When looking for first call resolution tips, it seems like the internet is a bit of a wasteland these days, with people focusing only on the diversification of the technologies used in call centers and contact centers. They also spend a lot of time talking about the demeanor with customers, about how to deal with angry customers, other such things.
Well, those are all good, but you need some first call resolution tips in order to ensure the best customer service possible. We’ve said this more times than there are galaxies in the universe, but we’ll say it again. Your customer service is what you’ll be judged for, especially if it goes wrong. A bad customer service experience will spread horrible rumors rapidly, and no amount of other positive traits can combat this.
So, let’s look at a few good tips to get that first call resolution. Of course, there’s no way to guarantee a hundred percent success rate in something this unpredictable, but efforts can be made to make that far more likely.
#1 – Contingencies
Planning contingencies for a large variety of potential situations is the first thing to work on to ensure first call resolutions. Having a set of routine things that agents are very used to working with, so that they can handle pretty much any kind of standard situation the customer may have goes a very long way.
Many time, customer service agents just kind of play it by ear, handling each situation by intuition, and this can be a problem when a situation is slightly confusing, or a customer can’t express it right. Contingencies like this will help a lot.
#2 – Cross Training
Cross training your agents to handle issues not normally part of their “department” within the service department also goes a long way. Many times, when a customer has to be put on hold for redirection, it’s not only going to produce a worse experience and annoy the customer greatly, it can go very wrong.
I can’t begin to count the times this has dropped my call, and I’m sure you’re just as able to pick out multiple times this has happened to you as well. If you cross train your agents to handle problems like this themselves, they can avoid this technical hiccup, and bring in those first call resolutions more often.
#3 – Onboarding
Using onboard systems like WalkMe to guide the agents through CRM in a much more dynamic and reliable fashion is also a big step that will help. This can help facilitate those contingencies being accessible to the agents without drilling them on memorization, and it can help alleviate some of that cross training as well.
These systems were created originally to make live tutorials to guide users through complex web interfaces, but they can just as easily guide a trained agent through CRM processes and question lists as well. In fact, many companies have tested this and have had great success with it, I’ll vouch for it working pretty darn well.
If you follow these first call resolution tips, simple as they may seem, you are going to see a drastic increase in this metric in the positive direction. As I said, you can’t guarantee one hundred percent in any business, but you can sure try!
