One of the most important statistics a company can measure with regard to agent performance and productivity is FCR or First Call Resolution. With the expansion of communication channels and platforms, it can also be referred to as First Contact Resolution. This metric examines whether the customer has his or her issue, request, or query resolved within the first interaction with your customer support agent.
A frequent pattern of incoming calls or contacts from repeat customers signifies that the customer service isn’t being handled properly. Not only does this affect the brand’s reputation but it also costs you a lot of money as more resources are required to cover and manage the incoming calls and contacts. From the customer’s perspective, it’s extremely frustrating to have to make multiple calls in order to attain resolution.
Improve customer satisfaction and reduce operating costs by incorporating these tried and tested strategies to visibly increase your FCR rate.
- Understanding Company Issues and Fixing Them
Primarily, the first step in improving FCR rates is to measure the metric. According to a report taken from the Call Center Helper, the most common way of measuring First Call/Contact Resolution is by calculating repeat calls.
Source: Call Centre Helper
These metrics make it easier to understand the root cause of the calls that weren’t resolved on the first contact. This further helps in identifying inefficiencies and can help in finding the solutions to these inconsistencies. On a surface level, issues can be identified by looking into factors like
- Why was the call transferred?
- Why was the call escalated?
- Why was the interaction spread across various channels?
- Did the agent have sufficient knowledge, resources, and training to solve the problem?
- Why was the caller unsatisfied with the solution?
The answers to these questions can be found by examining existing or new data, asking your agents, analyzing customer survey responses, listening to call recordings, and cross-checking with more experienced agents. VOIZ’s workforce management allows agents and companies alike to track repeat callers and helps the company in recognizing common issues, inefficient training, knowledge gaps, etc. By developing methods to overcome these repeat calls; your agents will be more aware and your data will be more regularized resulting in a more streamlined support process.
2. Analyze Customer Behaviour and Anticipate Their Needs
To understand what is causing your customers to repeatedly call you for support, agents must be advised to start listening to calls and identifying what’s the core of the issue from those calls. One approach is through immediate comprehension which is through listening and conversing with the customer. Agents at VOIZ are trained to minimize repeat calls and are trained to identify and capture certain calls in certain cases. To increase customer satisfaction and FCR, a few other approaches are as follows
- Curate Customer Profiles
By segmenting your customer base according to gender, age, location, educational qualification, income, interests, etc, you can identify the needs of each group, why they use your services, what problems they are likely to face, etc. At VOIZ, with the CRM equipped with features like detailed customer history, transparent telephonic process, call prioritization, etc your agents will have a better understanding of their needs and can do an exceptional job while interacting with them on the first contact.
- Analyze your callers and group customers based on their calls
Analyzing your callers and their behavior is an effective method to increase FCR as this information can be used to route specific callers to agents most capable of meeting the needs of the customers. By analyzing customer contact behavior, you will have a better grasp on the kind of customers calling, the type of problems they have, and whether or not a resolution for their problems, needs, or queries was attained. This insight can help the company and the agents solve customer issues faster and with no worry of a follow-up call.
3. Shift your process to a Marketplace like VOIZ
VOIZ is a customer support marketplace that connects companies with customer support agents and contact centers. Agents of VOIZ are trained and equipped with the right tools to increase the FCR. VOIZ’s ability to integrate with your CRM provides a detailed comprehensive history of the customer or caller in a unified interface, which allows agents to access information that will help them be more prepared to resolve the caller’s issue without having to transfer the call or call them back.
In addition to this VOIZ is built to pull call logs, generate tickets, create cases and events, update all integrated systems, and access accurate customer information in real-time that will drastically improve your agents’ capabilities reducing errors and omissions thereby resulting in better FCR.
VOIZ has agent dashboard metrics and performance-based actionable data dashboards that give agents access to valuable data about their performance; making them more aware of their actions, deliverables, and goals; allowing them to self-analyze and self-improve without having the management to remind them. We, at VOIZ, aim to empower agents to make educated and informed decisions based on actual data and metrics that will help to bolster employee motivation, escalate their productivity and improve their performance.
4. Boost Agent Autonomy
Encourage agents to be independent and empower them to cut the scripts and discard the red tape. Autonomous agents are not restricted by traditional methods and tools such as strict scripts and constrictive policies as they are more than capable of satisfying the needs of the customers by being attentive, responsive, flexible, and personal. When agents are stripped off of unnecessary restrictions, agents are empowered to handle the callers based on the instincts, training, and knowledge they will dramatically decrease the number of calls transferred and enhance FCR.
5. Fix Broken Processes and Enhance Internal Communication
Broken processes refer to internal collaborative processes that need to be identified. Build teams of agents to tackle various processes within the organization. With VOIZ’s reserve of talented and skilled agents, filling remote customer support seats is easy. It will be more organized on the customer service front if specialized agents are recruited to fill the positions of various departments and processes.
Despite the remote arrangement, VOIZ has an easy and seamless flow of communication between managers and agents that allow managers to continually solicit information to the agents. This goes on improving inefficiencies and other process-based rigidities as there is constant communication between the two parties. With managers monitoring agent effectiveness, tracking first call resolution, and providing feedback to agents regularly; internal communication becomes a two-way street eventually making the company win at winning over its customers.