Slow response times in your call center are so much more than just an irritating problem for customers, who call in with their limited free time for an answer to the challenges they’re facing with your brand. Those slow responses also create decreased overall customer satisfaction, loss of brand loyalty, and even potential reputational damage. Today’s customers aren’t content to wait on hold while your agents work through their queue. They need fast, clear responses they can count on, even during high-volume periods. In this article, we’ll address how to reduce call center response time with AI tools.
Common Causes of Slow Response Times
There are a variety of problems across your call center that can cause unexpected slow response times. Some of the most common problems are seen in a range of call centers, regardless of brand or industry.
1. High Call Volume
Chances are, you know when the high call volume periods are for your brand—and it may vary dramatically depending on your specific industry. Peak times are sometimes predictable: right after major sales, or during high-volume purchase periods, for example. Others may come as a surprise: right after there has been a serious problem or recall in your brand, or during a period of unexpectedly high need for your products.
Regardless of the reason, however, high call volume often means one thing for your customers: equally high wait times.
2. Understaffed Call Centers
Call centers often have chronically high turnover and constant understaffing. Unfortunately, many call centers do not have enough people on hand to handle the demand on regular days, much less high-demand days.
Are your employees constantly on the phones? Does managing even mandated breaks make it difficult for you to keep processing through calls as needed? If so, chances are, your brand is one of the many struggling with understaffing—and your employees and customers alike may be struggling as a result.
3. Manual Triage Processing
When a customer with a serious problem calls in, who decides when it’s time to escalate? Triage is often determined by employees directly. However, management team members, or escalated tiers of support, may simply have to take calls in the order they are received. As a result, it can take a long time for callers to make their way up the ladder to talk to the employee they need to actually handle their problem.
If your call center is still relying on manual triaging to handle your incoming calls, you may be slowing down the process significantly, placing an additional burden on both your employees and the callers.
How AI Can Reduce Call Center Response Time and Increase Customer Service
AI-powered solutions can dramatically reduce call center response time while simultaneously providing a higher level of support that will improve resolutions, increase customer satisfaction, and improve loyalty to your brand. AI solutions do not necessarily replace human agents, though they can certainly alleviate some understaffing issues in struggling call centers. Rather, they provide vital support to those human agents.
1. Provide Suggested Responses
AI-powered solutions can help human call center agents with suggested responses to customer needs. That can yield benefits in several key ways. First and foremost, it allows inexperienced call center agents to have the solutions and suggestions they need at their fingertips, rather than requiring them to connect with a more experienced agent every time a customer introduces a new problem. These AI-powered solutions make it easier to navigate the heavy employee turnover found in many call centers.
AI tools are not just valuable for new agents, however. They also provide much-needed answers to experienced agents who are dealing with a new problem for the first time or who may not be familiar with a specific customer’s case. Those suggestions also help standardize responses across the company, improving the customer experience and ensuring that they get the same results no matter who they interact with.
2. Automatically Triage Customer Needs
AI-powered solutions guide customers to the person they actually need to speak with without the need to work their way through different levels of escalation. For many call centers, every call begins in the same place: with the front-line support team. That team will have to go through the customer’s query and escalate the issue up the line if it’s something they can’t handle based on their access and capability.
In some cases, customers may have to go through every link on the chain to get to someone who can actually help them with their problem—and it’s not unusual for customers to get transferred back and forth between departments due to the employees’ inability to determine which department or level of support needs to handle a particular problem.
AI-powered solutions, on the other hand, can get a better feel for what the customer needs and send them to the department that is best able to handle their problem in the first place. In some cases, that may mean skipping the first level of support altogether or transferring them to a specific department that is able to manage their query. Not only does this streamline the support process for customers with higher-level support needs, but it also helps clear the queue so that call center agents can focus on the callers they can actually help.
3. Provide 24/7 Support
Finding the time and energy to connect with customer service can be difficult for many customers. They have long To Do lists, demanding jobs and schedules, and many other responsibilities to take care of. Not only that, most customers have the time to reach out to customer service during nontraditional business hours, since that’s when they’re off work and able to focus on their personal tasks and needs.
Unfortunately, those are often the hours when call centers most struggle to provide adequate staffing. You may not want to have 24/7 availability for your call center, since that can mean increased staffing costs and operations costs alike.
Enter AI. AI-powered solutions guide customers through their conversations with your company without them needing to talk to a human agent. With standardized responses and simple solutions to the most common customer problems, customers may not need a human agent—just that AI guidance.
In cases where that human touch is needed, AI solutions can still make customers feel as though they have been supported and their questions answered in the moment. Then, it can provide options for follow-up, whether that means a call back when there are human agents available or an email response that the customer can answer at their own convenience.
As a result, customers continue to receive the high level of support they need, no matter when they connect with the business—and they are more likely to be satisfied with their connection.
4. Data Retrieval Assistance
In many cases, call center agents need access to critical information quickly in order to offer customers the assistance they need. That may mean:
- Accessing past communications with customers, often across channels.
- Reviewing company policies.
- Checking key product or brand information.
Even experienced call center agents often do not have all the answers for themselves. Even an extensive database will mean that agents must look up that information before they can provide customers with the assistance they need. AI-powered solutions, on the other hand, can retrieve that data quickly, placing it at the agent’s fingertips during their interaction with the customer.
AI-powered data retrieval can be particularly important for large or outsourced call centers. When call center agents must juggle multiple brands—all with their own distinct styles, requirements, and products—it is more difficult for them to keep up with essential information. AI solutions, on the other hand, ensure that they are positioned to continue to provide the high level of service that customers expect.
5. Follow-Up Responses
The brand that responds first to a customer is often the one that is most likely to convert that customer, particularly in cases where the customer is still trying to decide which brand they want to use or which product best fits their needs. AI-powered solutions are ideal for improving that first-response time. In many cases, the initial response to a customer can easily be automated. It may include things like:
- A welcome to the brand.
- Start-up information.
- Answers to frequently asked questions.
Modern AI solutions not only make automating responses easy, but they also help you tailor your response to individual customer queries and needs, ensuring that you provide customers with the high level of personalization they expect.
6. Avoiding Lost Customers
Most of the time, call center agents keep on top of customer needs. However, some customers can fall through the cracks—especially if they haven’t yet made a purchase. AI-powered solutions keep up with customer contacts and prevent them from falling out of your brand’s sales funnel. That may include:
- Sending out automated follow-up communications.
- Reminding agents about customers who may not have followed up on their own.
- Tracking all customer interactions and providing that information as needed.
These processes are essential in protecting against customer loss and ensuring their satisfaction with your brand.
Find the Ideal AI Solutions To Reduce Call Center Response Time
As AI solutions continue to advance, they provide growing support for your agents and contribute to the best strategy to reduce call center response time. These solutions do not replace your human agents or the vital human touch for complex situations. However, they ensure that your brand continues to provide the high level of support customers expect as they connect with you. Book a demo with Verse today to learn more about how we can help.
