Why are customers calling? How can your company make sure to meet their needs? The best way to help is to get them the answers they need as quickly as possible. However, one should not sacrifice quality for speed.
Top Call Routing Strategies
Direct Routing:
This is the one of the most common, and most straightforward routing to implement. Customers use their telephone’s numerical keypad, or speech recognition software, to connect to a specific department associated with that number. For example, the number 1 associated with sales or the number 2 associated with support.
IVR Routing:
IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response. This method is similar to direct routing, in which customers use their telephone keypad, or speech recognition, to navigate the menu. However, the IVR allows customers to interact with pre-recorded audio that enables them to get information. This can help customers find the location most convenient to them or answers to commonly asked questions. This strategy is especially useful for a quick solution, like if a customer wants to make a payment. However, there should be a way for customers to interact with a live agent if they need.
Geographic Call Routing:
Location and advertising have always been synonymous with one another. This particular strategy is associated with a toll-free number (TFN). A company tries to get an obtain a number that’s easy to remember, and one that customer’s can call for free.
The number itself is associated with multiple locations. Yet, the call routes to either the closest location to the caller or a convenient location based on the desired zip code the caller inputs. While the company would need to pay for the call a customer would make, it’s worth the ROI of that particular customer’s business. Also, provided one can get an easy to remember TFN, this is great for the brand of the company.
Scheduled Routing:
Routing a call this way allows routed calls to agents based on a set schedule. Have locations in more than one-time zone? This method assures that the caller gets connected to agents that are available. Does a high influx of call traffic come in at certain times? Scheduled call routing allows your company to take trends like this into account and adjust the number of agents on duty. Because of its versatility, this method is most commonly used by hosted contact centers.
Percentage Routing:
This method allows for the number of incoming calls to be evenly distributed among agents. Calls are assigned to agents based on how many calls they received in hopes that the amount of time a customer is on hold is reduced.
Database Associated Routing:
In business, loyalty is a valuable commodity. It costs more to attain new customers than to keep your current ones. Not to mention, if you treat those customers right, they’ll advocate your business.
With this in mind, database routing associates the call with a customer database. This allows the routing system to look up the history of call interactions, provide options based on the history of interactions, and allow the agent to know what took place during previous interactions.
Skill-Based Routing:
Not all customer calls are created equal. Some cases require more skill to solve than others. Skill-based routing allows the most qualified agents to handle more difficult problems. This method can also take the prior history of customer interactions into account.
Still need routing advice?
We’re here to help. We know that each industry is unique, so things can get a little confusing sometimes as to how to best setup up your routing system. Feel free to get in touch with us; we would be happy to help you try and figure out the best way for customers to navigate through your IVR.