Your Contact Center Call Flow Defines The Customer’s First Impression Of Your Company
Planning call flow is probably one of the most time-consuming processes within implementation and support of a phone system. When you’re ready to replace your old phone system with the new VOIP solution you really should think carefully about the best ways to deliver calls, because what you had before most likely wasn’t nearly as effective as it can be now. Review it thoroughly! With the new phone system you have a great chance to start with your call flow from scratch.
Questions To Be Asked
Careful thought must be taken regarding many aspects of the call flow to ensure your callers have the best possible experience. Start with putting yourself in your caller’s shoes and imagine what should happen when they call your UC system the first time.
Here are some examples of the questions we ask our customers while going through the call flow design process with them:
- When I dial 888 212 5555 what happens?
- Does it go to a person or a menu?
- If it goes to a person what happens if that person is already on the phone?
- What if they stepped away, how many times does the phone ring before it gives up? And what happens then?
- Do we want to ring a single person or a group?
- Do we want to ring them all at once or sequentially?
- How long do you want your callers to hear ringing before a voice mail is taken?
- Should it go to the auto attendant if there is nobody to answer or should the caller hear the music and wait for someone to become available?
There are hundreds of questions that may be asked depending on the individual case. The key is to think through the maximum number of possible scenarios to ensure the caller will keep engaged and receive the expected result from their engagement.
Visualization Comes In Handy
As you can see, what happens when a customer dials your number needs to be carefully thought out from beginning to end. Then tested and adjusted until the caller’s experience is polished to perfection.
We find it helpful to have a Visio diagram of the call flow. It helps us and our customers visualize the caller’s experience in every given scenario. Here is the example of a relatively basic call flow diagram.
Always Test It First!
Once you have mapped out the call flow and visualized it, you can find the missing pieces and fill them in. before you go live, don’t forget about the “After Hours” and “Holidays” scenarios as well.
After you think everything looks good in the diagram, test it! It is a time consuming process but it helps you find little details that couldn’t be addressed in the diagrams, like Auto Attendant recording imperfections.
Worthwhile Time Investment
In our implementations, we always put a lot of focus on call flow design because it has a direct correlation to our customers’ business processes and their their customers’ experience. it is always a worthwhile time investment before the new VOIP system goes live to ensure you are giving your customers the call experience they expect and deserve.
