Posted by Mumbai: Call Centers over the years have remained as one of the key aspects for business functioning and operations. However, the evolution of IVR (Interactive Voice Response) to AI (artificial intelligence) driven chatbots in recent years have added a new dimension to these call centers and their agents.
Along with answering customers queries, call center agents also need to focus on satisfying the customers with a better customer experience.
The technology driven innovation have changed the way call centers work today than in past. Interestingly, Ozonetel, an Indian cloud based call center software provider has recently conducted an analysis of a sample set of 250 million calls made on its CloudAgent platform served by 60,000 actives agents in 2019.
The analysis covered both in-bound and outbound calls made on Ozonetel’s platform across various verticals, including education, real estate, travel, finance, e-commerce, food & restaurants, pharma and banking.
Key findings of the report:
- · Lesser wait time for customers:
For many years, call centers have followed the 80-20 rule that is 80% of the calls should be answered in 20 seconds or less. This has been an industry benchmark for call center service levels.
But, most industries as per Ozonetel’s report now exceed this standard. The report reveals an average service level of 93%. It means that most call center agents answered 93% of the calls within 20 seconds or less.
This improved service level is due to better call routing and sophisticated distribution tools adopted within call centers.
- Quicker response from agents:
The average speed of answer in 2019 has been reported at 3.5 seconds against the 2018 average of 6 seconds. Average speed of answer is the average time a call center agent takes to answer inbound calls. (This includes the duration for which the agent’s phone rings but does not include the time the caller spends in the IVR or waiting in queue.)
Faster pick-up implies lesser wait time for customers. This significantly enhances customer experience. Many call centers have adopted the auto-answering feature to quicken agent response time.
- Improved agent efficiency:
Wrap time affects how fast call center agents can attend to the next call and affects queue wait time and productivity.
There has been a drop in After Call Work, from 29 seconds last year to 25 seconds this year. International Call Centers have shown an even bigger improvement with average wrap time reduced to 15 seconds.
- Longer breaks for agents:
Agents continue to work hard, with marginally longer breaks. Agents login 7.5 hours per day on an average, taking breaks for an average of 67 seconds. This means that they are answering or wrapping calls for nearly 85% of their workday.
- Outbound dialing:
On average, across outbound call centers, agents dial 90 calls and speak to 42 contacts per day.
Many of these call centers have improved their dials per agent by switching from manual dialing to power and predictive dialers. They can further improve the answer rates by improving data quality and experimenting with call timings.
“We have analysed various metrics to determine and understand trends in customer experience as well as agent efficiency. We believe this report has value as a bench marking index for the industry: call center agents, managers, and businesses,” said Chaitanya Chokkareddy, Chief Innovation Officer, Ozonetel.
As customer support becomes an increasingly omni-channel play, right tech integrations can help contact centers add more value to businesses. For instance, integrating WhatsApp into your contact center platform can be a game-changer in your customer support efforts.
Ozonetel is constantly developing holistic solutions to provide seamless experience for both the customer and the call center agent.
(Image source – iStock)