3 ways to outpace your competition using call center automation software

In this post, we’ll cover one of most critical items for a call center’s success: Workflow automation.

“Workflow” is simply the set of processes a call center uses to manage its workload and ensure that reps are actually completing their tasks. Most call centers use one or more software systems to automate parts of their workflow.

Whether you know it or not, you’re already using a workflow in your call center. The question is how much of it is automated and whether it is actually working efficiently to keep your team at peak productivity.

This post outlines three crucial ways your call center automation software can make or break your workflow — and therefore can make or break your success.

1) Expect results from your call center software

Call center automation, also known as call center scripting, is one of the most effective ways to stay ahead of your competitors.

Regardless of the industry you work in, you have a specific set of steps, events, or business rules in place to help you accomplish your business goals. This is your “workflow” and this is exactly what your call center software should help you automate, eliminating bottlenecks and maximizing efficiency along the way.

Through a combination of email alerts, queue assignment changes, account activity driven events, and reporting, the right call center software system can keep everyone on top of their game. Unfortunately, many call centers rely on outdated software or disparate applications that don’t work well together. This results in slow response times and lots of human error, not to mention irate customers.

When choosing call center automation software, you should carefully consider your business needs and then choose a system specifically designed to streamline your workflow operations. It should be both flexible and fully automated, and it should provide managers with clear visibility into overall performance via dashboards and real-time reporting.

Once implemented, you should expect it to simplify your overall workflow, improve employee output, reduce wait times, enhance departmental communication, and — most importantly — increase customer satisfaction.

2) Get it on the floor…ASAP

In every call center environment, time is of the essence. You receive a batch of accounts to work from a client and they need to be in your reps’ hands to work as quickly as possible.

A good call center workflow should provide non-technical users an easy way to load accounts coming in from a variety of formats. You don’t want to have to wait on someone from your data team to clean the data and load it. You need the ability to load it yourself and get it out to your team immediately after it is received.

Getting files in call reps’ hands quickly and accurately provides you with a significant competitive advantage. A good call center platform should provide secure but easy access to import new files with the flexibility to map columns, preview the import and clean the data as part of the import process.

Equally as important as getting data into your application quickly is getting it out. Your call center automation software should include configurable exports so that non-technical people can export the results of the call reps’ activities for delivery to a client.

3) Tickets, please

Another item that provides a competitive advantage is workload tracking. Whether you call them job tickets, campaigns, batches or something else, your call center automation software should provide detailed tracking of your workloads through the system. This includes tying all the accounts together in a batch and maintaining key data elements about that batch, such as start time, finish time, duration to complete, and team members.

In more advanced configurations, you may want to track certain costs, hours worked and other metrics that will help you determine if you are achieving your objectives for certain clients or particular batches from clients. Having a ticketing style system helps organize your workloads so that these items can be tracked and reported.

Maintaining your workload in batches can help with the workflow of moving a batch through your call center software. Email alerts on key events or approaching deadlines, automatic status changes, and batch rules will help keep your call reps busy and productive.