In today’s fast-paced digital world, customers have come to expect rapid-fire service and gratifying interactions. They’re no longer willing to wait for minutes on hold or be transferred to multiple customer service representatives.With the rise of digital channels like chatbots and social media to handle customer interactions, businesses are expected to increase customer engagement while streamlining these support processes.
Call centers must leverage these alternative digital channels to ensure customer service agents maintain a high level of support. Gartner reports that by the start of 2023, 50% of large organizations will have unsuccessfully integrated omnichannel customer support. This statistic presents an opportunity for businesses to get ahead of the curve. Luckily, deflecting to digital channels is one of the best ways to satisfy customers when handling extremely high call volume.
What Does Call Deflection Mean?
Call deflection is the technique of transferring and resolving customer calls through digital channels rather than speaking directly with an agent. When customers reach out to your call center for help, they are offered additional support options, such as a messaging channel or chatbot. This allows customers to remain in control of their experience with your call center, and resolve their issue via the channel of their choosing.
Deflecting customer calls to digital channels saves both the customer and agent time, allowing your call center to resolve customer issues faster and with less effort. In addition, this practice frees your agents to handle more complex customer support requests that require direct interactions.
Top 4 Benefits of Call Deflection
No longer a trend, deflecting calls to digital paths has become a staple in providing excellent customer service. With countless benefits, there’s every reason to implement call deflection in your call center today.
1. Improved Customer Experience
The number one goal of every call center should be to provide an excellent customer experience. And offering customers support through digital channels can strengthen a center’s customer experience strategy.
Call deflection gives customers a more convenient interaction option. They can quickly get in touch with your business through their preferred channel. The reason that call deflection is so crucial for customer experience is that it meets customers where they are while increasing customer engagement.
2. Increased First Contact Resolution Rates
Since digital channels allow for quick back-and-forth communication, chances are that your call center will resolve the customer’s issue or request during the first interaction. Not only is First Contact Resolution (FCR) considered a valuable indicator of customer satisfaction, but when explored in depth, it can offer critical insight into customer journeys and trends.
3. Increased Productivity
Call deflection also allows agents to handle more customer support requests in the same amount of time, and often faster. In addition, call deflection helps teams better manage their support requests. You can prioritize and route requests to the appropriate call agents with the right tools. This way, your call center can handle customer support tasks more efficiently and effectively.
4. Bottom-Line Results
Incorporating digital support channels can often yield significant bottom-line results. For example, AI chat bots now play a huge role in call center customer experience. In some cases, Brightmetrics™ customers have found they have been able to deflect over 60% of their call volume to digital paths with the help of AI. Deflecting calls can also allow the proper agent or expert to handle the customer support request, which leads to improved call quality.
Implementing Digital Call Deflection Into Your Strategy
To effectively implement a call deflection strategy, call center leaders must start by measuring customer intent. Your call center is most likely already capturing intent data through wrap codes or skills. Analyzing why your customers are calling enables leaders to find which of these interactions could be simply handled through automation. Leave your most complex customer interactions for your agents to address and resolve directly.
Once identified, implementing the appropriate digital channels into your customer experience strategy will become simpler. Here are examples of different digital channel options for improved customer engagement.
Installing a Chatbot
Live chat or a chatbot is one of the best strategies for deflecting calls and improving the customer experience. This option gives customers rapid contact with your business and can provide them with near-immediate answers to their questions. You can create interactive workflows with chatbots that help direct customers to the proper support channels or teams. Live chat and chatbots can be installed directly onto your website or in-app, making it easy for customers to reach out for assistance.
Leveraging Social Media
Another call deflection technique works through social media. You can use these channels to deflect customer inquiries with quick answers and links to helpful resources. However, using these platforms as a support channel comes with the risk of frustrated customers sharing information online that could damage your company’s reputation. These channels must be approached sensitively, as it’s easy for an unsatisfactory interaction to make its way through a customer’s circle or even go viral. Ensure the customer experience is very high when using social media for call deflection.
Using Interactive Voice Response
An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system is a common call-deflection tool. IVRs are robust automated systems that answer and guide callers through a selection of options or menus to help reach the best agent to assist them. Unlike social media and chatbots, some IVR systems have language capabilities, allowing the caller to use their voice to make requests. Customers can enter their query or issue to start a conversation with your call center and be routed to the right destination. IVRs can also suggest additional support channels to callers, allowing them to switch from a voice call to text message or email if they prefer.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Call-Deflection Strategy
Once having curated and implemented a call deflection strategy, you need to measure its effectiveness. Having the right analytical software can help you understand the landscape of your call center and provide you with powerful insights to delight your customers. Using analytics, like Brightmetrics, to dissect customer interactions and intent will give organizations the advantage of being steps ahead of creating the experience that both employees and customers demand.
Learn more about how Brightmetrics can visualize your customer interactions and provide your team the insights they need.
