Interactive voice response (IVR) allows a company’s computer system to engage with customers through voice and touch-tone telephone keypads. They must take a hard look at the details involved in every interaction a customer has with the business along the entire journey. MORE

A new wave of callers surely already hit your call center – the holiday returns callers. If your frontline of call center agents is scrambling to meet the needs of holiday returns callers, recruit them some backup. Ask agents from other departments to field frontline calls. MORE

Call queues are central to the effectiveness of call centers and customer service. Call centers use a variety of methods, tools, and practices to lower the average time that a caller spends in the call queue. What is a Call Queue? Reduced Call Abandonment Rates. MORE

By Swati Sahai Call centers are an operationally-complex element of your business, but they play a big role in your customers’ experience with your company. It’s no easy task, but the right mix of call center metrics and KPIs can help you stay the course. There are many call center metrics you can measure, but only a few KPIs that you will want to monitor over a period of time. Many call center leaders view it as the most important KPI to track. MORE

Definition of Service Level: The percentage of calls answered within a set threshold. Other channels such as email, fax and even social media are measured based on elapsed response time. Calculation: (Calls Answered within x seconds)/Total Calls Answered X 100. Example: Service level threshold is 30 seconds; 100 calls are answered, with 80 answered within 30 seconds and 20 answered in more than 30 seconds. By: Peg Ayers and Turaj Seyrafiaan. MORE

Definition of Abandon Rate: The percentage of calls ended by the caller before being answered by an agent. Calculation: Abandoned Calls/ (Abandoned Calls + Answered Calls) X 100. Example: 90 calls are answered; 10 calls are abandon before they’re answered. Abandon rate is 10/ (10+90) which is 10%. Keep in mind that it is also possible for a caller to abandon a call for reasons not relating to the Contact Center. MORE

As an added benefit, studies have found that this approach also reduces lost or abandoned calls, increasing the number of calls handled satisfactorily. Properly configured, IVRs have been shown to reduce call abandon rates by upwards of 50%. MORE

A contact center in general term for any place or location where calls are made and received. Another, call center puts more emphasis on customer contact, CX. In the contact center, having in-depth knowledge about call center jargons, essential for reps’ success. MORE

These very important to have a thriving call center. Call center terminologies that everybody should have aware of. Here is call center around the globe experiencing growth in technologies. The Amazing A to Z Call Center Terminologies. Abandoned call. MORE

When mining phone metrics for those key measures that will improve decision making, start with: Call volume. Response times and wait times. Measure how quickly your staff responds to inbound calls along with wait times. Call duration. Abandon rate. MORE