What is Call Center Ring Strategy and Why Does It Matter?

Customers want a fast-delivered service in the current fast-paced busy world. For the call center and business to improve their customer satisfaction quick response to their incoming calls, queries, and issues is an important factor. 

A good call center ring strategy helps to address customer queries and issues effectively maintaining the optimized operation and agent utilization of the business or call center.

In this blog, we will look deeply and explore what is call center ring strategy is, why it matters, different ring strategies, and its importance with call center software implementation.

What is Call Center Ring Strategy?

Call center Ring strategy is a method used in call centers to effectively manage inbound or incoming calls by distributing them to the available customer representatives or agents according to their level. It helps to remove the unbalanced workload from a particular individual agent or in call center operations. It is also known as “Ring Strategy” or “Hunt Group”.

This strategy reduces the wait time for the caller or the customer who is calling the specific business or service provider. This means it efficiently decreases the waiting period and connects with the agents as soon as possible. 

The hierarchy system of the agents or sequence setting is involved in this strategy. When the incoming calls connect to the call center, it automatically forwards or routes the call in agent ranking order. 

If the First agent is unavailable or occupied, the following calls are routed to another inbound call representative or the next one until someone answers.

Overview of Call Center Operations

A call center is a centralized department that operates and manages the overall incoming and outgoing communication with current or potential customers. It can be associated with the organization or outsourced to another company for handling customer calls. The call center focuses on a single channel for communication. 

However, the contact center provides multiple support channels for communication like email, live chat, messages, social media, and phone calls. They may have more than one call center.

The call center’s primary objective is to handle inbound and outbound from customers and sales, follow-ups, and more. Provide technical and customer support to troubleshoot issues and inquiries related to the service or product. They also focus on customer retention, lead generation, sales calls, Data, and workforce management.

Call Center Ring Strategies

Call center ring strategies provide a customer with an instant connection to the available agent making sure that the workload is distributed evenly to all the agents. Thus enhancing the overall call center operations efficiency and productivity. 

Here are the different virtual call center ring strategies are as follows:

1. Ring All Strategy 

As the name suggests, the Ring All strategy is when incoming calls are made then agents phone rings simultaneously or all phones ring. It is one of the common strategies used in almost every call center.

Whoever picks the initial call first that agent is only connected with the call and starts a conversation. This method ensures that incoming calls are answered instantly by distributing them among several agents or devices at the same time.

2. Round Robin Strategy

It is a strategy where the incoming call is distributed according to the list of agents. Where a sequential or standard approach is used, the call is transferred to the next available agent or next, if the first agent is not available. It allows the available agent to receive the inbound call and reduces the workload of an individual agent.

It is also a commonly used strategy in call centers, but the round-robin strategy prefers to use the best agent or experienced one, which gives the other available agent a lesser chance.

3. Memory Round Robin Strategy

The memory Round-robin strategy is similar to the traditional preset order round-robin strategy. The only variation in this strategy is the system remembers the last call-receiving agent and resumes the next incoming call to the other agent instead of starting over from the order list.

It utilized all the free agents in the call center making it a more balanced call distribution and giving chances to all agents. 

However, it uses the pre-order list for distributing incoming calls among agents which makes the last agent wait for his turn to receive a call.
 

4. Longest waiting time Strategy 

In this strategy, the longest or more idle agent is utilized for the next incoming call. The call is assigned to the agent who has been free for the longest period. 

In this strategy, the agent is utilized and prioritized according to their longest idle time for the incoming call. This ensures the effectiveness of using free agents and call distribution.

5. Least talk time Strategy 

From the name, we know that it utilized the agent who has the lowest or minimum talk duration time. The incoming calls are routed to the average shortest talk duration among all agents.  

6. Low answered Strategy

In this strategy, the calls are directed to the agent who has answered the fewer number of incoming calls compared to all the other agents. This helps to improve the efficiency of the call distribution operation according to the least number of calls received or answered.

Importance of Call Center Ring Strategy

The call center ring strategy helps to ensure the overall improvement of the call center operation by optimizing the effective distribution of incoming calls and utilization of all agents for delivering efficient and quick customer service. 

