#GoToGetsIT: This article is part of an ongoing series from GoTo’s thought leaders on the frontlines: Our Solutions Consultants deeply understand our customers’ unique challenges and connect the right solutions to meet their goals using GoTo technology. Here, they share their industry knowledge on what it takes to help businesses everywhere thrive in a remote or hybrid world.
Businesses today are missing opportunities to connect with their clients. Whether it is sales or customer support, missed calls or “abandoned” calls hurt both revenue and reputation for companies.
To make matters more challenging, the way their customers interact with them has evolved. Some customers may prefer a phone call interaction, the Gen-Z and Millennial generations tend to prefer a more “digital” form of communication. This can create challenges for businesses that are not equipped or prepared to extend a more multi-channel approach for their organization.
When thinking about missing calls, any organization must define a value to an interaction. If you are a sales-based organization X is the average sales amount for each interaction. So, calculate something like so:
Average interaction sale = $1,000
Average amount of answered calls/day= 100
Average abandoned call/per= 33
In this basic example, you see a company that makes $100,000/day, but also loses $33,000/day. Why? The reason could range from hold times to client preferred method of contact.
A business that embraces a “proactive” contact approach is more likely to reduce the number of abandoned opportunities and increase reputation with their clients. So how do you embrace a proactive contact approach? It happens on multiple fronts that all converge into a single platform.
1. Inbound call routing
An inbound voice contact center leverages capabilities like skills-based routing, VIP routing, and most importantly queue callback. Skill routing or VIP routing matches your clients to an agent that is best equipped to address their needs. Queue callback is your next line of defense in ensuring customer retention. A caller can keep their place in the queue and have an agent call them when it's their turn. For inbound calling, this feature alone significantly reduces abandoned calls.
2. Outbound outreach
Even with special tools to handle inbound calls, customers will still hang up. So how do you collect that information and reach out to them proactively? With contact center software, you can create an outbound calling campaign comprised of customers who hung up while in the queue. Now, your agents can reach out directly and attempt to address their needs. This ability can directly impact revenue increase and company reputation.
3. Leveraging chat
The final approach is leveraging a digital channel or “chat” into your contact center organization. Chat can be a “broad” term, but can encompass text/SMS, website chat widgets, and even social media channels. In our ever-evolving world, including a chat option can directly impact the customer engagement, retention, and overall experience. By adding webchat or integrating your company’s Facebook page with the contact center, you can attract the customers that prefer NOT to call, but rather “chat” with an agent. Many times, these agents are the same agents taking voice calls. They can simply switch between queues. Scripted chat bots can also help on digital channels. Customers can receive guidance and get answers to their questions without speaking to a live person.
With contact center software, businesses can coordinate multiple communication channels and maintain positive customer experiences. With post-interaction surveys and analytics, you will see how proactive customer interaction makes an impact.