Is Your Contact Centre Equipped for Black Friday?

With the holiday season around the corner, it means one thing – Black Friday is coming. If you manage a contact centre, there are simple steps to follow to equip your agents.

According to Adobe Analytics data, American customers spent $8.9 billion online during Black Friday 2021. Although less than the average spend in 2020, when it surpassed all previous records by hitting $9bn, it’s up from $7.4bn in 2019 and $6.2bn in 2018.

The days in and around Black Friday are particularly busy for call centre agents. If you manage and run a contact centre you should ensure your agents aren’t left in the dark and are ready for your customers during one of the busiest times of the year.

Spearline has you covered, providing some of the best tips for dealing with the run-up to Black Friday.

Four Tips to Equip Your Contact Centre for Black Friday:

1. Prioritize Call Quality.

In a frenzy of activity, quality can slip. Top-up training for agents is advised to prepare for customer queries and potential complaints.

During peak times, carriers are tempted to save bandwidth by compressing your audio, impacting quality. Poor audio quality impacts call handling times and customer experience. In times of increased competition for customers, maintaining a quality experience is essential.

Our voice quality test replicates a call and generates an objective score. The test provides a wealth of understanding about your customer’s call experience and the quality of your carrier’s service.

2. Make Sure Your Callers get Where They Need to.

Check that your IVR is working, and routing calls to the correct agent. Complicated or malfunctioning IVRs lead to frustrated customers. Ensuring the best person handles the call will keep talk-time down, and first-call-resolution rates up.

Even if your IVR is working, phone line issues could mean that DTMF (touch-tone) signals aren’t transmitted. Proactively monitoring your global numbers means your customers can connect, and achieve high audio quality.  Checking for DTMF transmission allow customers to navigate your IVR, and reach the best agent quickly.

Outbound testing is used to ensure agent callback lines are functioning and achieving quality standards.

3. Utilize Your Callback Functionality.

We’ve all experienced the endless hold music, where we know the playlist order by heart by the time the call is answered.

If you have callback functionality – use it. Your customers feel time pressure now more than ever, so empowering them to request a callback at a time that suits, will be welcomed by many.

4. Make WFH Work for Your Agents.

Can you hear me now? Are you wasting time figuring out the network quality of your remote agents working from home?

Analyzing and understanding the network conditions of each home network of each agent becomes a priority in scaling up your call centre back to capacity. qualityRTC has you covered!

No installation required and it’s easy to use – qualityRTC conducts multiple network tests giving you a 360 view of your agent’s home network, improving the productivity of your call agents – allowing them to focus on what matters – your customers!