How Are Brands Reacting to the Coronavirus Chaos?

John Lee of Aspect Software shares how his company is supporting various contact centres in these difficult times.

Over the past few weeks, we have received multiple requests for “quick hit” help and assistance.

The volume of requests is spiking on our end and we wanted to communicate a few areas that seem to be more common in an effort to share ideas and solutions.

Even if some are only temporary fixes, they may help you TODAY and give you time to develop your longer-term strategy.

Inundated With Inbound Calls

A large technology company was being inundated with inbound calls and needed an approach to “insulate their contact centre.” They wanted to throttle the amount of calls that route to an agent in their call centre.

We pulled some of our best and brightest together and within 15 minutes we had the customer’s requirements and developed a creative plan to use an algorithm to select calls for diversion. We met with the customer an hour later and explained the details of the solution.

The customer was in favour and immediately made the suggested changes to their IVR.

Customers Getting Fast Busy Signal

A large financial services firm was experiencing more inbound call volumes than their trunks or agents could support. This customer had a set number of inbound trunks and when they exceeded this volume, the customers were receiving a fast-busy SIT tone.

They wanted to be able to reserve enough inbound call capacity so that they could play a recorded message before tying up all their inbound channels and forcing the fast busy.

We met with the customer and helped them create an overflow route such that when calls that are in the queue exceed n number of calls, it would route the calls to an Aspect M3 service and play a pre-recorded message before terminating the call.

Needing to Quickly Transition to Work-From-Home Workforce

A large mortgage company went from an on-site centre to a remote workforce, overnight. They needed assistance, or a guide to make sure they would have a seamless transition.

This company engaged professional services in our Home Workforce small workshop where they discussed and evaluated hardware and software considerations and walked through a comprehensive checklist for the right areas of focus to provide as much business continuity as possible.

This workshop uncovered areas that our customer needed to spend more time developing a Work-from-Home strategy and gave them the confidence to move forward.

My big takeaway: No two needs from our customers will be identical, but the underlying desire to create the best experience for your customers and your agents in this uncertain time is consistent.