80/20 is a north star for many companies that want to achieve a high level of excellence within the customer service domain. The pair of numbers represent a percentage within a time slot to better analyze your call center’s answer rate. Essentially, many customer service centers aim to answer 80 percent of incoming calls within 20 seconds.
Each call center will have their own percentage metrics, both shared internally and externally. These numbers help represent the practices established within the center, while exploring more technological integrations to help achieve the goals set.
Choosing the appropriate service level is key to designing an optimized call center experience for customers. Their onboarding can be optimized with the right answer rate and service level, while mapping abandonment rate with successful query resolution. Companies that view their 80/20 with regards to other key parameters can find long-term success.
Designing the right threshold
For companies that want to optimize their customer service operations, it’s important to design the right threshold for measurement. Organizations may focus on 30-40 seconds as their preferred call answer metric, depending on the nature of their business and service loads.
If, however, the company is straddling below industry standards, then a cloud-based call center approach may be preferable. It can design the right threshold based on the technological investments it has made into its ecosystem.
Additionally, the right metrics can be redesigned to reflect best practices, with ongoing training and staffing functions embedded. Companies can also create successful campaigns based on the effectiveness of the customer service center across quarters.
It’s also important to understand how the 20 percent of the calls are treated as well. These long-waiting period calls can be analyzed to make resource planning decisions for upcoming months. Whether there is seasonal traffic flowing into the call-center or problems with technological integration, decision makers need to analyze these calls as well.
Prioritizing customer service
To truly enhance your 80/20 approach, it’s important to prioritize customer service within your organization. This can be done by giving distributed teams access to key insights at the right time. By prioritizing your customer service operations, you can introduce key technological integrations while training your staff the right way.
There are multiple strategies that companies can incorporate to enhance their 80/20, such as leveraging a comprehensive dashboard. While an 80/20 is an ideal goal to achieve, organizations must focus on a top-down transformation of their systems in order to gain significant advantages.
Moving towards omnichannel management
The best way to enhance your internal and external goals is to shift to an omnichannel setup. This helps you reach out to the maximum number of customers within your database, while giving you the leverage you need to flourish. Omnichannel cloud centers such as Bright Pattern allow companies to deep dive into their analytics while providing a seamless call experience for all customers.
Omnichannel focuses on connecting distributed touch points in the customer journey to deliver a consistently high-quality experience. An integrated system shares all customer details with agents who can assist customers across a number of channels. From social media to inbound calls, omnichannel can enhance your response rates while lowering your cost of management.
Omnichannel also leverages automation best practices to route calls in an efficient manner. This reduces the wait time significantly while giving customer service centers a greater record overall. Agents can also make streamlined decisions while dealing with customers on a regular basis. It’s ideal to empower them throughout the acquisition journey, which is where automated best practices become invaluable.