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What is call drop?
How to calculate the call abandonment rate?
What is the acceptable abandonment rate for call centers?
All of your questions can now be answered.

First of all, let’s understand what is an abandoned call?
As the name suggests, calls that the agent does not answer are calls that the agent gives up.
The call may be abandoned due to the following situations: the caller hangs up before the call is connected to the agent, while waiting in the IVR queue, or they hang up the phone without leaving a voice mail.
There may also be other reasons for the call to be abandoned.
For example, connection problems, phone calls after get off work, etc.

A short and boring definition of call center abandonment rate is as follows:

In the terms of a call center, an abandoned call is a call initiated by the caller to the call center, but ends abruptly before any conversation has occurred.
If you are a customer support manager, call center manager or a business where telephone support is a vital channel, you must constantly monitor the call abandonment rate of the call center.

The call abandonment rate is one of the key call center indicators that help measure the efficiency of the call center.

This is also a standard of the customer experience you present to the caller.
A low call abandonment rate means that most of your callers will be answered.
A high call abandonment rate means you must rethink your call center strategy.

But how do you know if the call abandonment rate is normal?
What is the acceptable abandonment rate for call centers?

This constitutes the premise of this article.
Before proceeding with the discussion, one must understand how to calculate the abandonment rate of a call center.

How to calculate the abandonment rate of a call center

Calculating the correct call abandonment rate helps to evaluate the effectiveness of the call center.
Divide the number of abandoned calls by the total number of calls.
For example, if your contact center receives 1,000 calls and 50 are abandoned, your abandonment rate is 5%.
What is a good abandonment rate for a call center? Considering the reduction of call centers, your call center abandonment rate will inevitably be between 5% and 80%.
However, under special circumstances, it may rise to 20%.
Recent research also shows that one-fifth of calls made from mobile phones are abandoned.
To determine whether the abandonment rate is good or bad, the rule of thumb is to keep the abandonment rate as low as possible.

Several factors affect the rate from time to time, including:

Average answer speed

Service level target

Accuracy of prediction

Workforce management

Call center contraction

Call after get off work

First call resolution rate

Average answer speed

The low average answering speed means that the call center can resolve as many calls as possible in a given time.
However, when it is high, it may be due to the complexity of the problem or shortage of personnel, and the call abandonment rate will change accordingly.

The service level target refers to the proportion of calls answered within a given time period.
For example, an 80/20 service level goal means that 80% of calls are answered within 20 seconds.
High service level targets help minimize call abandonment rates.

Call density prediction. Call center managers use call density prediction to determine peak times during which they will need the largest number of personnel to reach service level goals.
The call abandonment rate will vary based on the call density forecast and the number of seats available to handle it.

Labor management is basically a process used by call center managers to plan seat schedules, determine vacation strategies, set IVR menus, or call routing after get off work.

Call center reduction can be defined as: “The number of seats actively serving customers divided by the number of seats unavailable at the time.” The shrinkage may be due to interruptions, absences or even unplanned downtime.
Needless to say, when the call center shrinkage rate is also higher, the abandonment rate will be higher.

Calls after get off work, in the call center, calls made after get off work are basically abandoned.
The IVR menu can help to a large extent, but customers who are eager to wait in the IVR or want to talk to an agent usually abandon their call.

First call resolution rate, IVR and its self-service menu help to maximize the first call resolution rate (FCR).

Only when FCR is not implemented, the call differs depending on the agent extension.
In other words, a higher FCR means a lower call abandonment rate.

These are some of the factors that affect the call abandonment rate of the call center.
Now, how can call centers maintain a healthy abandonment rate?
The best way to solve the problem is to find the root cause of the problem.

Let’s try to understand the main reasons for the high rate of phone abandonment.

Reasons for high call abandonment rate

Complex IVR menu, navigation time is too long

Invalid call routing cannot enable customers to get solutions faster

The shortage of call center staff makes callers need to wait for a long time

If you want to maintain a normal call abandonment rate, here are what you should and should not do.

How to reduce call abandonment rate

Even with these measures, your call center cannot reduce the call abandonment rate, and these measures can also help.

