Incoming calls
Whether they’re reaching you by calling via Teams or with a ‘regular’ voice call, these callers often require highly personalized service, reflecting their individual needs and track history with your business. This means exchanging a lot of detailed information before they can be connected to the right person.
Offering this level of service is an essential part of the business, but it’s hard to escape the constant need to save costs by ensuring your attendants are empowered to offer the most efficient service possible.
Avoiding "pinch points"
Given the real potential for this role to become a ‘pinch point’ in your Teams Contact Center, it’s clear there’s a lot of value in helping attendants to do their job in the most efficient way. This generates both cost savings for your business and gives your customers the best, most efficient service possible.
In this article, we’re going to look at how the Attendant Console for Teams Contact Center from ROGER365.io can help businesses support attendants and receptionists in delivering a highly-efficient service with automations, customized workflows, and integrations.
The face and voice of your Teams contact center
Front desk attendants and receptionists have a challenging role. They’re under pressure to answer new callers as soon as possible, and frequently need to juggle multiple callers as they find out more information and connect them to the right team.
In some cases, callers want to speak to a specific person, which requires knowledge of their availability and vigilance to ensure the call is picked up in good time. There’s considerable stress associated with this role because attendants have a critical position as the customer’s ‘first impression’ of the company, and the first person they talk to when they call your Teams Contact Center.
Thankfully, the Attendant Console can help by reducing the time spent on manual tasks with automations, customizations, and other tools. All these advantages are accessed directly within Teams, thanks to a dedicated interface that boosts productivity and accurate call resolution.
Efficiency saving #1: Connecting callers with the right team, fast
Once an attendant has determined the caller’s need, they must find the right team or person to match it. This isn’t always clear, especially when queries don’t fall neatly into a designated department. The Attendant Console solves this problem by enabling your attendants to organize your team members into departments, areas of expertise, geographical zones, or any other custom label. It’s easy to add notes to recipients in a frequently used ‘favorites’ list, such as availability, specialisms, and more.
When a recipient isn’t on the ‘favorites’ list, your receptionists can easily search for the right colleague in your CRM, based on the customized labels you have created. Then, with a click you can connect them with the right person in just a few seconds. There’s also a number of options for connecting calls, including blind transfers, consult transfers, and callback requests.
This is a massive help for attendants, who can rapidly connect callers with the right person with absolute certainty. Additionally, all attendants in your company can have the same overview, so new recruits can operate with the same added efficiency and certainty when using your Teams contact center solution.
Efficiency saving #2: Increased visibility reduces repeat calls and call volumes
Sometimes a caller is placed in ‘parking’ while they wait for the recipient to pick up, and after a while they lose patience, hang up, and call back later. This causes an unnecessary volume of calls, which translates to elevated costs, wasted time, and lower customer satisfaction.
This can be partially avoided by using the Attendant Console to check the availability of each potential recipient, to see if they are currently working, in a meeting, or on another call. This visibility helps ensure callers are connected with the best, most available agent for their needs.
Because the Attendant Console gives receptionists and attendants total visibility over all calls (incoming, ongoing, on hold, etc.,), they can see how long a caller has been waiting for. Before they have an opportunity to get frustrated, your attendant can rejoin the call and see if they want to keep waiting, or if they would like to speak to an alternative agent.
When they really want to speak to a particular colleague, you can create a callback request or automated callback, so the agent can call them back as soon as they’re available. This elevates the personal service you can offer, and reduces the volume of calls the attendant needs to handle. Big win!
See the Attendant Console in action:
Efficiency saving #3: Reduce time asking questions
By using a seamless integration with your own CRM, the Attendant Console empowers attendants to connect callers more rapidly, avoiding the need for repetitive questions. They can immediately see who is calling, with access to their entire profile.
This feature can also be a big advantage when callers are harder to understand due to different accents, dialects, or other reasons. Instead of being asked the same old questions, callers are greeted by their name and the attendant can offer to connect them immediately with their usual contact person, or if they need specialist help from another department.
The result is callers who are connected to the right person, faster – and without needing to spend time answering questions (which might suggest you don’t know who’s calling, or don’t value them).
Efficiency saving #4: Flexibility for remote and hybrid working
Many companies use hybrid working to increase the capacity of their workforce without increasing office space. In some cases, they can even reduce office space by accommodating more flexible working methods. This is a big advantage of a Teams Contact Center solution, because it enables a secure, information-rich contact experience – no matter where agents are working.
However, it’s harder to extend the same flexibility for attendants. Or, at least, it used to be.
With the Attendant Console fully embedded in the secure Teams framework, your attendants and receptionists can answer calls from any location without losing any quality of service. This enables your company to flexibly increase staffing at peak periods using a combination of in-office and remote attendants.
This capability means you can consolidate your multiple offices into a single phone number, which is staffed by an attendant (who can be at any location), or multiple attendants. For companies with an international clientele this is also a clear advantage, and it’s easier to offer round the clock assistance from international teams, using a single phone number.
Efficiency saving #5: Automations that fit your business perfectly
Instead of wasting time with manual tasks that can be automated, it’s easy to set up customized automations within the ROGER365.io Teams Contact Center solution, including the Attendant Console.This can save a lot of time by automatically retrieving data, or prompting attendants or agents to collect specific data from certain customers.
The platform is equipped with a wide range of robust APIs, meaning you can automatically:
- Register who called
- Display specific information for each caller
- Highlight a customer’s favorite agent or contact person
- Offer multilingual or dialect support, based on CRM data
- Prompt attendants to gather specific information, or immediately forward to a certain department
- Unlimited possibilities to customize to your own business
Efficiency saving #6: Metrics that guide future optimizations
The Attendant Console can save time and reduce stress by giving receptionists and attendants a real-time overview of all calls. But something that can help nurture and support their role in the long term is detailed metrics. These can identify areas that cause problems, and open a conversation for ways to deal with them; for example, with a custom automation that reduces manual tasks. The Attendant Console offers all the metrics you’d expect and hope for, making it clearer what is needed to help attendants to do their job in the most efficient way possible.
Your contact center solution can make it easier to offer personal service
Offering personal service isn’t always easy, but it’s definitely worth it in certain situations. Sure, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or multiple-choice menu might be cheaper, but it’s not always the most cost effective option when customers need more individual support. By using the Attendant Console for your Teams Contact Center, you can help your attendants and receptionists offer the highest level of service, using a modern solution.
With this new tool, your receptionists are empowered and fully integrated with your entire business, with a clear overview and a comprehensive toolkit. You’re not just saving money with more efficient service, you’re also increasing customer satisfaction with more rapid resolution to their queries. Start making your contact center solution a source of real value for your business today – get started with your 14 day free trial.
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