When your business is focused on customer experiences, one of the important stats you track is FCR (First Contact or Call Resolution) rates. A major issue when it comes to customer experiences is when customers have to connect with your business multiple times to have their issues resolved or when they are transferred multiple times. It makes your support channel seem tedious and unreliable. Sometimes customers won’t reach out for help and will potentially move on to a competitor because of this. Let’s dive into ways you can improve your FCR rates.
1. Get Feedback
Implementing customer surveys is not only a good way to see how your agents and contact center as a whole is performing, but it’s also useful in finding out the causes of some callbacks. Use a question such as “have you contacted us before regarding this issue” and then a selection they can choose from identifying the issue. This will allow you to investigate what types of issues are causing customers to call back, and address them accordingly.
There may also be an issue with an internal process that’s causing customers to call back. Meet with your agents to find out if there are processes that may cause customers to call back, and improve on them, or if there is a common issue they usually get a call back for.
2. The Right Tools Go a Long Way
Provide your agents with a system that is fast, reliable, and integrates with your CRM so they can access customer information they need with ease. This will reduce any miscommunications and ensure issues are resolved thoroughly on first contact. A user-friendly system will also reduce stress on agents allowing them to perform better and more efficiently with no hiccups.
3. Skill-Based Routing
Making sure your customers are connected to the best available agent is important for good FCR rates. If the customer is having an issue with their billing, a technical issue or need to upgrade a product, they should be routed to the best agent that can help them right away on first contact. This is where skill-based routing comes into play. Learn what your agent’s strengths are, and assign their skills in your system so calls are resolved fast and on first contact.
4. Do You Need a New Training Program?
Sometimes an underdeveloped training program can hinder agent preparedness and will greatly affect FCR rates. Get feedback from your agents with an anonymous survey on how well developed the training program is and if they felt they had the knowledge needed to handle all types of calls. If the results are negative, this is most likely due to the training program not being clear or thorough enough. You may consider adding more testing, content, allocating more time for them to train, or having meetings between modules to go over what has been covered.
5. Incentivize
Since FCR rates are your priority, you should communicate this with your team, and let them know the measures you are taking to drive this initiative. You may also want to include an incentive program for the best-performing agents. This could be a monthly selection and the winner gets some sort of prize such as a gift card, dinner, or tickets to a game! Most importantly, an incentive program should only be implemented after you have taken action on some or all of the tips above.
Good Luck, and please do share any other ideas in the comments section for other readers to see!