We all are aware of the typical scenario of customer calling call center for any service related queries. As a part of the conversation between the call center agent and the customer, good amount of time is spent in understanding problem statement by both the parties with one trying to articulate and the other to digest it. At the same time, customer had to go through a long painful process of listening to the IVR instructions before getting to speak to the real agent. In the recent times of automation and digitization, there have been several initiatives to find innovative ways to reduce the amount of time spent on the calls, thereby reducing the cost to organization and improving productivity of agent, leading to a change in perception and channels to reach out to call center.
Especially in the cable, satellite and communications industry, due to higher volume of calls to call center, any decrease in call duration even in seconds would lead to savings in thousands/millions of dollars per year. Customer possess good amount of hardware devices like set top boxes, phone, TVs, wireless/wired clients and other supporting hardware, due to which call duration may increase as part of conversation. With the concept of virtual agents (Chatbot)/Artificial Intelligence(AI)) playing major role in the whole conversation in the recent times, we see new features getting added to the conventional channels of communication day by day. Based on my experience with cable/satellite, telecom sector, here are few approaches that might help in reducing the call duration:
1. Integrate the IT, Engineering with AI/Chatbot based systems especially at the time of customer interaction with agent.
2. Develop product level framework with business validations accessible to Chatbot/AI based systems for faster turnaround time before going further to access downstream systems.
3. Integrate the IVR/ Virtual Agent Application (Chatbot) with Engineering system to generate diagnostic report instead of agent manually swiveling chair to systems/applications/transferring the calls to other departments of the organization
4. Feed data generated by IVR from time to time to AI/Chatbot based systems to make it more effective.
5. Simplify CRM system by providing users more interactive data to generate reports, e-learning tools for self-installation/diagnostics with automated tools.
6. Enhance AI/Chat based systems to allow user to share video/voice form problem statement to reduce time to understand problem statement.
7. Make CRM accessible in Omni-channel mode
Adoption of either all or few of these features can help organizations achieve service related cost reduction with productivity improvement for agents.