Four Key Strategies for Call Deflection and Call Handling with Digital Customer Service
We are often asked how Digital Customer Service (DCS) technology can assist our customers who have overflowing call queues. In short, DCS has helped our customers gain efficiencies, reduce handle times, and provide their customers and members with a personalized online experience:
- With the implementation of Digital Customer Service and virtual branches, Unitus Community Credit Union realized a 28% reduction in online banking handle times.
- CoBrowsing helped Orion Advisor Solutions decrease average handle time by 4 minutes.
- PSECU is delivering a frictionless member experience while enjoying an 18 second decrease in AHT with AI operator assistance, a 160% growth in digital engagements year-over-year, and a 1.5x increase in completed online applications.
- A regional neighborhood bank added no staff, but is handling a 3.1x volume increase and has a 24% lower average handle time since introducing DCS.
As you are considering offering true Digital Customer Service, here are four strategies that you should consider employing to streamline your operations and reduce call handling times:
1. User detection
Make sure your DCS solution provides the ability to detect where visitors are on your digital properties (websites, apps, etc.) then take rules-based action to offer the appropriate resource—whether a specialized bot or a specific team—based upon their activity and location when they reach out for help. Imagine being able to proactively prompt operators if customers are having issues and offer the best communication option (chat vs. voice, etc.) to help them navigate to a positive outcome.
2. Context is everything
The more context you can provide to representatives before and during an interaction, the better they can serve customers and members. Context is one of the core tenants of full Digital Customer Service. For example, enabling an interaction to start in your banking or insurance app without requiring operators to re-authenticate users reduces handle times and frustration.
Offering operators the ability to see what customers are doing on your digital properties through Live Observation gives your staff the context that they need to quickly connect with your customers. Operators can proactively reach out to customers who may have reached a friction point, to quickly assist.
Adding the ability to CoBrowse lets operators guide customers OnScreen through your digital properties, choose the best options, and even help fill out forms as needed while protecting sensitive information. CoBrowsing provides visual context to “show,” not just “tell” visitors, decreasing confusion and handle times while increasing customer satisfaction.
Finally, using a singular engagement platform provides persistent context throughout an interaction in any channel to enable your operators to deliver a better experience. Armed with the context of the customers’ bot or agent interactions, operators can jump into the engagement and avoid asking customers to repeat their inquiries.
3. Strategically deploy bots
Conversational AI, or AI chatbots, can streamline inquiries and processes for both customers and operators. You can put AI bots to work for routine questions, site navigation and data retrieval, freeing up representatives to handle more complex and higher value interactions. For example: bots can be trained to answer questions about account balances or claim status. However, be sure that your DCS solution supports seamless escalation to a live agent when the bot has low confidence in the answer or keywords trigger a transfer. For representatives, agent assistant bots can provide suggested responses to make the engagement more efficient and effective.
Virtual assistants enabled PSECU to service rapid chat volume growth without adding headcount or compromising member service standards. In fact, bots have saved Member Service Representatives (MSRs) 5 to 6 minutes per self-serve chat.
4. Empower your teams to be efficient
Meeting customers where they are—on their screens—greatly enhances customer and agent experiences alike. Offering your contact center staff the ability to seamlessly transition between channels—such as from a chat or SMS conversation to voice or video—as needed, saves time, reduces customer effort, and increases first call resolution.
For chat interactions, enabling operators to field multiple conversations at once lets your organization serve more customers with the same staff and reduce queue times in the process. Adding lightning messages and agent assistants can further streamline engagements.
Experience DCS Firsthand
There are many advantages to meeting your customers OnScreen with a personalized, seamless experience. To experience Digital Customer Service first-hand, request a demo. We’ll show you how you can provide the kind of OnScreen experiences that maximize customer satisfaction, decrease call handle times, and improve conversions.
