Exploring Call Deflection: An Overview and 7 Misconceptions about Call Centers

Customer service is critical to the success of any business, but your customers may not be provided with the desired service and support they need quickly. Call deflection plays an important role between customers and any business or contact center to address customer issues and queries promptly. 

However, there are many misconceptions about call deflection in contact centers to avoid customer calls, which are rarely true in reality.

In this blog, we will discuss those call deflection and misconceptions about call centers and understand how call deflection can improve overall business operations and customer experience.

Understanding Call Deflection

Call deflection is a technique or practice for strategically redirecting customers to alternative digital channels like self-service channels, chatbots, and virtual assistance to reduce loads of incoming call volume and effectively manage customer queries and support. 

Call redirection ensures a better customer experience corresponding to efficient and cost-effective contact center operations by omnichannel customer support presence, reducing the call volume and agent burnout through the customer’s desired channels for service or support.

For Instance, Let’s say you want to make a simple inquiry into the bank for your current bank balance. Now, call deflection can give you the same result in an alternative way:

• Use the bank app to check your current bank balance details.
• Chat with the website chatbot for quick inquiries.
• Connect with the agent quickly for details and further information.

Redirecting calls allows you to get your desired answer instantly without making a call or being put on hold. At the same time, the bank reduces the call volume, allowing agents or staff to focus on more important clients or tasks.

Deflection rate, cost per contact, Average handling time (ATH), Self-service success rate, First-Call Resolution (FCR) rate, and customer satisfaction score (CSAT) are some of the key metrics and indicators used for measuring the call deflection success rate. 

The IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system helps to track the self-service success rate; it records customer inquiries and interactions to determine the success of call deflection. 

Advantages of call deflection

Call deflection has several benefits and advantages for contact centers and organizations to optimize customer support operations and provide a suitable channel for better customer experience and satisfaction. Some of the advantages are listed below:

• Cost-effective: Redirecting calls to alternative channels and call deflection methods can be cost-effective. A small number of live agents is required for customer assistance and support, which leads to cost-effective operation for any business or customer support center. 
  
• Improves customer experience and satisfaction: The call redirection method can enhance the overall customer experience and satisfaction level through self-service, interaction with chatbots, and online information, enabling easy and quick access to support and solutions.
  
• 24/7 hours customer support: A call deflection system can be available all the time, unlike the physical need of the customer assistant for resolving customer issues. Your customer can get a prompt and real-time solution to the problem through the desired channel at any given moment or time. 
  
• Operational efficiency: Redirecting inbound calls to the desired alternative channels and reducing the call volume for simple inquiries and support improves the efficiency of both customer and customer support representative efforts. Quick and accurate issue resolution is a positive result for overall operational efficiency.
  
• Improves agent productivity: Call deflection helps agents increase productivity by eliminating common and simple issues. In the meantime, they can focus on urgent and important tasks. Hence, this improves the agent’s productivity and prioritizes the needed tasks. 
  
• Quick issue resolution: Simple and straightforward questions can be resolved quickly; chatbots can provide the desired accurate response and answer related queries in real-time, lowering the time for resolving customer queries and issues and erasing unnecessary phone calls.
  
• Data insights: Call deflection can generate valuable information about customer behavior, preferences, and channels for interaction or support. This helps organizations and traditional or cloud contact centers optimize the self-service system and user experience by monitoring interaction patterns, user feedback, and common queries using analytics tools. 

Optimizing Customer Experience: Implementing Strategic Call Deflection Techniques

Call deflection techniques can optimize the customer experience and the organization’s operations. Some of them are as follows:

Implementing IVR for self-service customer service:

Use the IVR system and optimize it for better self-service customer support options by designing clear guide navigation and menu options to take the required actions. This helps users with a friendly self-service approach, ensuring customer satisfaction and experience.

Analyze the customer interaction pattern, needs, and behavior:

Identifying the frequently asked questions, concerns, and issues customers encounter helps improve and tailor the specific customer’s needs, interaction channels, and relevant service.

Use advanced customer support technology: 

Updating and offering advanced customer support technology assists businesses and customers in cooperating effectively. Like virtual assistants, AI-powered chatbot systems, pre-determined user queries, and live online chat features.

Offer callbacks: 

Offer a callback option after the call deflection to ensure they get the desired result and address them appropriately if not. This ensures customers that you are not neglecting their incoming calls but are committed to providing excellent customer support.

Personalize customer interactions and engagements: 

CRM integration and analytics tools can help improve and implement personalized, tailored messages and interactions for better customer engagement, which improves overall user satisfaction and customer experience.

Offer omnichannel customer support: 

Your business customers, audience, and agent may not be available or active on multiple channels. Ensure an omnichannel communication support system where they can connect with you instantly using their preferred channels, such as social media, a Web chatbot, an online chat service, a search engine, or mobile apps. Since different individuals prefer different communication channels and approaches.

