Call Centre Top Tips

Do your inbound call centre callers sometimes suffer from long queue times or do you use IVR menus that callers would prefer to avoid?

You could be leaving your customers frustrated, have higher than necessary abandonment rates and miss a great opportunity to enhance your caller experience.

Read our top Call Centre Audio tips to help your Call Centre improve its customers' calling experience.

1) Always connect a call as soon as an agent is available. Never delay a connection because you want to play something to the caller.

2) Select professional voice artists that inbound callers can relate to; usually same age and accent, a person next door’ persona often works well - not ‘BBC English’

3) Don’t confuse the difference between ‘person next door vs BBC English’ with amateur voice vs professional voice’ selection. Professional voice artists will produce clearer, shorter and more engaging recordings than an amateur, yet also appear to be the ‘person next door’.

4) Use language that the caller can relate to, like ‘Thanks for calling’ ... rather than ‘Thank you for your call’...and avoid the condescending clichés like “Your call is important to us”.

5) Push back on legal departments who insist on lengthy legal disclaimers. There is a huge difference between playing something to a caller and getting the caller to listen to it. Most legal departments are happy to make disclaimers more conversational when they realise that callers will not listen to legalese.

6) Ensure that the inbound caller experience is as good on foreign language lines as for English lines.

7) Don’t just entertain callers in-queue, inform and engage them.

8) Don’t presume that your call centre manager’s favourite music will be liked by all callers. Music choice is highly subjective and inappropriate music can alienate a caller in seconds.

9) Use in-queue time to prepare callers so that the agent handling time is minimised.

10) Make the most of in-queue and on-hold time. If you are proud of an achievement as an organisation, don’t miss the opportunity to tell your community about it.

11) Help callers to help you. At busy times ask them if they would mind calling back at less busy times.

12) Help callers to help themselves. Use in-queue productions to encourage callers to use self service options such as the web, saving cost, time and call centre management planning problems, and avoidable contacts!