Inform customers of estimated waiting time

The time the customer waits to play music

Provide self-service (IVR)

Use a team wall or dashboard

Reallocation hours (WFM)

Overflow calls with too long waiting time (callback queue)

Provide self-service (IVR)

The IVR menu has options for obtaining information that users want to ask agents, which can help reduce the abandonment rate.
In effect, they eliminate the need for callers to talk to agents.
The result is that fewer calls will be abandoned.
For example, a bank customer service number with an IVR option can get the latest account balance.

Announce estimated waiting time

The main reason customers disconnect the call while they are on hold is because they don’t know how long they must stay.
Announcing the estimated wasted time can make the caller decide not to disconnect the call.
They will disconnect the call only when the waiting time is too long.

Take up customer time

It is very annoying that the caller can only hear the beep while waiting for a call.
And this only intensifies the caller’s urge to disconnect.
On the other hand, letting them listen to music, latest offers, announcements, etc. during hold time can help reduce call abandonment.
However, even music and announcements that keep time should be used with caution, as their misplacement can lead to a poor customer experience.Reallocation hours (WFM)Call centers usually work according to the time zone of the country or region where they provide support.
However, this may not exactly match the number of hours with the highest call density.Use the team’s dashboard or wall panel

Dashboards or wall panels that display real-time information on key call center indicators can help improve overall team morale.
They can be used as indicators to keep the entire call center in sync with service level goals.
If too many abandoned calls exceed the acceptable threshold, the call center manager can take remedial measures.

Final advice

No call center can avoid giving up the call.
They are natural phenomena in the call center environment.
However, you can control and reduce the call abandonment rate and ensure that appropriate services are provided to all callers.
You can take many steps to achieve this goal.
However, sometimes you need more than just the process but also effective call center software to help you manage things better.

If you want to learn more about our work, please visit www.cn.astercc.com

Build trust with customers and employees through an effective risk communication plan

In today’s fast-changing social development, companies can actively prepare for emergencies, not only can bring minimal risk losses to the company, but can also bring rich returns to the company.

The best feedback on the company’s capabilities is the behavior and response that the company makes when dealing with risks.
If done well, companies will get the opportunity to build long-term trust with customers.
Developing a reviewed risk communication plan will ensure that your organization is prepared to respond to any risks quickly and decisively.

What is the risk?

Risk is everything your business encounters that will hinder the normal development of the business.
This risk can be real or pre-perceived.
It may be caused by global epidemics, natural disasters or human error.
In some cases, the risk should be an event that you can expect, even in this case, it will be beyond your control.
Risks can have a lasting impact on a company’s reputation, brand and profitability.
With proper planning, risk communication plans can mitigate or completely avoid the damage caused by risks.

What is a risk communication plan?

The risk communication plan is a comprehensive and detailed plan that outlines the organization’s communication strategy for dealing with risks.

Why develop a risk communication plan?

Recognizing the potential vulnerabilities of the enterprise and preparing corresponding emergency strategies will enable you to respond quickly and effectively to the risk situation, thereby reducing the long-term damage of the risk.
A good risk communication plan will build trust between your business and customers, employees and investors.

For your employees, risk may bring uncertainty and confusion, which may have multiple impacts on your customers and ultimately on your business.
By clearly communicating the organization’s risk communication plan to employees, they can become the risky public relations army and become your biggest online messenger.

Checklist of effective risk communication plans:

1. Know your weaknesses

Work with business leaders and key stakeholders to determine a list of potential risks. This is called a risk review. These are potential situations that may affect your income and/or reputation.

For example, if you are a financial institution, there may be a risk of data leakage.
If you are a catering company, there is a risk of food poisoning caused by improper food handling.

Many risks can be prevented-by conducting exercises you can highlight areas that need improvement and/or training.
As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure.

2. Who is responsible for control?

Establish a risk management team and outline the chain of command to deal with risks.
Employees and customers will seek answers and guidance from authorities.

3. Who do you want to contact?

Determine the audience groups you need to reach (customer groups, distributors, investors, employees) and the best channels to reach these audiences (phone, email, social media, media).

4. Draft draft

Use senior executives to prepare communication and press release templates based on the blanks and multiple choices that need to be edited.
This will save you valuable time when actual risks occur.

