Everything You Need to Know About Call Avoidance in Call Centers

Call center employee jobs are stressful compared to other employees in any business sector. They consistently have to deal with a number of customer calls and should resolve their inquiries as soon as possible. 

Sometimes, it is impossible to provide the same level of service all the time due to high call volume, time limits, or physical exhaustion, leading to decreased customer satisfaction. 

Because of this, it shouldn’t be surprising that the employee intentionally takes fewer incoming calls or avoids interactions across multiple communication channels. But call avoidance has huge negative impacts on businesses. Thus, they must follow a few tips to reduce call avoidance.

This blog provides detailed information about call avoidance in call centers and the prominent ways to tackle it. So, let’s dive in. 🚀

What is call avoidance in call centers?

Call avoidance is the action taken by call center representatives to deliberately take fewer incoming customer calls or avoid interactions on support channels such as phone, live chat, or email. Agents may avoid interactions due to high call volume, time limits, physical exhaustion, or customer complaints.

Beyond not answering the calls, the agents avoid them in multiple ways. For instance, they hang up the phone, keep customers on hold, route calls, remain in conference mode, or accept calls via voicemail. 

Such intentionally implemented tactics often lead to low customer satisfaction and damaged brand reputation. Thus, to maintain exceptional client connections and deliver top-notch customer service, it is crucial to identify and address call-back avoidance behavior. 

What causes call avoidance?

Despite intentional ignorance, dogging calls may result from frequent agent breaks due to health issues. Thus, it is crucial to monitor the agent’s behavior and listen to their side of the story before identifying it as call avoidance.  

Call avoidance can stem from several causes:

• Job dissatisfaction
• Burnout and fatigue from high call volume
• Irritation and anxiety while dealing with tough clientele agent complaints.
• Conflicts with co-workers in the workplace. 
• Personal distractions due to health issues or any other personal difficulties. 
• Insufficient training and knowledge 
• The pressure of performance metrics such as First Call Resolution (FCR) and Average Handle Time (AHT). 

Negative impact of call avoidance on your business

Escaping a customer’s calls can have a severe impact on businesses. It can negatively impact the company’s reputation and customer satisfaction, resulting in loss of revenue, employee turnover, or loss of business partners. Additional consequences include:

1. Decreased customer satisfaction

Customer dissatisfaction is one of the most common consequences of call avoidance. This often leads customers to switch to your competitors who offer better experiences.

Every customer expects prompt responses to their inquiries and complaints. Ignoring their calls or delayed responses will gradually diminish the customer’s trust and loyalty to the brand. 

2. Damaged brand reputation

Bad reviews on different sites such as Google Reviews, G2, or social medial channels like LinkedIn and Facebook resulting from poor customer service can seriously impact your business reputation. 

Consumers who are dissatisfied are more likely to use social media, word-of-mouth, or online reviews to tell their friends and networks about their bad experiences, which can discourage other prospective consumers from using your goods or services.

3. Increased operational costs

Implementing online resources such as self-service portals and FAQs reduces the need for direct customer interactions. Moreover, it minimizes the call center call volumes but increases operational costs. 

The online platform requires ongoing investment in technology to maintain client interactions. If agents are unable to handle complex issues, providing specialized training is crucial, ultimately increasing training and support costs.

4. Poor employee morale

Avoiding calls, even by just one agent, can lead to an uneven distribution of workload for the entire team. Some agents end up receiving more calls than they should, which causes inefficiencies, agent exhaustion, and employee churn.

Tips to reduce call avoidance in call centers

Reducing call avoidance in call centers is critical to improving customer satisfaction. Here are a few steps to minimize call avoidance.

A. Identify the Root Cause

To resolve call avoidance issues, such as long wait times or complex IVR systems in your call center, you must identify the root cause. Its cause can be determined using survey and feedback analysis. Then, apply custom solutions such as better call routing or training to resolve the issues promptly. 

