Have you ever contacted a company’s customer support and they couldn’t deal with your problem and provide a proper solution only on the first call itself? This is an example of a company that fails to meet the expectations of customers during their first call resolution.

Most businesses can’t afford to under-deliver solutions to customers during the first call resolution as it is equated to poor customer service and experience. FCR not only helps to build measure customer satisfaction but it will also higher your first call resolution rate. 

When your customers are satisfied, you will drive more customer loyalty and as a result, you can measure your call center agents’ efficiency and profitability.

What do you mean by First Call Resolution?

First call resolution is also known as first contact resolution or FCR. It is a company’s ability to handle customers’ complaints, calls, emails, questions, or queries during their first outreach to a company for a particular incident.

3 Importance of First Call Resolution

Companies strive to deliver quality service to their customers and for that, they essentially focus on delivering optimal first-call resolution to their customers. Here are a few specifics on why FCR could be a healthy business practice.

1. A Good First Call Resolution Helps To Retain Customers

Customer’s pain points should never be ignored and companies should ideally solve them in the first place. Ideally, when customers reach out to companies with their problems, a customer support team should try to solve them in the first place as it would retain customers for the future.

2. Helps To Change The Mind Of Dissatisfied Customers

A dissatisfied customer might spread negative about your business. But if their problems are addressed in a friendly way, then you might turn a potential detractor into a possible promoter of your business. 

3. Helps To Get The Most Out Of Your Support Team

When customers first time call you or send you an email and if their problem has been taken into priority and solved by your customer support team, then they won’t be calling you again for the exact same problem. The shorter time a customer waits to get the answer, the more productive a customer service outsourcing team is. 

9 Tips To Improve First Call Resolution

Here are 9 tips that will help to deal with your customers on the first call and improve the FCR rate.

1. Create A  Customer Service Portal

It might be difficult to track all the customer support interactions without software. This task even becomes more tedious when documenting which calls are resolved the first time and which are not. 

Customer service software when integrated into your company’s CRM helps in tracking tickets, emails, and calls and makes the whole process more systematic. This helps the agents to respond easily to the inquiries and it also provides actionable and data-rich info which helps to analyze the results. 

2. Define Your Escalations

Different companies have their own escalations when it comes to first-call resolution. You should always specify and define your business parameters with regard to FCR. 

For example – If a problem has been escalated to a supervisor, is it escalated beyond the first call? 

If a problem of a customer is complex and it will take 2-3 business days to resolve, then you should always try to inform your customers only on the first call. You should always make your company’s FCR clear when it comes to the method of outreach, time, or the number of people involved for clear and precise record-keeping.

3. Staff A Customer Service Outsourcing Team

When you have limited customer service department members, it will put huge pressure on your team to rush and get the next ticket without completely solving the first one. Apart from this, if those customers deal with excessive waiting time, then they would also be frustrated with your service. Thus, to boost your FCR, you have to hire enough staff members or a customer service outsourcing team who can answer all the emails, chats, and calls that you receive from your customers so that customers won’t have to wait for a longer time to get the answer.

4. Train Your Customer Support Staff Members

The customer support team members or your agents should completely learn about your products and services to deal with your customer queries. They should always keep learning about the changes in your products from time to time so that they always stay updated. 

If they fail to obtain proper updated knowledge and the solutions they provide will not be accurate anymore and as a result, you will fail to provide effective customer support solutions.

5. Structure Your Team Carefully

When you rebuild your team, you should always consider discussing with your employees and know where their strength lies. 

For example – If a company requires simple customer support needs, then every support employee should be a generalist and have more breadth of product knowledge than its specific features. 

But if a company is working under a particular niche, then it should always consider dividing and structuring each customer support team member according to their specific area or product knowledge. Here, depth of knowledge can be used to divide the right employee into the right area so that they can get to the root of the problems and provide customers with the best solution through calls or emails. 

6. Follow Up On Emails Or Conduct Phone Surveys

Once a ticket is closed, ask them to answer a phone call for a survey or follow up with them through an email so that you may further reach out to them for support. 

This provides an insight to your FCR quickly and can prompt the support agents to reach back to those customers and solve their problems the right way and as a result, it helps to improve the company’s first call resolution every day.

7. Motivate Your Team

Your customer support team plays a challenging role in your company. Talking to your customers who have specific issues can sometimes be very frustrating and challenging.

 If you want to provide great customer service and experience, then you should always motivate and appreciate your customer service staff every day and also help them with their problems when needed.

 Ensure that you are happy and motivated to solve challenges every day. You can also create plans for bonuses and incentives for better achievement and results. 

8. Analyze Your Trends

Once you set up your software, hire employees and train them, you should start analyzing your results through emails and calls. Check for questions that could result in a better-improved customer experience. 

For example – 

• Is one common issue that continues to arise?

• Is one customer support agent reporting lower FCR than others?

• Which day of the week is having more customer calls?

These were some of the questions with which you can improve your first call rate.

9. Make Changes When Needed

Find solutions to the above questions.

• If one issue continues to arise, then consider writing a knowledge-based article on this issue and publishing it on your website. 

• If one customer support agent has a lower FCR than others, then place that employee for another round of training or in any other department. 

• If a particular day of the week has more customer calls, then staff up new members accordingly.

Conclusion

These are some of the tips and measures which you can use to deal with the problem of first call resolution and improve its rate. You can always make changes in your customer support team or hire an effective customer service outsourcing team to deliver an effective solution to customers on the very first call. 

Finding common issues for a delayed resolution, using different segments to filter those common issues, measuring FCR performance, and avoiding call transfers as much as possible are some of the bonus tips which will also be helpful to improve your FCR score.