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Call avoidance is a strategy businesses use to reduce inbound call volumes to contact centers in the customer service industry, particularly in the consumer market.
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Call avoidance is a strategy businesses use to reduce inbound call volumes to contact centers in the customer service industry, particularly in the consumer market.
Businesses choose call avoidance techniques because person-to-person service calls are time-consuming[ citation needed ] and costly[ citation needed ] and should be accessed only when there is no viable option. Voice calls can then be reserved for high priority customers, complex service requests, or emergency situations where the quick response of skilled phone agents is essential.
It is impractical[ citation needed ] and expensive[ citation needed ] for call centers to provide a live answer for every caller during peak demand periods such as certain times of the day, days of the week, or seasons. Callers in urgent need to discuss an issue with a live person are typically put on hold along with callers whose request could be better served through other channels. Both are competing for valuable talk time.
With the spread of the Internet and email access, contact centers are moving toward self services[ citation needed ] via a searchable knowledgebase, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), or computer generated emails. Password resets are the most popular[ citation needed ] form of website self-service where clients are asked pre-established confidential questions that verify credentials before the system sends them a temporary password. Other typical areas to employ call avoidance strategies include the following:
The reference desk or information desk of a library is a public service counter where professional librarians provide library users with direction to library materials, advice on library collections and services, and expertise on multiple kinds of information from multiple sources.
An automated call distribution system, commonly known as automatic call distributor or automatic call dispatcher (ACD), is a telephony device that answers and distributes incoming calls to a specific group of terminals or agents within an organization. ACDs direct calls based on parameters that may include the caller's telephone number, the number they dialed, the time of day or a response to an automated voice prompt. Advanced ACD systems may use digital technologies such as computer telephony integration (CTI), computer-supported telecommunications applications (CSTA) or IVR as input to determine the route to a person or voice announcement that will serve the caller. Experts claim that "the invention of ACD technology made the concept of a call centre possible."
Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telephony, IVR allows customers to interact with a company's host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition, after which services can be inquired about through the IVR dialogue. IVR systems can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed. IVR systems deployed in the network are sized to handle large call volumes and also used for outbound calling as IVR systems are more intelligent than many predictive dialer systems.
A voicemail system is a computer-based system that allows callers to leave a recorded message when the recipient has been unable or unwilling to answer the phone. Calls may be diverted to voicemail manually or automatically. The caller is prompted to leave a message and the recipient can retrieve the message at a later time.
Technical support, commonly shortened as tech support, is a customer service provided to customers to resolve issues, commonly with consumer electronics. This is commonly provided via call centers, online chat and email. Many companies provide discussion boards for users to provide support to other users, decreasing load and cost on these companies.
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
A service-level agreement (SLA) is an agreement between a service provider and a customer. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user. The most common component of an SLA is that the services should be provided to the customer as agreed upon in the contract. As an example, Internet service providers and telcos will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms. In this case, the SLA will typically have a technical definition of mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair or mean time to recovery (MTTR); identifying which party is responsible for reporting faults or paying fees; responsibility for various data rates; throughput; jitter; or similar measurable details.
Help desk and incident reporting auditing is an examination of the controls within the help desk operations. The audit process collects and evaluates evidence of an organization's help desk and incident reporting practices, and operations. The audit ensures that all problems reported by users have been adequately documented and that controls exist so that only authorized staff can archive the users’ entries. It also determine if there are sufficient controls to escalate issues according to priority.
Self-service password reset (SSPR) is defined as any process or technology that allows users who have either forgotten their password or triggered an intruder lockout to authenticate with an alternate factor, and repair their own problem, without calling the help desk. It is a common feature in identity management software and often bundled in the same software package as a password synchronization capability.
An issue tracking system is a computer software package that manages and maintains lists of issues. Issue tracking systems are generally used in collaborative settings, especially in large or distributed collaborations, but can also be employed by individuals as part of a time management or personal productivity regimen. These systems often encompass resource allocation, time accounting, priority management, and oversight workflow in addition to implementing a centralized issue registry.
A dialogue system, or conversational agent (CA), is a computer system intended to converse with a human. Dialogue systems employed one or more of text, speech, graphics, haptics, gestures, and other modes for communication on both the input and output channel.
The eCRM or electronic customer relationship management encompasses all standard CRM functions with the use of the net environment i.e., intranet, extranet and internet. Electronic CRM concerns all forms of managing relationships with customers through the use of information technology (IT).
Voice phishing, or vishing, is the use of telephony to conduct phishing attacks.
Automated telephone surveys is a systematic collection a data from demography by making calls automatically to the preset list of respondents at the aim of collecting information and gain feedback via the telephone and the internet. Automated surveys are used for customer research purposes by call centres for customer relationship management and performance management purposes. They are also used for political polling, market research and job satisfaction surveying.
Click-to-call, also known as click-to-talk, click-to-dial, click-to-chat and click-to-text, is a form of Web-based communication in which a person clicks an object to request an immediate connection with another person in real-time either by phone call, Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP), or text. Click to talk requests are most commonly made on websites but can also be initiated by hyperlinks placed in emails or videos, and other Internet-based object or user interfaces.
[24]7.ai is a customer service software and services company based in California that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide targeted customer service.
A security question is a form of shared secret used as an authenticator. It is commonly used by banks, cable companies and wireless providers as an extra security layer.
In electronic commerce, conversion marketing is marketing with the intention of increasing conversions—that is, site visitors who are paying customers.
Help desk software is a computer program that enables customer-care operators to keep track of user requests and deal with other customer-care-related issues.
Data center management is the collection of tasks performed by those responsible for managing ongoing operation of a data center. This includes Business service management and planning for the future.
