Call Management Strategies to Improve Customer Satisfaction

What happens when a customer calls you? Do they get through to the right department the first time, or do they have to suffer through numerous call transfers and long wait times?

The way you handle inbound calls is a reflection of the customer service levels and contact center benchmarks you strive for. Without a formal call management system in place, you leave the door open to poor customer experiences, lots of abandoned calls, and a reactive call center that’s always at a disadvantage.

Call management options range from manual to fully automated, so you can choose an approach that’s right for you and tailor it to meet your unique needs.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, let’s make sure we’re on the same page when it comes to defining call management.

What Is Call Management?

Call management is the process of efficiently handling incoming and outbound calls by using technology and workflows. Effective call management ensures that phone calls are routed correctly, wait times are minimized, and customer interactions are optimized.

You’ll never have to ask a customer to leave a voicemail again because every call stands a good chance of getting through to the right person. As a result, expect first-call resolution rates to jump to new highs.

Fluid call center operations depend on factors that are related to people, processes, and technology. To get your call management in order, you need to become familiar with these six key components of a call management process.

Key components of call management

Here are call management’s crucial components:

• Call routing: Create preconfigured call routing rules to direct live calls to the right department or team member.
• Call distribution: Maintain regular levels of calls for all agents and hunt groups based on availability, skill set, or time on the phone.
• Call recording: Capture, store, and analyze conversations for training, compliance, and quality control.
• Call tracking: Monitor and log call details for performance analysis and pattern identification.
• Interactive voice response (IVR): Automate call handling with prerecorded options, and introduce customer self-service.
• Automation: Use artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce manual call handling and improve efficiency.

Call Management Approaches: Pros and Cons

You don’t have to go all in with fully automated call management straightaway. Understanding the differences between various call management approaches and the advantages and disadvantages of each one is key to getting your implementation right.

Manual call management

With a manual process, human agents handle calls without automated assistance. A standard method looks like this:

1. Incoming calls reach your contact center.
2. An available contact center agent answers a call.
3. The agent transfers the caller to the relevant department or user.
4. The caller waits on hold until the relevant department or user becomes available.

Manual processes are often used by small businesses or teams with low call volumes and are considered the most basic call management approach.

Pros: Manual call management involves personalized service and full human interaction. Smaller businesses can tout this personal approach as a customer value and make the marketing claim that in their companies, humans support humans.

Cons: This approach results in slow response times and high labor costs and is difficult to scale. When dealing with high call volumes, it’s impossible to hit answering targets while maintaining a good average handle time.

Semi-automated call management

When you combine manual handling with technology like IVR or call queues, you can direct callers to their desired destination before reaching an agent. For example, when a caller phones your business, present them with numeric or spoken options to help navigation. Choose menus with options like “1 for sales, 2 for service,” then introduce submenus to point customers in the right direction.

Pros: Semi-automated call management systems are more efficient than manual ones and balance customer service automation with human customer support. You can still offer some level of personalization when calls connect to call center agents, but the connection becomes more streamlined.

Cons: This approach still requires agent intervention, which can slow processes. Customers who are new to numeric menus or spoken IVRs may be unfamiliar with the ones you decide to use.

Fully automated call management

AI-powered call management software routes calls, handles inquiries, and automates workflows with self-service options. You can remove the manual call handling elements from your call management system and completely outsource the routing, menus, tracking, and recording processes.

Pros: Fully automated call management is highly scalable, reduces agents’ workloads, and improves response times. Call tracking becomes a powerful tool for your business, introducing full customer journey metrics.

Cons: This approach may feel impersonal if it’s not optimized properly. Customers who expect to speak to a human being right away might be upset.

Helpful Ways to Manage Calls Effectively

There are a number of call management features available with market-leading call center software. Here are some you could use from day one:

Softphones

Softphones allow employees to make and receive calls over the internet, eliminating the need for traditional phones and manual keypad dialing. You get a built-in contact list, an internal directory, and speed dials. You also get access to call histories, so there’s no need to retrieve call logs and manually copy and paste phone numbers. You increase flexibility and reduce hardware costs, especially if you have remote teams.

Call queues and call routing

When calls enter your business, choose to organize them into a queue and direct them to available agents based on priority, skill level, or customer needs. When you do this, you can expect shorter wait times and ensure that customers speak to the right agent quickly. Your operation won’t have a helpdesk/receptionist feel anymore, and you’ll gain countless efficiencies and free up your staff to assist customers with more pressing issues.

Call recording and monitoring

Businesses can record calls, review them, and analyze them for training and compliance. The simple act of recording calls also helps you take the first step into sentiment analysis and formal quality assurance.

What you do with those recordings is of paramount importance to the transformation of your customer service operations. Use the recordings to review calls, automate quality management, and improve agent performance, customer satisfaction, and legal compliance.

VoIP systems

Using a VoIP system is the entry to cloud-based call management processes and systems. While you can apply various call management principles to an on-premises phone solution, it’s harder to integrate other systems and stitch processes together. You’ll also be somewhat restricted when trying to do more with call recordings and when transferring calls between departments.

VoIP systems are scalable and cost-effective and allow remote teams to handle calls efficiently.When you enable calls to be made over the internet, you get more flexibility, cost savings, and integrations.

Changes to setups can be made via self-service portals using drag-and-drop builders. When you need to make a quick change — for instance, when call volume levels are unexpectedly high — there’s no need to wait for your phone provider to help you.

CRM integration

When you connect your customer relationship management (CRM) software to your call management platform, you share customer data and link caller histories. This not only gives agents personalized information about customers’ previous transactions and preferences but also speeds up response times and reduces post-call activity. With this two-way information sharing, there’s no longer any need for manual reliance and switching between systems, which are susceptible to human error.

Nextiva integrates with major CRM apps like:

• HubSpot
• Zendesk
• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Oracle Sales Cloud
• Zoho
• Bullhorn
• SugarCRM
• ServiceNow
• Act! CRM
• ConnectWise

Why Nextiva Is the Best Choice for Call Management

Nextiva’s call management system streamlines business communication with VoIP, automation, and CRM integration.

Whether your business needs manual, semi-automated, or fully automated solutions, Nextiva offers scalable tools to enhance customer experience and call center efficiency. What’s more, all these tools are built into our call center solution, which is packed with extras like call recording, sentiment analysis, and workforce management features.

This combination of call management enablement and built-in omnichannel contact center software helps our users create compelling customer experiences.

For example, Reliance Partners, one of the top 10 fastest-growing insurance companies in the United States, handles around 30,000 calls per month. If the company’s 150 agents handled these calls manually, they’d have to spend all their time directing customers to the right teams rather than dealing with the callers’ queries.

With softphones, skill-based routing, AI-driven automation, and real-time call monitoring, Nextiva helps businesses effortlessly improve their call handling and service quality.

Make a conscious choice to automate call management, and see results immediately. Customers will love the reduced wait time, and agents will become more productive, solving genuine customer problems rather than acting like human switchboards.

Want to implement first-class call management? See why millions of customers trust Nextiva every day. 👇