Published on July 16th, 2019 | by Emma Smith

5 Features Your Call Center Must Have

Everyone knows how important it is to have a customer service call center in a company. Not only does it help improve the productivity and the effectiveness of each phone call, it also helps build strong relationships with potential and future clients. With the arrival of new technologies and the use of cloud computing, we can expect much more from cloud call centers. When you choose your call center provider, you should not only think about the lowest prices, but also the additional features they can offer. BPOs in the Philippines, for example, utilize tools to track calls and monitor the performance of every agent. Apart from that, they upgrade their software and equipment as needed to provide clear and effective services to customers. Depending on what features they offer, they can help make your customer service more efficient. These are a few of our favourite must-have features:

1. IVR (Interactive Voice Response)

Ever make a phone call and you hear something like this?: “For sales press 1, for accounting press 2“. It is an automated phone system that interacts with your client by using their voice and the number keypad on their phone. It allows you to distribute your calls effectively and meet the demands of your clients.

However, it doesn’t just send the caller to the right department or help them select a language. It can go much further. Go creative because the possibilities are infinite. For example, you could give your premium clients personalized treatment when they call. The IVR can ask them to introduce their account number, so that the agent knows important details about the customer before they begin the call. Or, you could ask your clients to enter their postal code, so you can offer them a specific service depending on their location. Those are just some of the features, but the possibilities are infinite.

2. ACD (Automatic Call Distributor)

The ACD is the second step after IVR. Once you have information about the caller, the system will send the client to the most skilled agent based on the topic of their call. You would need to create a profile of each of your agents evaluating their skill sets. For example, if one of your agent’s Spanish skills can be rated as 8/10 and another agent as 5/10, the ACD will send the Spanish speaking clients to the first agent. It will send them to the second agent only if the first agent is not available. This system can improve your agents’ productivity since they will not waste any time on any clients they cannot help.

3. Call Transcriptions

Call transcriptions is a great option to have all of your phone calls under control. While agents speak with customers, the supervisor will have access to the call transcriptions of the current conversation in real time. You can also save the call transcriptions as a file to analyze or make notes on the call later. It is a great source of information for market research or to evaluate the progress of your agents. With that feature, you will not miss any important details of any phone conversation and you will be able to evaluate how can you improve your call center based on your calls.

4. Listen to Calls

When it comes to new agents in a call center, even after initial training, the supervisor will still likely need to observe how well the agent is doing during the first week. This is why being able to listen to all calls is so important. When a supervisor can listen to any conversations the agent had, they can make sure the agent does not need any additional help.

5. Whispers

With the possibility of being able to listen to calls comes the option of whispering. When you notice one of your agents doesn’t know how to respond to a client’s question, you can “whisper” to them the right answer during the call and the customer will not hear it.

These are just some of the many features that a call center system can offer. They will make your call center and customer service life significantly easier, and also help improve the efficiency and productivity of your business.

5. Statistics

Ever wonder which agent is making the most calls? Who answers the most calls? Who doesn’t answer calls at all? Now you can find out all of this information through caller statistics. Some virtual phone companies for businesses will provide this feature in order to improve call center services.

However, it is not just for agent information. You can also view which caller is calling the most, what menu options they are clicking on the most, and so much more. This statistical information will help assist your business by answering any questions on your call center performance.

Not only is this the most valuable feature, but it can also be downloaded as an excel file so you can conduct analytical research with it later. This is the best feature in today’s world to check how well your business approach is in order to gain success in customer service. Not only does your customer service department benefit from this feature, but so can your marketing department, analytics department, and sales department. They can each track the progress of how customers react and the approach agents take in order to solve these problems.

Conclusion

For the best, most effective call center service, you will want to be able to manage calls quickly and efficiently. Although these are just a few of the features you may find in a virtual call center, it is able to take account how you will use the service.

By organizing your calls, you will be able to ensure that no calls will be missed. Callers will be less frustrated since they will be directed to the most qualified person or department each time. You will be able to take notes, and whisper to your agents everytime they also have a question. Customers are key in every business. But this isn’t just about the customers. This makes the phone process for any business much easier and more enjoyable. Now, instead of focusing on who you should transfer a call to, you can simply answer any call, from any location.

With cloud call centers, you can manage calls automatically. You will never need to worry about a missed call again.

Tags: call center, call distributor, caller, communications, customer, Phone, service

About the Author

Emma Smith PR and content manager at Fonvirtual. Fonvirtual provides companies and entrepreneurs with virtual services. I’m interested in digital marketing, technology and international logistics. I enjoy writing for blogs where I try to spread the word of telecom services in international business.