January 25, 2021
The biggest goal of every telecom operator is to increase customer retention and gain competitive advantage. But how to do this?
Customers ask questions of all kinds. They could be looking for: information, advice, help, guidance or more..
Thus, equipping your agents with the right support tools and devices is important. Doing so will improve first call resolution rate and overall customer satisfaction.
First Call Resolution (FCR) is a significant metric to monitor customer service. It basically means resolving a customer issue in a single interaction, thus, eliminating the need for them to contact you again regarding the same issue. FCR measures your ability to resolve customer calls, emails and other support requests across different channels in the first interaction.
For improving FCR, operators need to track it effectively and put an improvement plan in place.
Let’s take a look at the following tools that can help telecom operators to improve FCR
Device and Support Guides
Devices can be complex to use, thus, in the absence of prompt assistance, customers reach out to their network operators, which results in lengthy support calls and costs. However, with telecom ready device and support guides, operators can provide instant resolutions to customer queries and increase user experience.
These guides can be published across your website, contact centers, self care app to help both customers as well as agents in any scenario related to installation or troubleshooting. The tool helps customers with detailed specifications and guided steps regarding device issues such as battery optimization, internet setup, mailbox configuration and more. It offers faster resolutions to customer queries and improves FCR.
Visual Engagement
Technology plays a vital role in providing superior experience to customers. Therefore, telecom operators are now leveraging visual engagement technology to offer better experience to customers. It empowers agents to provide live assistance to customers over a video call. This helps agents in getting visibility of devices and accordingly being able to assist customers navigate through the next best step for resolving the issue.
Visually engaging customers and assisting them to resolve the issue, increases user experience. The tool eliminates a long list of diagnostic questions asked by agents over the call. This helps in faster resolution, thus improving FCR and reducing field visits as well as support costs.
Co-browsing
Co-browsing is one of the most significant tools to offer superior service to customers. The tool empowers support agents to view the screen of customers in real time and guide them through complex processes. With the help of co-browsing, support agents can provide faster resolutions by reducing the number of touchpoints made by customers.
The solution also provides a set of highlighter tools that allows agents to assist customers in a streamlined way. Moreover, it is secured as it does not allow agents to see any other data on customer’s desktop.
With shared viewing, it becomes easy for agents to detect the problem and provide an effective solution to customer in the first contact itself. This improves FCR and increases customer satisfaction.
Increase Self Service Options
Self service tools have become significant for telecom operators to offer high quality service to customers and improve first call resolution. It provides customers the tools to resolve their own issues and saves significant time for support agents to handle more complex inquiries. Increasing self service options decreases call wait times and saves a huge amount of money of telecom operators that would otherwise be spent hiring additional call center agents.
Benefits of Improved First Call Resolution –
Reduce Operational Costs
As per a report by SQM Group, for every 1% improvement in First Call Resolution (FCR), a call center reduces its operating costs by 1%.
When you deliver faster resolutions to customers, it reduces the call volume as well as operational costs. With contactless support service tools including visual engagement, co-browsing, and more, agents can provide remote visual support to customers to resolve issues. This enhances user experience, reduces field visits as well as support costs.
Increase Customer Satisfaction
Customers tend to be impatient when they want a resolution to their problem. They want an answer right then and there. Thus, when your agent solves a customer issue in the first interaction, without your customer having to follow up or contact you again, it makes the customer happy and improves customer satisfaction rate.
A high FCR is associated with high levels of customer satisfaction. Therefore, when customers are satisfied with their experience of engaging with you, they are more likely to return for repeat business. This is the reason why positive interactions with customers are vital for all the telecom operators.
Enhance Agent Productivity
When your agents solve customer issues in the first interaction, then they have to deal with fewer repeat requests. This allows agents to focus on more complex issues and increases agent productivity. Improved FCR also results in improved agent performance. Empowering employees to resolve customer issues in the first contact itself results in increased efficiency as well as profitability.
Customers are not the only ones who benefit from a higher FCR, your agents do, too. When there is an improvement in first call resolution, it also increases employee satisfaction rate. Therefore, by keeping both your customers as well as employees happy, you increase the likelihood of long term customer and employee retention.
Closing Thoughts
Monitoring and improving first call resolution (FCR) is an important step in the process of providing high quality service to customers and increasing CSAT. Customers, now, expect fast and easy service experiences. Therefore, resolving customer queries efficiently in the first interaction results in an improved FCR rate and increases customer retention.