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Call blending functionality is included within both the Ultra Inbound and Outbound contact centre solutions to provide the ultimate call centre utilisation and management. This facility enables many benefits for the management of the agent FTE and can give very cost effective call centre operations for businesses of any size but in particular for SME’s.
This feature can be used at will by Ultra clients and is not charged as an extra function to them.
BENEFITS SUMMARY FOR CALL BLENDING
Ultra Call Blending is designed to increase the efficiency of the call centre and enhance customer service. Blended customer service agents (CSA) receive both inbound and outbound calls and during peak inbound periods can help maintain
service objectives by reducing hold times.
Solution Key Features
- During slow down in the flow of inbound calls, blended agents can work outbound campaigns and as a result are always working and productive for the call centre.
- When inbound peaks drive up the hold time, the blended CSA can start to take calls from inbound projects thereby maintaining SLA’s to acceptable levels.
- When inbound call peaks subside, the agent automatically returns to outbound duties thereby maintaining the productivity that your call centre requires.
- Calls can be assigned as strictly inbound or outbound or mixed.
- Agents or representatives can be designated in the Ultra systems as inbound, outbound or blended (inbound/ outbound). Blended agents receive both types of calls.
- These agents can easily identify which type of call they are receiving because the Ultra application can deliver a different script to the screen which will appear at the onset of the call.
Achievable benefits of Blended call operations
- Maintain customer service levels without adding CSA staff.
- Solution provides flexibility for staffing and planning.
- Achieves productivity even during slow inbound call periods by automatically switching call blending staff to outbound duties.
Advantages with call blending –
- There are both direct and indirect cost savings with reduced overheads as you would need reduced numbers of staff to process the calls. This is because agents are kept productive by taking both Inbound and outbound calls ensuring maximum productivity during the working day.
- An increase in Inbound performance is usually associated with larger team sizes, coping more easily with peaks and troughs of inbound calls, and the resulting achievement of high SLA’s i.e. improved time to answer calls and reduced abandoned calls through shorted hold times. Therefore an overall higher quality of service is provided by your company to your clients. Blended call functionality permits your outbound capability to be automatically utilised whenever a peak in inbound calls ‘overtakes’ and specialist inbound team’s capability.
- Multiple inbound call flows can be blended together to create larger teams, and helping to reduce any requirement to over-employ to cover the part agent numbers. [ i.e. if need 1.5 agents to answer your calls then you either employ 2, which means 25% additional unused resource, or if you employ only 1 then 1/3 of your business is not properly resourced].
- Increased agent availability by having use of inbound and outbound agents - stabilises the required team numbers needed to cover for sickness, holidays, time-off and staff absence. Allows for better organisation of work and shift patterns.
- You acquire the ability to have the agents answering multiple Inbound campaigns, simplifying cross training between call handling skills, and improving retention.
- Automatic agent screen scripting is driven to the PC by the inbound number called; this minimises the training time and allows the company the ability to achieve a minimum standard for call handling, with even new agents.
- Skills based routing of calls – particularly relevant if you require agents to be presented only a sub-set of Inbound call flows to match their skill set e.g. new employees, those in training or not qualified.
- By having combined campaigns in outbound calling and inbound calls you further increase the size of the agent pool by reducing the number of dedicated agents, limited to only one function.
- Larger agent pool size allows you to cope with unexpected or short peak periods throughout the day allowing for smoother business planning.
- Outbound sales team can take return calls from customers on the various campaigns permitting a better customer service.
- Inbound calls can be non-geographic exactly like the outbound calls giving complete disaster recovery and giving you the ability to target key employment areas when expanding, yet still allowing you the ability to pool remote agents with the main team.
Potential disadvantages of call blending –
- Reduced outbound campaign productivity and a potentially higher overall cost per call, as specialist outbound agents tend to have an increased cost of employment.
- Blended call agents will need to be multi-skilled, however this can lead to lower staff turnover.
Without call blending –
- Call centres cannot accurately predict call volumes in any one day, therefore need to employ enough agents on rotas to meet estimated Inbound call flow peaks. This inevitably leads to either a shortfall in achieving call SLA’s or having idle resource.
Key phrase (no times appears in content) – Google searches in last year – AdWords competition
Existing phrases (appear 3 or more times in text):
inbound call (10) - 2,900
call blending (8) – 140
call centre (6) - 165,000
inbound calls (5) - 390
customer service (4) - 368,000
hold time (3) - 1,600
inbound outbound (3) - 1,300
outbound calls (3) - 480
blended call (3) – 170