5 ways to prepare your contact centre for Coronavirus

The outbreak of Coronavirus has caused global uncertainty, businesses are working out how to plan for the coming weeks, so we’ve put together 5 ways you can prepare your contact centre to deal with COVID-19.

5 ways to prepare your contact centre for Coronavirus

1. Business Continuity Plan

If you have a written business continuity plan (and you should) then review it with your team. Is it still fit for purpose? Are there any additional factors to consider?

2. Is Home Working Possible?

If you’re utilising a cloud based telephony solution, remote working should be possible. Your agents will need a laptop and headset to get up and running, and access to your business admin systems. Don’t expect agents to be as productive when working from home and if schools close, agents could have children at home… which leads us neatly on to…

3. Adjust Working Patterns

Consider splitting your contact centre agents into smaller teams, with different shift patterns; this way if an agent becomes ill you can hopefully contain the spread. Don’t leave treats and food out at the end of workstations and ensure meeting and training rooms, keyboards and phones are cleaned after every use.

4. Keep your team updated

Your agents will have lots of “what happens if…” questions. So let them know what to do if they get ill - don’t come into work, and what sick pay they are entitled to (this is likely to be a priority for most staff).

Share your business continuity plan with staff so they can plan ahead for working from home or new shift patterns.

5. Keep Callers Updated & Encourage Channel Shift

The quickest and easiest way to keep callers up to date is by utilising professionally recorded IVR Messages. You can use messages to encourage callers to self serve online or if their enquiry isn’t urgent call back at a later date. If you use Livechat or email support, now’s the time to start promoting these other channels, and for most agents this would be easier to do at home than taking calls (see point 2).

Do you have the correct IVR Emergency Messages to load on to your IVR Platform?

Coronavirus Contact Centre IVR Messages

High Call Volumes - Channel Shift

Welcome to [COMPANY NAME]. We’re receiving more calls than usual due to Coronavirus, which means wait times are higher than we’d like. Answers to most questions can be found on our website [YOUR WEB ADDRESS]. Please stay on the line and we’ll be with you as soon as possible.

High Call Volumes - Urgent Calls Only

Welcome to [COMPANY NAME]. We’re receiving more calls than usual and due to the Coronavirus precautions we have less team members available to take calls, which means wait times are higher than we’d like. Answers to most questions can be found on our website [YOUR WEB ADDRESS]. If your call isn’t urgent, please check the website and call back when normal service resumes.

Closed - Pandemic Message

Welcome to [COMPANY NAME]. Our phone lines are currently closed due to the Coronavirus restrictions imposed by the government. However our customer service team are available to help with all enquiries via Live Chat at [YOUR WEBSITE] dot co dot uk. We will post regular service updates to our website. Thanks for calling [YOUR COMPANY NAME]… Goodbye.

Order Your Messages Here

Coronavirus Message Pack

£195.00

Plan ahead and get your BCP messages recorded by us.

Package includes 3 messages:

1x High Call Volumes - Channel Shift

1x High Call Volumes - Urgent Calls Only

1x Closed Due to Pandemic

Quantity:

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Custom IVR Voice Message Recording Service

IVR Recordings specialises in professional voice message recordings for contact centres.

To discuss your contact centre IVR voice requirements or CX project give us a call on 0800 052 7720.

Check out Steve’s latest article on LinkedIn - Managing Customer Expectations With Phone Messages Whist Remote Working

Find your Moneypenny

Today sees the release of the latest Bond film, as ever it’ll be full of gadgets, action and of course cars. The Aston Martin makes an appearance in 11 Bond films and is one of the most iconic vehicles in cinematic history, yet even James Bond’s car needs a service every now and again particularly after running into an enemy!

