Six Sureshot Ways to Optimize Call Volumes in Your Contact Center?

One of the key operational metrics in any contact center is call volume. It determines the efficiency and effectiveness of a contact center.

The trick to being a successful contact center is to manage call volumes effectively. This would ensure:

• Customer satisfaction as they don’t have to be on hold for long periods.
• Agent productivity by avoiding burnout as they don’t have to handle an enormous number of calls.
• Lower operational costs as you don’t have to keep adding agents to attend to calls.

It is a critical metric that helps contact centers assess staffing needs, customer demand, and service levels.

How Is Call Volume Calculated?

There are multiple ways by which this can be calculated, both directly and indirectly. Let me give you the ways by which it is calculated.

Total Call Volume

It is the total number of calls received or made in a given period, like in an hour, day, week, or month. For example, if a contact center receives 5000 calls in a day, the daily call volume is 5000.

Peak Call Volume

The highest number of calls received in a given time frame, helping contact centers plan for peak hours. For instance, if an eCommerce provider sees a spike of 2000 calls between 9 am and 11 am, that is the peak call volume of the day.

Call Arrival Rate

This is the rate at which calls arrive at the contact center per unit of time. If your contact center receives 600 calls in an hour, the call arrival rate is 10 calls per minute.  

Average Handling Time

The total time taken by an agent to handle a call. This includes talk time and after-call disposition work. For example, if an agent handles 50 calls in 5 hours, then the average handling time is 6 minutes per call.

Call Abandonment Rate

The percentage of customers who hang up before speaking with an agent, often due to long wait times, is the call abandonment rate. If 50 out of 1000 callers hang up before connecting, the abandonment rate is 5%.

Analyzing these call volume metrics will allow the contact center to allocate resources and anticipate surges in call volume optimally.

Reasons for High Inbound Call Volumes

Several factors contribute to high inbound call volumes. Some of them include:

Product or service issues: Defective products, service outages, or technical glitches can lead to a sudden surge in customer queries.

Recently, an Internet service provider that we work with had an underwater cable issue, which resulted in a network outage. This led to thousands of customers calling in to report the problem.

A Gartner study reveals that 52% of inbound contact center interactions are a result of service or product failures.

This can be easily avoided through proactive measures. For instance, if the Internet service provider had informed all their customers about the network outage due to an underwater cable issue, they probably wouldn’t have received so many customer calls.

Billing and payment queries: Incorrect charges, failed transactions, or unclear invoices – do they sound familiar? These can result in high call volumes. 

Recently, our electricity provider introduced a new billing system, and the bill that we received recently was three times the usual amount. It turned out that we weren’t the only ones to face this issue. There were hundreds, and this resulted in their customer service receiving 40% more calls than usual.

Billing and payment inquiries account for nearly 25% of all inbound calls in verticals such as utilities, telecom, and banking.

Marketing campaigns or promotions: Special promotions, discounts, or new product launches often drive customer engagement, leading to more calls.

This call volume is something that organizations would be prepared to handle as they expect the volumes to go up. However, you have to ensure that you handle those calls promptly.

A research study states that 63% of customers expect companies to provide instant support during promotional events, leading to increased contact center traffic.

Inefficient self-service options: If customers cannot find answers via self-service channels like FAQs, mobile apps, or chatbots, they are likely to call.

I regularly use my mobile app for the refill of my drinking water. The last time I tried, their app was down, and I couldn’t use it despite my repeated attempts. So, I ended up calling them for the refill.

An HBR study states that 81% of customers attempt to resolve issues themselves before calling support, but 53% ultimately contact an agent due to inadequate self-service options.

Seasonal demand: Industries such as travel, insurance, and retail experience seasonal spikes in call volume.

During festive season sales, most eCommerce providers experience high call volumes. However, this is an expected trend in various industries, which they would be prepared to handle.

A Deloitte study reveals that the retail sector experiences a 70% surge in call volumes during the holiday shopping season.

Poor first-call resolutions: If issues are not resolved during the first interaction, customers call back, which increases the call volume.

If your agents are not equipped with all the customer details and interactions to handle their queries, they are likely not to resolve them in the first interaction. This would lead to high call volumes and unsatisfied customers. 

Do you know that for every 1% improvement in FCR, contact centers reduce operating costs by 1% and improve customer satisfaction by 1.4%?

How Do You Manage and Reduce High Call Volumes in a Contact Center?

Handling high call volumes requires a balanced approach that includes workflow optimization, technology adoption, and proactive customer engagement.

Let us look at some of the strategies that can help do this.

1. Optimize Workforce Management

• Schedule your shifts based on historical trends
• Use forecasting tools to predict peak periods and staff accordingly

One of our customers optimized their workforce management and reduced the call wait times by 40%.

2. Enhance Self-Service Options

• Make your IVR systems intelligent to route calls efficiently to the right department, location, and agent with the knowledge to handle the query.
• Implement AI-driven chatbots and knowledge bases for quick resolutions.

You can reduce your inbound calls by more than 40% by implementing chatbots to handle transactional queries.

3. Improve First-Call Resolution (FCR)

• Provide your agents with a single view of your customers across all channels and interfaces by opting for an omnichannel platform. This would allow your agents to access every information about the customer and resolve their queries effectively, without them having to repeat themselves.
• Train your agents regularly to handle different kinds of queries.
• Have your agents share all the challenging queries they faced and how they solved them once every fortnight with all the agents. Document them as a part of your FAQ and knowledge base.

Improving FCR by 1% reduces repeat call volume by 5%.

4. Leverage Call Deflection Strategies

• Use SMS, email, WhatsApp, and social media for non-urgent queries
• Offer call-back options instead of making your customers wait in long queues.

We implemented an automated voice broadcasting solution for one of Asia’s largest healthcare service providers and helped them reduce their appointment no-shows to near zero. We send reminders for the patients to confirm, reschedule, or cancel the appointments in advance so that other patients can be accommodated in the free slots.

5. Deploy Advanced Contact Center Technology

• Utilize cloud platforms for better scalability.
• Implement predictive analytics to anticipate and manage call spikes.

An eCommerce company understood with their speech analytics solution that 20% of the queries were related to delivery. They started proactively sending delivery status updates that reduced the call volumes considerably.

6. Monitor and Analyze Call Data

• Regularly review call metrics to identify trends and areas for improvement.
• Implement a speech analytics solution to understand recurring issues, misselling, compliance challenges, and agents’ training needs.

This would help reduce call volume spikes by more than 50% and make your contact center operations predictable.

Studies show that 78% of customers prefer self-service options for resolving issues, yet over 60% still end up calling due to inadequate self-service solutions.

You should look at investing in smart self-service tools, proactive communication, and workforce optimization. This would help significantly lower inbound call volumes while improving service quality.

“Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.” This quote by Peter Drucker in the contact center world translates to automating what can be automated, empowering customers with self-service, and focusing agents on high-value interactions.

Reducing and optimizing call volumes can greatly enhance customer experience, improve agent efficiency, and drive long-term success.