B. Utilize performance analytics

Performance analytics can provide helpful insights to improve call center functions and outputs. It can analyze the effectiveness of self-service options such as chatbots, FAQs, or IVR systems, enabling agents to optimize according to customer needs. 

Indicators like average call duration, call transfer rate, abandonment rates, and first-call resolution rates help businesses predict potential reasons for call avoidance, and they can tailor solutions accordingly. 

C. Utilize Automation Solutions

Automation is an advanced feature for contact centers that can perform repetitive tasks faster and more consistently than human agents. Thus, it can streamline the operation, improve customer satisfaction, and lower call avoidance. 

The self-service portals automate tasks, reducing the need for in-person interactions and freeing up agent time to handle calls.

D. Optimize call routing

Implement skill-based call routing features in your contact center to direct calls to the right agent or department. This will reduce multiple call transfers and longer wait times, improving first-call resolution rates. 

Moreover, intelligent call-routing algorithms can ensure that urgent or important calls are handled quickly. Such routing protocols and automated call response systems help the business enhance efficiency and reduce call avoidance.  

E. Offer Diverse communication channels

Centralize your communication channels beyond phone calls. Include customer contact channels such as live chat, social media, and email, which eventually reduce wait times and call volume and increase caller satisfaction through improved responsiveness. 

F. Optimize workload Distribution

Unequal work distribution among coworkers causes call avoidance. Therefore, a balanced workload is necessary to create a happy workplace for employees so that they can perform better to provide exceptional customer service. 

Implementing effective scheduling procedures and monitoring workload in real time can accomplish effective workload distribution. This boosts agent morale, lessens agent fatigue, and enhances the general customer experience in contact centers.

What are the strategic advantages of call avoidance in organizations? 

The strategic benefits of call avoidance in organizations include:

I. Employee retention

Implementing call avoidance strategies such as self-service options, automation solutions, conversational AI chatbots, and progressive dialers can handle simple, repetitive customer interactions. 

Thus, it reduces high call volumes, ultimately reducing stress and burnout among employees. Such a strategy can significantly improve worker retention. 

II. Improved brand image

Fewer calls can greatly enhance a company’s image. Reduced wait times and better customer service result in more positive word-of-mouth advertisements about the brand. 

Such advertisements are effective in attracting new clients while maintaining the current ones. In addition, an improved brand image will eventually increase profitable sales. 

III. Increased Operational efficiency

Employees are essential to a call center’s operation. Businesses can improve operational efficiency by reducing the number of calls received while still addressing customer inquiries and concerns. 

Additionally, providing specialized training has the potential to enhance employee engagement and satisfaction, leading to higher productivity and efficiency at a lower cost. 

Conclusion

Call avoidance is the strategy applied by call center representatives to avoid inbound and outbound calls, mostly intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. It can pose major negative impacts on businesses. 

The representatives tend to avoid calls due to high call volume, time limits, physical exhaustion, health issues, or insufficient training and knowledge to handle angry customer complaints.

To address such issues, businesses should incorporate self-service options and provide the agents with the necessary training and resources to handle the calls effectively. Identifying the root cause, utilizing automation Solutions, optimizing call routing, and distributing workload are some of the tips to reduce call avoidance in your company. 

FAQs

How to prevent call avoidance?

Businesses can avoid call avoidance by following the provided guidelines:

1. Develop a call avoidance policy.
2. Set performance goals.
3. Automate call center routing
4. Support omnichannel communication. 

What role does technology play in call avoidance strategies? 

Technologies such as advanced IVR systems, CRM integrations, and data analytics tools play a vital role in developing and maintaining effective call avoidance strategies.

How can businesses mitigate the negative impacts of call avoidance?

Businesses can mitigate the negative impacts of call avoidance in the following ways. 

1. Providing comprehensive training for call center agents
2. Ensuring robust and user-friendly self-service options
3. Actively seeking customer feedback
4. Leveraging analytics to optimize both self-service and call center operations. 

What are the benefits of call avoidance for businesses?

They are:

1. Reduces call center costs
2. Increase operational efficiency
3. Improve customer satisfaction through self-service options.