by INI Staff
INI has been helping organizations improve their customer experience for 25 years. During that time, our employees have gained insights and knowledge that has shaped their viewpoints about what it takes to deliver IVR that is effective and that callers appreciate.
We asked some long-time INI team members, each with a different role in the company, to discuss intelligent call routing and its place in superior customer experience. Here’s what they had to say.
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1. Why is intelligent call routing a must-have for large contact center organizations?
[JW] If you want to be an efficient call center, you have to have intelligent routing. Let’s say you have 100 agents. Each has expertise in one of five different areas – tech support, sales, billing, etc. If your system can automatically tag incoming calls, based on the customer’s previous calls or other criteria, and properly route them to one of the 20 agents who are in-the-know about the exact thing the caller needs, the call will be faster and a lot more effective. Agents won’t be passing the call around, wasting time and money and upsetting the customer. They can get right to the issue, address it, and end the call sooner; saving the organization money and offering a better customer experience.
[MS] I think the digital age has trained us all to expect faster access to more information in less time. As a result, customers are savvier and demand a higher level of attention and personalization from the businesses they deal with. It’s no longer okay to treat every call that lands in the contact center the same way. People will be unhappy and frustrated and feel like the company isn’t responding to their needs. That’s where intelligent call routing comes in—it allows us to personalize and expedite call handling on a per-customer basis, which ultimately is going to increase customer satisfaction and reduce handling times.
[KJ] Hearing “Good afternoon Mr. Smith, my name is Jane. How may I assist you?” is more welcoming than “Good morning, my name is Jane. May I have your account number?” When the contact center representative answers the call with our name, we gain the sense that we are more than just an account number. Intelligent call routing enables just such personalization opportunities. It can equip the call agent with information about the caller as the call is delivered so they can provide an added sense of personalization and prioritization, which provides an enhanced caller experience.
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2. What are the benefits of intelligent call routing to the organization versus the caller?
[JW] In call center situations, pretty much everyone’s goal is to maximize efficiency, so the organizational and caller benefits are essentially the same. The caller wants to speak to the person who can address their issue, and be off the phone with as little hassle and as quickly as possible. The organization wants to satisfy the customer quickly, while providing the most positive experience possible.
No one likes calling and explaining your situation eight different times to different people because you were sent to the wrong type of agent who couldn’t address your issue. It’s frustrating and inefficient. With intelligent call routing like INI LaunchPort, organizations can offer a more personalized experience, while maximizing efficiency. For example, automatically routing a return caller to the same agent she worked with before. The agent is already up-to-speed on the issue and is ready to take action.
[DW] More efficient routing benefits both the caller and the organization. Accurate, intelligent routing leads to shorter hold times, which saves companies money and is more pleasant for the caller. With fewer agents re-directing calls, their time is more productive and focused on issues that really need their attention. Additionally, breadcrumbing, or gathering information about callers’ past behaviors, gives the organization more insights about callers that can be used for strategic business decisions like staffing for the call center or new service offerings.
[KJ] For large contact centers, accurately predicting the reason for calling and routing to an agent who is trained to assist them reduces transfers – improving first call resolution and overall agent productivity. As consumers, we know how valuable our time is; when an organization delivers a personal touch through intelligently routing, it provides the impression that the organization knows our time is valuable too.
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3. How has call routing changed over the years and where is it headed?
[MS] Old-school call routing basically consisted of an auto-attendant that put the burden on the caller to choose an option to get them to the right person. At the time, it was considered high tech to identify a caller by phone number and, say, offer them a custom greeting or a high-priority transfer. Now, with the advent of omnichannel communications, we have the ability to use intelligence from other modes—web, mobile, etc.—to track what customers are doing and accurately predict WHY they’re calling the contact center. All companies should be leveraging this ability, it’s the ultimate in customer service. Still, I hear many organizations say they think it’s “creepy” or “stalker-like” to say “Hey, I see what you were doing over on our website, do you need some help with that?” I don’t know about you, but to me that seems pretty cool and makes me feel like this company really respects my time.
As far as where it’s headed, I expect it will be a more advanced version of that. More use of biometrics, perhaps, to authenticate callers during the routing process. Maybe predictive routing based on not just current omnichannel data, but past behaviors and trends. We’ll see!
[DW] Years ago, operators manually answered every incoming call and then transferred based on what or who the caller was calling for. Then, it evolved to IVR automated attendants that routed based on a caller’s menu choices for departments; or callers could choose from a menu list of names or enter a known extension. Today, users can interact with organizations via different media types like web, text (SMS) and voice. This multi-modal environment is becoming the expectation. We can assume organizations will continue connecting, and even combining use of, those different modes to create a more unified customer experience with all of them leveraging the same business intelligence.
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Learn more about intelligent call routing with INI LaunchPort.