As call center wait times soar, how can CSPs help solve customer frustration?

Queues for customer support have lengthened, along with average call lengths – presenting new challenges for call center and CX executives. In this blog, Katarina Radman examines why this is happening and what can be done to alleviate it.

Wait times for customer services are at a record high, just as customer expectations are soaring.

But why are customer service organizations under so much pressure? There are two main reasons for this: lack of agents and changes in customer behavior.

Shortages of trained agents leads directly to longer support queues. But a higher proportion of inexperienced, new agents also leads indirectly to longer queues, as less knowledgeable agents take longer to resolve inquiries.

Support staff on the B2B side need even more specialist knowledge, are more valuable to CSPs, and cost more to replace – making it imperative that CSPs hold onto them.

Meanwhile, extended call times also result in longer queues. This is partly an inevitable side effect of increased digital autonomy, which means customers can now solve many simple problems themselves. Inevitably, the calls coming in to the contact center are likely to be more complex and harder to solve. So even if there are fewer of calls, each call takes far longer to resolve. Call length is also being extended because customers have become chattier and are often more emotional. All of this is lengthening average handling time (AHT), as contact centers become what Forrester has termed “empathy channels”.

Resolving billing and payment inquiries faster

Billing-related issues remain a significant source of call center traffic. Data from the UK regulator Ofcom revealed that around a third of inquiries and complaints in the mobile market and nearly a fifth in the broadband market are due to billing and payment issues.

 Most of these inquiries are not because the bill has been calculated incorrectly, but because it contains charges or information the customer doesn’t understand or wasn’t prepared for. Or, conversely, vital information is missing or the customer simply can’t find it. But what if bills could be improved so that customers understand them and can find the information they need more readily – removing the need for support? And, at the same time, for those that still need support, it is faster, more effective and omnichannel?

There are three key things CSPs can do today to deliver this win-win and improve their support for bills and billing-related issues.

1. Address the root cause of inquiries. The first place CSPs need to focus is on improving the root cause of inquiries by optimizing, for example, the form and format of bills – ensuring that customers can get all the information they need and that bills are clear and usable. Bills not only need to be easier to understand, but special attention should be paid to the first bill, as this is a known cause of confusion due to issues such as proration and one-off upfront charges.
2. Optimize digital support. Next CSPs need to review their support infrastructure, unlocking the full potential of digital channels such as mobile & web apps, chatbots and social media so that customers can answer more questions for themselves and faster. Making the self-same billing data available across the support organization is fundamental to unlocking the potential of digital channels.
3. Give support staff the data they need. When customers can’t resolve an inquiry themselves and need to escalate it, giving support staff easy access to accurate and up-to-date data ensures seamless support experiences and faster average handling times. With the problem resolved faster, staff can then spend more time on experience-enhancing activities, provide more empathetic responses to customers, or increase their productivity by answering more inquiries.

CSPs often think that providing seamless omnichannel support requires a huge digital transformation project to enable easy access to data, but it needn’t.

Calvi Core, for example, doesn’t just deliver easy-to-use convergent bills, it can also form  the foundation of a successful omnichannel strategy - bringing together all the data needed and supplying it to all support channels.

Meanwhile, Calvi Consulting can show you how to leverage your existing investment in Calvi Core, or help you deliver world-class omnichannel support for billing inquiries and related issues.

To find out more about how Calvi can help empower your omnichannel strategy feel free to reach out! 

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