Blended Dialling Drives All-Round Satisfaction

Sonia Rabone explains how blending your inbound and outbound queues can improve the contact centre experience for both your customers and your agents.

Blending allows you to swap agents between the inbound and outbound queues depending upon the quantity of calls being received at the time. There’s nothing that agents or supervisors have to do manually – it simply happens automatically. Prioritise inbound calls so you don’t keep customers waiting.

But some staff members will have a natural propensity and preference for dealing with inbound calls and ‘warmer’ enquiries. Not all people feel comfortable on outbound calling campaigns, particularly if this wasn’t a clearly defined part of their role from the very outset. In these cases, there may be stumbling blocks and it may be difficult in the short term to move these team members into a blended environment. But if you’re able to overcome this then the rewards can be significant.

And of course you are likely also to have agents with the necessary skill sets and the ability to ‘cold call’ or make those slightly more daunting calls relating to debt collection etc. How will these agents feel about jumping onto inbound campaigns when the need arises?

Agents with a variety of tasks in their daily lives are often happier

It is apparent that, on the whole, agents who are given a greater variety of tasks in their daily lives are often happier and more satisfied in their role. In the ideal scenario we should have agents who are skilled at both inbound and outbound, and certainly this is becoming far more desirable, so it’s important to review this with the HR team.

In addition to automatically moving your agents between inbound and outbound calls, you can use a cloud contact centre software platform to also move between calls, webchat, email and even SMS. So again, it’s key to ensure the right mix of staff that are skilled across these channels.

The marketing department and the contact centre can sometimes collide, but our blended dialling approach is great for bringing both together as it gives you the agility you need to flex and meet demand.

Say, for instance, you have a big marketing communication going out about an offer that suddenly drives up inbound calls or web enquiries. With a blended contact centre, inbound calls are automatically prioritised to meet that new demand, capitalising on the effectiveness of that marketing activity.

Call blending seems like a no-brainer and certainly this approach is dramatically on the increase, with more and more businesses realising the benefits of a combined team and an intelligent system. So what about the agent skill-set issue? Well, it seems we are heading the way of ‘super agents’ anyway – due largely to the fact that call centre agents are expected to deal with ever-increasing complexity.

Simple queries are no longer directed at agents as we are far more likely now to choose self-service options. So agents are expected to have greater product knowledge and more detailed understanding of all issues.

The choice of channels that are available to the customer is also a driving factor and again points to the need for a wider agent skill set – and people who can handle voice, email, chat and social. So throwing a combination of inbound and outbound skills into the mix too should surely be a walk in the park for the new super agent!

With thanks to Sonia Rabone at Magnetic North