Reducing repeat customer contacts is essential for improving efficiency and customer satisfaction in contact centres.
By focusing on first contact resolution (FCR), contact centres can address issues promptly, minimise frustration, and free up resources for more complex enquiries.
To find out what contact centres can do, we spoke to Colin Mann, Global Demand Generation Director, Enghouse Interactive, to find out four tips for reducing repeat contacts.
Video: Tips to Reduce Repeat Contacts
Watch the video below to hear Colin outline four tips to help contact centres reduce repeat contacts:
With thanks to Colin Mann, Global Demand Generation Director, Enghouse Interactive, for contributing to this video.
Four Tips to Reduce Repeat Contacts
Improving First Contact Resolution (FCR) is key to reducing repeat customer contacts and ensuring a smoother experience.
Here are four practical tips to get you started.
1. Implement Quality Assurance Processes
Adopting a quality assurance (QA) methodology can highlight areas where improvements are needed.
“There are others I encourage people to explore, but one is to adopt a quality assurance methodology.
So you’re looking at things like asking agents whether a query was resolved, asking customers through post-transaction surveys, using supervisors to monitor calls and check they were resolved quickly, analysing call recordings to see if queries were resolved.
So you can see there’s a lot you can do around quality assurance and processes that will improve your First Contact Resolution.”
To summarise, these techniques include:
- Asking agents if a query was resolved during the interaction.
- Conducting post-transaction surveys to gather customer feedback.
- Supervisors monitoring calls to ensure quick and effective resolutions.
- Analysing call recordings to identify patterns and address unresolved issues.
These steps help refine processes and boost FCR rates.
2. Foster Collaboration Between Departments
Complex customer enquiries often require input from multiple departments. Instead of transferring calls or asking customers to call back, involve subject matter experts during live interactions.
For example, agents can use internal chats or other collaborative tools to bring in the necessary expertise, ensuring the issue is resolved in one go, as Colin explains:
“The second one I would call out is collaboration between departments. Sometimes you’re going to find you’re talking to a customer, or a prospect, who has a more complex enquiry, and typically in the past that might have involved telling them to call back or transferring them to somebody else.
What you can do these days is actually bring in expertise during a live interaction. Maybe have a chat going on in the background with an expert in the team, to just bring that knowledge in during the live interaction.”
3. Provide Agents with an Accessible Knowledge Base
Equipping agents with an up-to-date knowledge base ensures they have the information they need at their fingertips.
“And then, related to that, the knowledge base is important.
If an agent has access to the right knowledge there in the interaction that they’re having with the customer or prospect, that’s only going to help them to resolve that query first time and fast.”
This speeds up responses and helps resolve customer queries effectively, reducing the likelihood of follow-ups.
4. Promote Self-Service Options
Digital self-service tools like chatbots, FAQs, and online portals empower customers to resolve straightforward issues independently. This frees up agents to focus on more complex enquiries while improving FCR rates for routine tasks.
“And then finally I would say self-service. Yeah, there are a lot of interactions with customers that can be done online and can be enabled through digital self-service, so your agents can focus on the more complex enquiries. So automating that and driving self-service is only going to help with this area as well.”
If you are looking for more great insights from the experts, check out these videos next:
- How to Improve Your QA
- Why FCR Matters and How to Measure It
- What Are Some Challenges to QA?
- Inspire Agents to Improve Their Performance
Author: Colin Mann
Reviewed by: Robyn Coppell
Published On: 7th Nov 2023 - Last modified: 29th Apr 2025
Read more about - Video, Colin Mann, Enghouse Interactive, First Contact Resolution (FCR), Videos