5. Train employees

As part of this planning process, you should provide call center or customer service employees with training on suggested scripts, including what to say and how to respond to inquiries from customers, the media, and other related parties.

6. Obtain legal and management support

Make sure you have the support of the legal and management team.
This will help eliminate any form of misunderstanding that may again cause another risk.

7. Communicate early

Respond quickly and incrementally through a continuous flow of information.
This will prevent the risk from growing out of control and will allow you to control the narrative in the media.
Don’t underestimate the power of social media in shaping public perceptions.

8. Ensure consistent messaging

Ensure that the organization’s messaging on your website, social media, and other platforms is consistent and consistent with your risk communication plan.

9. Establish a risk communication command center

Depending on the situation, you may not be able to access your office.
Ensure that your command center has alternate communications access (phone, email access, etc.) available at all times.

The most effective risk communication plan includes active outreach activities that enable you to build trust with your customers before risks occur.
Then, you build trust with these customers, and they are more likely to forgive any preventable mistakes.
The longer the risk lasts, the greater the impact on your company.
If done well, your organization’s response to risk will help strengthen your organization’s established values.

Having a clearly outlined risk communication plan allows your organization to respond quickly and effectively, thereby mitigating the long-term negative impact on the company’s reputation and profitability.
Likewise, it can bring your employees together and adjust them to support your mission.
Most importantly, it can ensure the health of customers and employees

asterCC has been well received in the past few years for its ease of use, ease of installation, and professionalism in after-sales support. asterCC redesigned our daily telephone system for customer support, sales, IT and HR teams.
It can serve as a central hub for all phone-related activities in the organization, allowing companies to easily activate their call centers in minutes. In addition, asterCC is easy to use and implement reviews, and is touted for its quick response customer support.”AsterCC allows you to customize the service exactly the way you want, and it doesn’t restrict how you use the system.Allowing end users to be creative and build phone systems in their own way will continue to make asterCC a leader in the industry. ”

“I really like the simple setup system, phone numbers, rules, messages. The design of asterCC is very user-friendly. I am very happy because it will provide our customers with professional solutions and let them call us by phone It not only keeps call records, but also enables us to convert to tickets and record notes for each call, thus keeping us organized.We are not in China, asterCC enables us to have a Chinese number abroad so that our Chinese customers can contact us. As we grow, being able to grow into capabilities with more functions is a huge benefit. ”

“The design is simple … we have used the system for teleconferences for agents across the country. It is very easy to download and make calls.”

“AsterCC allows you to set up a complex, intelligent entire contact center for teams, departments and customers from a simple contact channel for customers.It also has a very friendly and beautiful UI.This is a very simple solution, it only takes a few minutes to complete the setup, which is the biggest difference from the competition. ”

The era of cloud PBX

In the cloud era, the business phone system industry has been going through a revolution, and the days of hosting PBXs and physical phone lines are gone. More and more enterprises choose to use cloud PBX systems because they are easy to use, easy to set up, low in cost, and give users a lot of leeway in terms of flexibility.asterCC combines the best traditional managed PBX functions (such as IVR) and advanced functions (such as intelligent upgrades, custom call center analysis) to help companies build the most advanced business call center.asterCC provides virtual phone numbers in more than 90 countries / regions and provides refreshing call center solutions for keen-sighted enterprises.The mission of the asterCC team is to build a modern telephone system that is easy to use and suitable for the needs of enterprises of all sizes and sizes.

Leave your comments here and help us help you better.

Managing a small business is not easy.
Larger companies usually have the advantage of focusing specialized departments on one aspect of the business.If you are running a small business, you may have a lot of titles in financial,marketing, sales, logistics and many other fields.

I know this because I saw my friend running his small company.This was his first venture, and he learned some lessons from his mistakes.However, you do not have to make the same mistake.In this blog, we will introduce some convenient small business management tips.

1. Separate personal and corporate finances

When operating a small business, your personal and business finances may start to get mixed up.Please separate them as soon as possible, which will become a big problem in the future.When you submit a return or apply for a business loan, your financial situation will be reviewed.In this case, you must maintain a strict distinction between corporate and personal accounts, which is very important-this will also save you some trouble in the future.

