Cathal McGloin, CEO of ServisBOT describes to V and C Magazine how a good call deflection solution enables employees working on helplines to deal with the surge in customer calls amidst the Coronavirus pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created major spikes in customer calls across many industries as helplines deal with customer concerns, cancellations, refund requests and information updates. Whether it’s an insurance company answering questions about travel or health insurance coverage, or airlines and hotels managing cancelations and refunds, the global health emergency has caused major disruption. Customer service, helplines, and contact centres are facing much higher volumes of incoming calls, putting heavy pressure on their agents, their systems, and their ability to respond.
In the UK, call volumes to the NHS 111 line jumped by a third compared to this period last year. In Washington State, calls to the Coronavirus hotline were experiencing 20 minute wait times and then being dropped as call volumes spiked. Hold times of 4+ hours and dropped calls are not uncommon as concerned consumers try to change or cancel bookings, check the status of their insurance cover, or make other urgent requests.
For many businesses, the response is to add more staff to handle consumer queries. However, adding more agents may not be possible at short notice.
Many airlines have sent mass emails to their customer base asking those who don’t have flights within the next 72 hour time period to wait until closer to their trip time before calling their customer service line. This helps them flatten the peaks on incoming call volumes so they can prioritize the customers with more immediate needs.
With call volumes surging for many contact centres, a solution that can firstly shift customers from a voice to a text-based channel and secondly deflect some of them to self-serve via your website or mobile app may be just what is needed. It doesn’t have to be a complex, costly or time-intensive solution, but it can be extremely effective in managing the additional volumes more cost-effectively and giving your customers the information that they need to allay their concerns.
The Simplicity of Shifting incoming Voice Calls to More Efficient Digital Channels
Think of this scenario. Call volumes are out of control, agents are frazzled, and customers are anxiously waiting long periods before they can speak to an agent.
If customers are able to initially interact with a chatbot and the bot resolves their immediate queries, then there’s no need for agent involvement. Your business can still provide a path to handover to a customer service agent for customers that require further assistance.
By shifting customers from the more costly voice channel to a more efficient text channel, you open up more potential for automation, out of hours accessibility, and thoughtful call deflection.
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Setting up a Chatbot in 48 hours
Whether your interactive voice response (IVR) is based on legacy technology or is a modern cloud-based solution, it’s possible to deflect customers from an inbound voice channel to a messaging channel. We know, because we have done this for a client who considered this impossible with their legacy on-premise IVR system. Spinning up a solution took a matter of 2 days but allowed them to successfully deflect calls, automate the response, and still have a path to live chat.
Employing a Chatbot as a Call Deflection Solution
Once a customer is willing to engage via a messaging channel, using a chatbot opens up a whole new path to automation. Once the customer opens this intelligent virtual agent and starts to engage, the bot can handle simple requests, point them to the place on your website to find information, or help them transact in a self-service manner. All this can happen without the need for them to engage with an agent unless they specifically request this, or the bot escalates the request to an agent.
The bot can be as simple as just pointing a customer to the COVID-19 FAQ page or it can be an extension of an existing customer service bot that offers multiple capabilities. The point is that this is a highly effective way of deflecting incoming calls.
In times like this, where an influx of concerned customers needs to be handled well, call deflection using a chatbot or virtual agent takes the pressure off contact centre agents. It also introduces an automation path that can help customers out of hours as well as in hours. The bot can even be integrated with your live chat systems so that the bot works in parallel with live agents when needed.
Simple and effective
Creating and deploying a simple chatbot that can help with call deflection and serve customers in a more efficient way doesn’t have to be as complex, expensive, or time-consuming as you may think.
Working with your existing customer service technology such as the IVR and Live Chat, a simple AI-powered bot solution can be designed and implemented to triage customers and move them from voice to text, in order to deflect incoming calls. It doesn’t have to be fancy or complex, but it can be highly effective.
Using chatbots to ease pressure on staff
In a short period of time, your business can launch a very simple bot that can be trained over the course of a week to ten days to start automating your customer service. On day one it may not be a particularly clever bot and may just be used to quickly assess queries and handoff to a live agent. However, by gathering the training phrases from customer chats, the bot can be made progressively smarter and add capabilities. After a week it can start automating to become more self-sufficient and take more of the burden from your live agents, allowing them to handle more complex customer issues.
Future proofing
Once your chatbot has been trained to respond to common customer queries round the clock and reduce the pressure on your contact centre staff, your employees can focus on providing the best care for your customers who urgently need to speak to them. You will have sent a clear message to both your staff and your customers that they matter and your business will have added another layer of resilience to prepare it for peak periods in the future.
