Call Center/Telephony Assessment

Client Background and Overview

Turnkey Solutions was asked to assess a municipal call center handling roughly a million and a half calls per year. The call center addressed citizen billing complaints as well as dispatching to the field to resolve issues. They were experiencing extremely high call volumes, long wait times, high abandon rates and frequent busy signals. Monthly call volume far exceeded the expected volume for based on the number of customers being serviced. The purpose of the assessment was to discover the root cause of the challenges and both recommend and implement approved solutions.

Solution

Turnkey Solutions was able to accurately assess the symptoms and diagnose one main issue and two subsidiary issues that were contributing to the call volume. A traffic study quickly revealed that the department’s Primary Rate Interface (PRI) trunks were being shared with another department and at peak times, neither department was receiving the service that they needed. By re-configuring the trunks, Turnkey was able to find a more efficient way to accommodate call volume without increasing the number of PRI trunks.

Also, the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and automated attendant were re-configured to be more customer-friendly and accommodate additional self-service options. The IVR soon accounted for 63% of automated customer payments.

From a personnel perspective, the agents were divided into unique groups of expert agents, who were trained for specific tasks, and calls were routed appropriately. Because these agents focused on specific issues all day, they were better suited to help customers more quickly.

Finally, over a period of about a month, call volume decreased to acceptable levels and 80% of calls were answered within 30 seconds (industry standard). A large percentage of the call volume was based on repeat calls from frustrated customers who were hanging up and calling back. In addition, the more efficient routing of calls and additional self-service options for the IVR reduced the overall volume.

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