When a customer calls your business, there's several call center software features that are executed before your agents can answer the call. Two of them are the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) that helps your customers navigate through your options so that they're connected to agents most suitable for their needs, and ring strategies, which determine how the call rings for the group of agents that should receive it.
The phone menu or IVR
When your customers call your business, they can listen to a greeting audio, and a list of options that they can access from their dialpad. Toky also offers the option of having different levels for these menus, so that you can design a menu adapted to your business; there are the following recommendations for these menus:
- Do not use more than 2 or 3 levels to avoid the customer canceling the call.
- Use simple language and short phrases to ensure a better understanding of the message and speed up menu navigation.
- Place the most used options in the first levels.
- Offer an option of direct contact with your agents, which connects them to a group of representatives who give general support to requests or direct the contact to the correct agent.
These menus can be used in different cases such as:
- Options with menus in different languages.
- Options targeting specialized sales or support groups
- Options that direct calls to groups that serve specific locations.
- Informational audio options
Ring strategies
When the call is directed to a group of agents, the ringing strategy determines the order in which each agent is notified of the incoming call. The call rings for a specified time at each agent before proceeding to the next or being sent to voicemail. There are different strategies:
- Ring all: With this strategy, the call rings at all agents and the ringing is suspended when one of them answers.
- Round Robin: In this strategy, each agent is assigned a priority, and each new call rings the agent with the highest available priority and if they don't answer, it goes to the next one.
- Round Robin with memory: With this call strategy, the system stores the last agent who answered and each new call is directed to the agent with the highest priority, next to the last one who answered.
- Random: The system will randomly choose the agent that will attend, from the agents available in the group.
Round robin strategies are generally used in groups of agents ordered according to their knowledge of certain issues, to guarantee the client the best possible service always, and also giving an opportunity to those with less knowledge to provide service.
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