6 ways call center automation makes your life easier

Running your call center like clockwork means putting no second to waste. Your team needs to chase targets, build relationships, and turn leads to gold, while you’ve got to steer them to success. Now ask yourself: do any tasks in your workload feel secondary to that?

Slow-moving processes can grind a busy day to a halt — we know it, you know it, and so do your customers. Customers want easy interactions paired with effective solutions, and your agents want more time and energy to prioritize tasks that provide true value.

Call center automation meets everyone’s need for speed, but key to getting it right is knowing which tasks to focus on. While every call center has different performance needs, automation has been proven to help make life easier in your workplace and for your customers.

We’ll take you through the processes that can be safely left to technology, so you can put time back into your hands and concentrate on closing more deals.

1. Scheduling

Creating a schedule that works for your call center is no simple task. It takes time to arrange your agents in a shift pattern with no gaps, accounting for their skill sets and availability.

Scheduling is a great example of where call center automation shines — by taking a complex job out of your hands, efficiently analyzing large amounts of data and variables, and coming up with a pattern that works. If you’ve found yourself spending too much time putting puzzle pieces together, scheduling is one thing you need to automate.

2. Forecasting

No one in this business is a stranger to data. Every call your reps dial, every sale they make, and all the processes in between are recorded and reported on. While you might look at the numbers regularly to set sales goals and look for trends, data analysis is one thing that machines do faster and better.

Forecasting tools use a mix of methods to uncover insights, evaluate potential outcomes, and suggest courses of action based on your data. Each interaction brings new information to your fingertips, and automated forecasting can help you quickly make sense of it all — and take the right actions to boost performance.

3. Interactions

Automating customer interactions accomplishes two things: it gives your customer the power to explore and solve queries on their own to their preferences, and provides agents context about customer needs and intent. With that insight, they can step in if necessary to provide a better, more personalized standard of service. Customers gain satisfaction from directing their queries, and agents ensure their time on the phone is truly helpful.

Whether you use interactive voice responses with self-service screening or schedule follow-up messages, there’s something for everyone to like with automated interactions.

4. Agent guidance

Your reps might be the best in the business, but we all need support from time to time. Agents have a lot to think about while on the phone, from landing sales and processing payments to determining transfers — all while staying compliant with relevant regulations.

Call center automation tools can help with agent guidance, incorporating sentiment analysis and natural language processing to offer real-time advice during customer interactions. This means agents can better understand their next steps, troubleshoot at the right times with the right message, and avoid legal issues without hands-on assistance, saving time for managers too.

5. Workflows

From wrap time to talk time, your agents have many tasks to take care of. Some of these, like switching between apps, add up without adding value. Not only that, but manual data entry can lead to costly errors.

Automating these workflows naturally complements your agents. Letting tech take care of manual admin creates simpler, more engaging work processes, and frees up time for your reps to focus on what they’re best at: connecting with customers and banking bonuses.

6. Sales tasks

Does your call center have the double task of talking customers through service and product issues while hooking them in? You probably know how involved sales can be outside of closing the deal, with tasks like customer onboarding and follow-up communications all requiring time.

Thankfully, sales process automation makes the cycle as short and simple as possible. Automation tools can use customer data and communication templates to send announcements, order information, and even create sales offers based on purchase history. As with workflows, automating sales tasks lets your agents add more value with each second, but it also creates a simpler process that allows for faster and more frequent sales.

Call center automation streamlines admin, sharpens data analysis and reporting, and creates more rewarding experiences for your customers and employees. Before you begin automating, it’ll pay to think about what your business needs the most to become more productive — but any of these manual, time-consuming, and repetitive tasks are a great place to start.

Check out our ACD system for smarter, automated call routing.

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