2. You need a good accountant

I must emphasize this point, hiring a good accountant is absolutely crucial, or if you are outsourcing, make sure you are outsourcing a good accounting firm.When my friend first started a business, it can be said that he hired a less competent accounting firm to manage finances. The company used free financial templates and charged excessive fees for its services.
Substandard.
He eventually evaded the country’s tax declaration.In the end, when he decided to change the company, he encountered many difficultiesIt is best to investigate first to make sure that there are no problems, because if the previous company or accountant’s work is not done well, it may be troublesome to sort out the financial situation.

3. Train employees

You cannot continue to run your own business alone, which is unsustainable and you will be exhausted.Correspondingly, you need to hire the right employees and train them.

Take my friend as an example.
I saw that he did a lot of work simply because he felt that his employees did not meet the requirements.
He will undertake many challenging tasks himself.
After a while, he realized that this was not sustainable.
Because in the end he did not help his employees learn and grow.

When you first start hiring, your workload may not decrease immediately.In fact, the workload will increase over time because you must train new employees.However, this is a reasonable effort, because in the long run, it will make your life easier in the future.

4. Get the right tool

Equipping your team with the right tools can have a major impact on your business.”There are two aspects that distinguish companies from competitors: selling in a modern way that goes beyond traditional sales techniques, and providing excellent customer support. Remember to provide your team with the best tools to achieve these goals!” With the right tools, they can expand smoothly and provide a better customer experience.

As a small business, you cannot maintain finances unorganized, track sales leads or support notices.Using the right technology and tools can save you money and time, and can greatly improve the way you do business.

5. Investment marketing

As a small business, you may not be as famous as a large business.You must let people know the types of products or services you provide.You may provide the best products or services, but people wo n’t line up to buy.They must know your existence.

You should also find the right market channel according to your industry, which channel is best for you-social event or booth?Will digital marketing be better?You must determine which channel is suitable for your audience.

If you ask my friend, he will say that this is one of the earliest mistakes he made-he thinks customers will come knocking on the door.In fact: they don’t.
He also spent a lot of money on digital marketing, and later learned face-to-face meeting prospects and participate in activities, which is much better for his business.Having an employee or team that specializes in marketing may also not be hurt, which is a crucial part of any business-it will help your business gain visibility, attract customers and ultimately generate revenue.

The Intelligent Voice Questionnaire is still a strange technology for most people, but this technology has been slowly adopted in the latest surveys in the marketing programs of various companies.

Compared with the traditional manual questionnaire, the intelligent voice questionnaire will save more human resources.

From the traditional manual telephone survey to the current intelligent voice questionnaire based on AI, each company has reduced more human resources and time costs, and has become a new driving force for the rapid operation of enterprises.

How does the smart voice questionnaire save more energy efficiency?

First, when the company conducts a survey to the customer, the system will play the pre-recorded questionnaire content and voice prompts. When the customer needs to answer the questionnaire, we encourage the customer to use the button number on the phone to communicate with the company.

Interactive response, functionally speaking, the intelligent voice questionnaire can be combined with the prepared questionnaire questions through different buttons.At this point, the enterprise only needs to dial and collect data, and does not need to have a special agent to dial.With the development of technology, we can now use natural speech recognition to suspend the customer’s answering questions, achieve manual and timely insertion, and improve customer satisfaction and experience.

For example, companies need to do after-sales questionnaires, auto-dial in the automatic dialing system of astercc, the interviewed customers connect the phone, the system automatically plays the greeting tone before the questionnaire, enters the questionnaire, and the content of the questionnaire is recorded by the pre-recorded voice.

During the playback, the customer selects a number based on the voice prompt to perform the evaluation, and the evaluation ends to enter the end of the questionnaire, and ends the investigation, hangs up, and ends the questionnaire.

No manual intervention is required throughout the process.

The original intention of the Intelligent Voice Questionnaire was to provide a way to transfer simple and repetitive tasks from manual to machine, to automate most calls, reduce the burden on agents, and fully improve the efficiency of manual seats while ensuring service quality and customer satisfaction.

degree.

