Few things bother people more than having to repeat information they’ve already provided. It wastes their time, and they know it’s wasting the agent’s time, too. So why do call centers let this happen? It’s understandable if you’re calling into a PBX system and the call recipient can’t do a transfer correctly, but it’s something that can be avoided in the call center.
With a good Interactive Voice Response (IVR) builder you can collect a lot of information before getting to the agent. Giving your caller options as to the nature of the call as well as data collection for things like an account number should be able to shorten the actual call time. Assuming your call center ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) software is integrated with the dialplan, your agent script should be populated with the information already collected. Then your agent can confirm the information they have, rather than asking for the information again. If it’s necessary to not relay this information back for security reasons, let the caller know you’re simply verifying the information in front of you. Confirmation is good. Wasting people’s time is not.
Sometimes the call is not with the correct agent, however, or it has to be escalated somewhere else. Or maybe the customer has something they want to discuss with another client. It’s really frustrating to talk to someone for 10 minutes, then get transferred to somewhere where they have to repeat the conversation. To combat this, call centers should be using warm transfers.
Warm transfers, at the simplest, are transfers where the original agent speaks with the new agent. Sometimes this is done with the customer present, sometimes not. The important part of the warm transfer is that there is a transfer of information from the first agent to the second. A blind transfer does not accomplish this. The agents should make sure that all the information that is needed is being relayed. Once that has been done, the transfer can complete and the first agent drops out. Of course, this requires call center software that allows consultative (only two parties in the call at any time, with the third leg on hold) or conference (all three parties in the call at the same time).
What could be better? If you’re transferring to another agent on the same system, wouldn’t it be nice if the information on the first agent’s screen made it to the second agent’s screen? That way, the second agent could save everyone even more time by verifying he had the information there before continuing on with the call. Modern call center software is capable of letting the first agent save the data and bringing that up on the agent’s screen. After all, that’s what the caller assumes is going to happen. Why disappoint them?