Call management - 5 benefits of getting the right business phone system

Put simply, call management is the way in which businesses handle incoming calls. It’s a fundamental component to every business’ customer experience strategy and getting it right is vital. Every business wants to make sure that every call is routed quickly and easily to the right person to handle the query, while at the same time having the systems and processes in place to gather insightful statistics about how the call is managed.

As the UK’s leading provider of call management solutions for over 20 years, we’d like to share our top 5 benefits on how getting call management right can revolutionise your business communications and customer experience.

1. Reduce missed and abandoned calls

It’s no surprise that missed and abandoned calls are a major issue that businesses want to avoid. Callers don’t want to be waiting in long queues or be disconnected before reaching an agent. Instead they want to be quickly connected to the right person who can efficiently deal with their requirement. Whatever the cause, missed and abandoned calls are a negative experience for the caller and it’s estimated that 85% of people whose calls aren’t answered will not call back. 

If the customer had a service or billing enquiry you’ve missed the opportunity to resolve the situation and strengthen their faith in you as their supplier; if they had a sales need then it’s very likely that they’ll soon be picking up the phone to a competitor.

A great call management solution will provide you with the visibility of when and how these calls are being lost, meaning that you’re one step closer to resolving the issue. Maybe you need to put more resource on different queues. Maybe you need more resource at different times during the day. Or maybe your hold music needs updating with a bit of Ed Sheeran.  Only by being able to see the call journey and caller behaviour will you be able to understand the situation and take the necessary action to improve the caller experience and reduce those lost calls.

2. Better staff management

Callers don’t like being stuck in long call queues, especially when they have to speak to an agent urgently. In fact, 25% of callers give up if they’re kept on hold for too long.  These callers could be potential sales leads or existing customers, and an unanswered call gives a bad experience and risks them going elsewhere. The most common reason for long call wait times is due to there not being enough colleagues available to take the calls, so visibility of call peaks and trends is invaluable.

This is where call management comes in. If you don’t know your busy and quiet call times, or have visibility of seasonal or situational trends then the data provided by a call management solution will provide the insight necessary to make better queue and staff management decisions. By analysing the call data, businesses have a greater visibility of when they experience high and low call volumes and with this information can better plan the resources needed to provide a great experience without overstaffing when it’s quiet.

3. Improved employee performance

It’s vital that businesses that have customer contact centres, both inbound and outbound, can accurately monitor, report and act on the performance of their agents. Call management data can be used by managers to monitor and assess how their staff are performing. This data can provide important metrics such as average call times, the number of inbound and outbound calls made and received, the time between calls etc. All of this information can be used as internal KPIs to see who is excelling and who might need some extra support.

Additionally, calls can be recorded and reviewed to use in training exercises and for internal audits to ensure that agents are giving the best customer service they can.

4. Better customer service

When you make a phone call into a business your needs are simple: you want it answered quickly by someone who is equipped to resolve your query. Call management enables businesses to achieve just that. Calls can be routed to the right people quickly and effectively meaning that waiting times are minimised and callers are kept happy. Additionally, by having the caller’s previous interactions recorded on your call management system, the agent has a good understanding of their background which can be used to better help resolve the call.

Understanding the customer’s needs and directing them to the right agent or department in a timely and efficient way increases the overall customer experience. 52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a company after a positive customer service experience so it’s vital that you do everything possible to provide great customer service and understand the role that call management can play in helping achieve this.

5. Cost saving

A call management system allows you to better understand where you could be spending needlessly and highlight areas for cost savings. Maybe you’ve got too many agents on shift during periods of low call volume, or some of your call processes or workflows aren’t efficient, costing you in lost productivity. Then there’s the added costs involved in human error or poor training. With the right call management solution, agents and managers have the ability to listen back to calls or join a conversation mid-call allowing them to assess and improve call experiences as they go, improving productivity and maximising value from every colleague.

Whether you’re a small business or a larger enterprise, implementing a call management system has a lot of great benefits. Here at Windsor Telecom we have decades of experience in helping businesses implement the right business phone solution that gives them the best call insight to ensure a great customer service. Our cloud-based VoIP phone system is feature rich, especially around the areas of queue management and analytics, helping our customers understand their business calls better, as standard. Get in touch for a demo and further insight into how call management data can help drive better decisions for your business.