subject: How To Blend Live Agents With Automated Response Systems [print this page] In general, companies prefer that their customers use automated systems such as interactive voice menus and online applications. However automated systems have their limitations, and some clients simply prefer to talk to a human being. Rather than viewing these as separate call center solutions, organizations should see them as different facets of the same tool.
Offering Customers Flexibility
No single system will please everyone. Some businesses choose to commit to one customer service system, with the idea that it's cheaper and if they please most of their clients, it's good enough. More successful organizations try to offer an array of call center solutions in the hope of having a tool for every taste.
Interactive voice menus allow customers to take care of routine tasks such as calling to get an account balance or making a payment. Now that so few phones have keypads separate from handsets, systems that understand spoken commands are becoming common. However voice recognition applications should allow customers to punch in information. Callers may not want to speak a credit card number aloud while in a crowded restaurant, or a disabled caller may be unable to speak. And, of course, a person should be able to reach a live agent at any time.
Integrating Call Center Solutions
With the latest advances in call center software, the line between automated tools and live agents is becoming thinner. Online applications typically allow customers to chat with an agent, and telephone tools can transfer the caller to a representative at any time. When these call center solutions work together as one, customers get the best service.
Managers can look at traffic patterns and look for potential problems. For example, if they notice most of the callers who start on the interactive voice system end up talking to a live agent, perhaps the tool is not as functional as it could be. Upgrading the automated system with new capabilities could relieve caller traffic and reduce hold times by allowing callers to complete their business without having to talk to a representative.
It's All About Customer Service
One of the reasons companies like automated systems is that they are cheaper to administer than a team of service agents. On the other hand, some callers don't want to talk to a computer. In the early days of automated systems, some organizations committed to them so strongly they alienated their customers by making it impossible to reach a human being.
While cost is certainly an important factor when developing call center solutions, any company that is so busy saving money that it forgets about the needs of the customer soon won't have any customers at all. Encouraging customers to use automated tools is good business. Forcing them to do so is a road to failure.
Technology has fundamentally changed the concept of call center solutions. But technology not backed by and integrated by human effort is ultimately empty and unsatisfying.