Here are some of the importance of call center ring strategy:

1. Effective call handling: Calls are distributed systematically to reduce the wait time for the customer and assigned agent.
   
2. Balancing workload: It helps to balance the overload among the agents and reduce the burnout of the individuals from unbalanced call distribution in the call center.
   
3. Effective Agent use: By following the different call center strategies it prioritizes and distributes the call for effective agent utilization.
   
4. Improve customer experience: Instant-delivered service and customer support by connecting to available agents helps to improve customer loyalty and positive experience.
   
5. Flexibility and adaptability: According to the incoming call volume status, agent availability, and business needs call center strategies can ensure flexibility and adaptability to the dynamic operation.

These call center strategies help to improve customer experience, optimize the overall call center operation, and maximize the effective utilization of the staff or agent.

Ring Group Strategies in Group Call

A ring group is a collection of phone numbers, phone extensions, or telephone devices that ring at once simultaneously when one extension or number is dialed to improve the call distribution and routing among different departments of the organization. The ring strategies help to manage and distribute the incoming calls within the group according to the predetermined order or function. 

It is a beneficial feature in hosted VoIP phones for sales, support, and billing teams which automatically manages the distribution of calls with teams or members in the department.

Let’s know some of the ring group strategies used in a group call:

1. Simultaneous ring: All the phones ring in at once when the first person picks up the phone then the other telephone stops ringing. Multiple participants and individuals are alert together during incoming calls for answering.

2. Circular ring: A circular ring is also known as a “cyclical ring”. The incoming calls are routed to the agent in a circular pattern similar to the sequential order. Starting with the random agent every time.
   
3. Hunt ring: The phone rings in sequential order it is also called the sequential ring strategy because the device rings at a particular group in a sequential order to each individual. If the agent is unavailable to receive the call during the ringing period, it rings to another and the next one until someone answers. You can set the duration for the ring time.

Factors Influencing Ring Strategy Selection

Although it helps to optimize the call center operation and improve the custom service experience by reducing the duration of call answering, some factors influence the selection of a particular ring strategy.

• Call volume: The volume of call helps to influence in determining the use of call strategy. The high-volume call requires a simultaneous or all-ring strategy for answering calls promptly.

• Agent skills and availability: The round-robin strategy is useful when you need a skilled and knowledgeable agent to answer certain high-level calls. Sequential strategy is more useful for available agents when you don’t have to answer high-level calls.

• Customer preferences: Customers want a quick response and prefer to answer their calls as fast as possible. So to meet the expectations of the customer you need to use a suitable ring strategy.

• Communication technology: The technologies and infrastructure also affect the ring strategy selection. Call routing, monitoring software, and cloud telephony systems help in improving the call strategy.

• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): To meet the customer expectations and align with the expected level of service like response time and positive call experience also influence ring strategy selection.

• Business objectives: According to the business priorities and objectives call handling and agent utilization strategy can be changed according to business needs.

Conclusion

In the end, the selection of the ring strategy in the call center is determined by the call volume, customer experience, agent availability, agent skills, and business objectives for effective and efficient call center operation. 

Not only this but the call center software and technology play a vital role in overall call center operation for call distribution, call monitoring, call forwarding, and effective use of the ring strategies in call centers.

Dialaxy is a cloud-based telephony system dedicated to improving the call center communication system. It has advanced features like call routing, forwarding, Integration with CRM Systems, Real-time call monitoring, reporting, and automatic call distribution. Its VoIP technology enables businesses to adapt to remote flexibility, versatility, and scalability in a cost-effective business model.

Ideally designed software and communication technology for the call center service with industry compliance and security standards to protect customer information and data privacy.

FAQs

What is the call center ring strategy?

The call center ring strategy is a practice of effectively distributing and managing incoming calls in the call center. This helps to distribute the call to available free call support representatives and reduce wait time for the caller.

What is the purpose of a call center solution?

The purpose of a call center solution is to provide effective customer support related to the business service or product. To make an outbound call for a specific objective or handle inbound calls for providing customer support.

What is the most important thing for a call center?

The most important thing for a call center is to provide excellent customer support and interaction. By addressing customer needs, and resolving issues positively.