Contact centre: 7 effective tips for optimising inbound call management

Poorly managed inbound telephone calls can sometimes have negative consequences for the contact centre and for the company itself. Poor communication management affects the satisfaction of customers who are unable to find solutions to their problems or answers to their questions. After a bad call experience, most of them don’t want to contact the company again, which is a major loss for the company.

So how can you effectively manage your contact centre’s inbound calls? Here are 7 effective tips.

Managing inbound calls: what’s at stake?

The challenges of customer relations cannot be neglected. Customer dissatisfaction can become a real threat to a company. According to a study by Salesforce, 91% of customers say they intend to make a new purchase after a positive first experience with a telephone answering service.

Improving your company’s image and boosting sales through telephone answering is entirely possible. This is achieved by establishing quality communication with callers and taking the time to listen to them and analyse their expectations. Establishing quality communication in a customer relations centre involves reducing waiting times and putting in place a team with expertise in customer relations.

Poor customer service often leads to dissatisfied customers/prospects. After a negative call experience, they may not want to contact the company again because they feel that the customer service department is unable to respond to their request or resolve their concerns. Not only will the company’s image be affected, but its sales and turnover will also fall.

To avoid these negative situations, it is important to improve the customer experience by effectively managing incoming calls. The use of outsourced customer support is also one of the most recommended alternatives for guaranteeing caller satisfaction and strengthening your brand image.

What are the challenges of managing inbound calls in contact centres?

Implementing effective management of incoming telephone calls is not always easy in contact centres. They face a number of challenges.

Using several communication channels

Customers can contact the company via a variety of communication channels: telephone calls, email, SMS or even social networks. Poor management of this multi-channel customer relationship can lead to a deterioration in the quality of communication.

Constantly changing customer behaviour

Inbound call management strategies are mainly based on understanding the needs and preferences of customers/prospects. The problem is that customer behaviour is constantly changing. They tend to demand an increasingly personalised service or product. By focusing on an overly generalised customer relationship, contact centres run the risk of deteriorating the communication experience with their customers.

The use of inappropriate equipment

The failure of the telephone answering service is often due to the inadequacy of the equipment used. Outdated, it does not allow contact agents to work efficiently. These agents are forced to operate under degraded conditions and are unable to pinpoint the needs of customers/prospects. The result is a poorer quality of service.

A lack of skills

To manage inbound calls effectively, contact centres have to face up to the challenges associated with a lack of skills. They need to employ skilled staff and provide them with regular training so that they can master the new technological solutions required by the business. Only the most skilled agents can put the human dimension at the heart of customer relations.

7 tips for effectively managing inbound calls in contact centres

Here are our 7 tips for effectively managing incoming calls in a call centre.

1.  Define customer expectations

A switchboard service must do more than just respond to customer requests. It must also be able to understand their expectations in order to offer them an empathetic, fluid and personalised call experience.

With ProContact, a specialist switchboard company, you benefit from optimised customer relations. Thanks to our customer support outsourcing solution, we can refine our knowledge of your customers and provide personalised responses to better satisfy them.

2.  Deploy the right technologies

To optimise inbound call management, contact centres need to rely on appropriate technological solutions. The use of modern call centre software is essential to ensure greater operational efficiency. Some inbound call management software offers comprehensive functionality, such as the ability to track customer history across different communication channels on a single platform.

What’s more, there are other innovative technological solutions available to better meet customer needs, such as Voice over IP (VoIP) and Artificial Intelligence.

3.  Personalise customer interactions

To strengthen customer relations, your agents need to be able to provide unique responses to incoming calls, as each customer has specific needs. Standardised responses should be avoided as they do not take into account the personalised expectations of callers.

4.  Train agents to optimise operations

The customer experience depends on the skills of your agents. If they are to handle incoming calls effectively, they need to be well trained. The contact centre must therefore implement an ongoing training plan to support the skills development of call centre agents and optimise the quality of customer service.

5.  Manage call peaks effectively

Call peaks are a source of dissatisfaction for customers. In addition to call failures, they can also lead to long waiting times. To resolve call bottlenecks, consider implementing rigorous planning and adopting intelligent strategies. This involves, for example, right-sizing your teams or using intelligent routing technologies. These solutions enable you to manage peaks in incoming calls effectively and guarantee a quality customer experience.

6.  Carry out satisfaction surveys

Measuring customer satisfaction enables you to maintain your brand image. It makes it easier to anticipate and correct any mistakes. It also shows customers that your company is listening to them and that their satisfaction is your priority. By measuring and managing customer satisfaction, you also optimise your brand image.

7.  Reinforce data security

The contact centre must guarantee the security of data shared during incoming calls. This is done by implementing data security protocols that serve to guarantee the efficiency and security of interactions. By making data confidentiality a central concern, you can easily gain the trust of your customers.

Why outsource your company’s customer service?

Outsourcing customer relations is the solution for companies wishing to establish high-quality, fluid communication with their customers. Using an offshore customer relations centre offers a whole range of advantages.

A cost-effective option

By outsourcing the management of your telephone answering service, you can optimise your budget. Specialist companies such as ProContact offer simple, clear contracts with costs fixed in advance. By using a call centre, you avoid the sometimes unpredictable costs associated with the internal management of incoming calls from your customers.

An effective solution for an optimised customer experience

Outsourced customer relations is the solution for providing customers with a satisfactory communications experience. The agents who work for a company specialising in outsourced switchboard services are trained in telephone answering. So your calls are handled by professionals. Your customer relations are optimised and you build customer loyalty.

A flexible and available service

Customer relations outsourcing guarantees the flexibility and availability of your telephone answering service. The solutions it deploys enable it to effectively manage any call overflow. What’s more, you can assign your in-house staff to tasks that are more rewarding for your company.

Get in touch with us!

Entrust the outsourcing of your customer relations to ProContact. With qualified, trained and multilingual agents, we can offer your customers a quality call experience. We also provide initial and ongoing training to enhance our teams’ skills. At ProContact, the average seniority of our call centre agents is four and a half years. In other words, our staff turnover rate is very low. The motivation of our teams enables us to ensure the availability and continuity of our services when outsourcing your call centre.

We also use innovative infrastructures based on Dialogic-Vocalcom platforms. These latest-generation solutions enable us to provide advanced management of your incoming calls. Operating in the cloud, they guarantee the confidentiality of data shared as part of customer relations outsourcing.

ProContact is more than just a contact centre. Partner with us and treat yourself to a premium customer service that makes it easy for you to build customer loyalty. In addition to our outsourced telephone answering service, we also offer other services, such as secretarial outsourcing and HR outsourcing.

Contact us today to build your tailor-made offer.