From the Aston Martin DB5 featured in Goldfinger, complete with rotating number plates to the V8 that ends up in a wooden hut on an ice rink in The Living Daylights, it’s clear to see each of the cars featured in the films brought something new, whilst maintaining a Bond tradition. Yet most impressive by far must be the DB10 in Spectre. The car was purpose built for filming, with only ten being produced it’s never going to be sold to the public, making it the most exclusive Bond car of all time.

We think that you and your business should be as impressive and unique as the DB10, bringing us to an important question, are you an Aston Martin or a Reliant Robin? Does your company sound as good as it should? The Aston could have all the gadgets in the world but if it didn’t look the part it wouldn’t have the same impact. First impressions are valuable when it comes to your company, don’t settle for being reliable, be impactful.

According to Inbound Telephone Call Centre, 94% of marketing budgets entice a customer to call, yet only 6% of the budget is actually spent on handling inbound calls. Customers deserve to be entertained if they’re prepared to wait on the line to speak to your advisors, welcoming IVR Prompts and Music On Hold Marketing is proven to retain those waiting on hold, compared to those who are faced with silence.

Bond has Moneypenny, your customers could have an IVR menu. Being able to direct your customer’s calls as quickly as possible through simple and easy to navigate menus is far more efficient than leaving someone on the line or passing them from department to department. Bond has Moneypenny, why not include an almost virtual secretary to your phone systems with IVR recordings?

How IVR Has Developed

Despite not quite being where Back to the Future predicted we would be at this point in time (or yesterday to be exact), it’s fair to say that technology has developed at an astonishing rate, with some inventions that have completely changed the way we interact and socialise in modern day.

We often take for granted the ease of the taking a picture, making a call and checking our emails all on one device, when once upon a time you’d have needed three separate ones. Now we’re able to call a company and without even speaking to an operator we can get to the person we need.

The first electronic speech synthesiser was created in 1936, so speech recognition is nothing new. Following on from rapid developments and growth in the telephone industry the Bell System (a continuation of Alexander Graham Bell’s work) unveiled a system which could dial dual tone, multi-frequency audible tones, this was in 1962.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) was to change the way call centres and businesses operate and connect with their customers, serving as a bridge between the customer and the company to direct them to the most suitable place. Brian Bischoff (who was once a part of AT&T which eventually became the Bell System’s parent company) highlighted how the development of the internet hasn’t dented the popularity of speaking on the phone “Is Web traffic up? Yes, definitely. Is phone traffic down? No, not really”

IVR has developed along the way to become more accurate, less sensitive to background noise and much easier to navigate nowadays. There are several options available to those using IVR.

·Natural Language; After a prompt is read the customer responds as though talking to a human

Touch Tone; The customer can either make their selection by pressing a number on their phone or by saying the option they want

Directed Dialogue; This works by the customer using keywords to access the department they wish to speak to.

The aim for IVR has always been to improve customer service, refining the speed and ease at which customers can reach their desired department or contact. Technology has developed to allow IVR systems to detect and understand a range of accents, vocabularies and pronunciations. There’s less need to enunciate each individual word when prompted, meaning if an IVR system was to use natural language, the response of the caller could be an unbroken sentence of continuous speech.

IVR technology has developed so far that gone are the days of trying to book cinema tickets for a specific film and time and ending up with the complete opposite of your request. Gone are the days of even needing to speak to someone to pay a bill. IVR has developed so far that thousands of tasks are performed using the tech every day, from placing an order to tracking it, paying a bill, using a directory to reach a specific contact, checking schedules, the list goes on!

With the IVR industry spanning decades, improving rapidly and being available in our pockets in the form of Siri, Cortana and OK Google it’s no wonder the industry is worth £14 Billion annually in revenue and growing at a very healthy 10.7%!

Sources:

http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/CRM-Featured-News/The-Phone-Refuses-to-Die-48996.aspx

http://virtual-call-center.eu/blog/2015/06/12/history-of-ivr-interactive-voice-response-part-1

http://www.eckoh.com/resources/blog/journey-speech-recognition-ivr/