7 misconceptions about call centers

Low-skilled job

Call center jobs or customer support representative jobs are considered skilled jobs. Still, they require charisma and high skills to listen to the customer, provide compelling customer service, and objection handling skills for negative customer comments or interactions, which can be challenging on the personal and professional level for any person. 

Poor customer support

There is a myth that call centers provide poor customer support, but in reality, call centers are there to provide better customer support and satisfaction. Without call centers, customers can’t get the desired service, and businesses can fail to keep their customers happy or help acquire loyal customers. They are the primary source of customer satisfaction and loyal customers for any business or company.

Expensive for a large business

Call centers have the technology infrastructure and resources to support businesses of any size. For small, medium, and large corporate businesses, VoIP telephony services or cloud-based contact centers are much more cost-effective and convenient for scaling business communication systems in different locations compared to traditional call centers or contact centers.

Only for the outbound customer calls

One misconception about call centers is that they reach out to customers and call them to sell new products or offers. However, call centers not only take outbound calls but also provide customer support for incoming or inbound calls from customers related to their queries, problems, and issues. 

Also, help clients by providing the desired assistance, information, and service to resolve customer support with a personal human touch and interactions.

Easy to work in call centers

People think working in call centers is easy because they believe it is repetitive. But in reality, agents need the skill to address customer problems, issues, and pain points accurately and respond to them personally with a positive attitude and patience. This can be difficult with some customers while supporting them, leaving agents stressed and feeling burnout. 

No career growth opportunities

AI assistants and live chatbots can only enhance the customer experience by responding instantly to common inquiries and interactions. On the other hand, overall customer support management requires human skills, from training agents to developing an effective call center strategy and quality assurance. There are lots of growth opportunities within call centers as cloud-based contact centers and virtual call centers are popular and continue to grow.

No live agent is required

There is a misconception that no live agent is required in the call center since everything can be automated, and customers can be guided without assistance. In reality, humans want human interaction and communication to understand their problems and address them properly. 

They need personalized messages to hear their pain points and provide solutions for intensive issues and personal concerns. In contrast, straight questions and simple customer interaction can be quick and desirable with the virtual assistant for instant customer support.

Conclusion

In the end, there are many misconceptions regarding call deflection practices in contact centers, but they are all there to improve customer support effectiveness and efficiency. They provide better customer support through different mediums, reduce the time for customer inquiries, and assist them with desired actions and preferences for self-service.

However, the call centers also prioritize the live agent service for personal interaction and communication and ensure the customers are getting the service they want to resolve their issues. Since intense and high problems need human assistance to be solved.

If your business and contact center cannot correctly execute the call deflection practices and features due to the lack of better communication technology, Dialaxy can provide a virtual number for the cloud-based contact center solution, enabling your business to scale and provide excellent customer service from any location.

FAQs

What is call deflection, and how does it work in contact centers?

Call deflection is not about ignoring or avoiding incoming customer calls; instead, it is a strategic method of redirecting inbound calls to other digital customer support channels to reduce the call volume in the call center or minimize the call burden to the customer support representatives, agents, or employees.

Overall, it helps customers and call centers effectively manage inbound calls through call redirection and self-service options, enabling dialers to instantly get the desired service.

What are some common misconceptions about call deflection in customer service?

Some of the common misconceptions about the call deflection in customer service are:

• About avoiding customer interactions
• Call deflection leads to decreased customer satisfaction
• Calls should be higher than text-based communications.
• Can’t provide instant customer service

How do you calculate your call deflection rate?

To calculate the call deflection rate

Mathematical formula:

Call deflection rate = No.of deflected calls or resolved queries /Total number of incoming calls or queries*100%

For example, if your no deflected call by chats, Self-service, or FAQs is 500, and your total number of incoming calls is 1000 per month, then your deflected call rate will be 50% per month.

What is the impact of call deflection on customer service and efficiency?

For short interactions and minor problem-solving, call deflection provides quick solutions. It resolves almost every user query in real-time and enhances positive customer service satisfaction. 

At the same time, it reduces the call volume load significantly for efficient customer service operations or call center support.

What metrics are used to measure the success of call-deflection strategies?

The metrics used for measuring the success of call deflection strategies are:

1. Call Deflection Rate (CDR): customer inquiries are resolved through the alternative channels.
2. Average Handle Time (AHT): Average time spent to resolve an inquiry.
3. Self-Service Success Rate: Service resolved by customers on their own by finding the desired information for their queries or problems from FAQs, chatbots, and troubleshooting tips.
4. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score: This measures the customer’s satisfaction level related to the service or method provided for queries and problems.
5. First Contact Resolution (FCR) Rate: This measures the success rate or percentage of customers resolved in the initial interactions without needing repeat or other interactions.