The intelligent voice questionnaire is just one of the methods of astercc to improve the efficiency of the enterprise. For more information, please contact us.astercc.com

 call center system | Construction Bank | outbound call | call center solution China Construction Bank Suzhou Branch is the first tier-one branch directly managed by the head office in Suzhou. There are 12 branch-level branches including Kunshan Branch and Wujiang Branch. The total number of business outlets is 225, and 360 seats of asterCC call center system software are used.

Before using the astercc call center system, Suzhou Construction Bank mainly faced the following major problems: In the first category, the problems occurred during the outbound call were complex and varied, resulting in a very high failure rate of the outbound call frequency.

The other type is that the production environment of the system itself has more defects in the logic, resulting in a large number of problems.

When Suzhou Construction Bank sought to cooperate with us, before using the asterCC call center system, we first helped Suzhou CCB conduct a comprehensive troubleshooting to solve the bugs that occurred, and the overall network hardware was also optimized for overall hardware failure.

After that, we customized the customized service according to the characteristics of Suzhou Construction Bank.

Customization 1: Due to the large number of CCB outlets and the large amount of data, the traditional manual picking and screening of data is time-consuming and laborious. Therefore, according to this situation, we develop the function of automatically assigning data according to the network. The information data-seat-sites are automatically allocated.

Reduce workload and resource investment while achieving greater returns.

Customization 2: The most important thing in the banking system is the data management of customer privacy. According to this demand, astercc successfully creates the function of data privacy processing, ensuring that the data is carried out between the server and the server, the data is not floor-to-floor, and the FTP is developed.

Greatly increase the confidentiality of data, more secure and reliable.

After the astercc call center system was built and used, the number of failures of the overall system of Suzhou Construction Bank was greatly reduced, and the success rate of the outbound call was greatly improved. This was the biggest feeling of CCB after the asterCC call center was put into use. The maintenance work of the CCB Information Department was also reduced. After the CCB recommended the asterCC call center system to the head office in Suzhou in 2018, Tianjin Construction Bank is in contact with us.In the future, astercc can bring you countless possibilities to maximize benefits. Visit our website at cn.astercc.com to learn more

Call centers have been defined as the departments in the past time that are used to give or receive the information on the behalf of the company or organization. In today’s world, it is clear that business call automation has been developed.

Innovations in Interactive Voice Response (IVR) have made it possible to view the contact center more than just a communication place. In fact, there are some people who go so far as to explain IVR system as a dynamic and strategic business move. That is due to the IVR system as it is not like Hardware i.e. diverse.

Types of Applications:

•         Personnel Management
•         Analytics & reporting
•         CRM/Lead capture

You will observe that small businesses are using IVR for employee training, maintaining track of operations and profitability based on calls received and even for Customer relationship management (CRM). Let’s have a closer look at each class of IVR for small business and how is it needed for success.

VR call center solutions that are designed especially to support staff that generally includes scheduling, job reporting, and technical support. This is quite different than predictable applications because it targets on addressing the requirements and concerns of the employee instead of the caller.

What’s required: you need IVR system that helps to save time, lessen errors, and diminish frustrations that might obstruct your performance.

Analytics and reporting applications include both basic and advanced options like offering call transcripts or making records for callers detailing why IVR system features transfer call to live employees

What’s required: IVR system that reports information perfectly based on what the client wants.

CRM and lead capture software simply refer to IVR solutions for small business that depend on caller-specific details and records.

What’s required: IVR system that is able to communicate in real-time.

IVR system plays an important role to help the company balance key areas. Let’s discuss further that how managers can use IVR system in a way to enhance accountability, streamline procedures, and fine-tunes call automation.

Guidelines for managers

When it comes to executing new software, managers find themselves on the wheel. Support staff will perform IVF features at peak level when they are responsible for the services they offer. It is up to the managers to make sure that everyone is on the same page so to speak.

Here are some basic guidelines to ease the transition if your company is just getting started:

Ø  Make sure key employees understand how to use it & know how to get help when they need it

Ø  Coordinate with internal departments so calls are routed appropriately

Ø  Have regular staff meetings so you know what’s working and what isn’t

Modern and upcoming industry trends

Various new and exciting trends have introduced in this year. One of the most exciting developments is how IVR solutions for small business are integrated with the caller’s mobile. The main idea is that relevant consumer data like web browsing, texts, and downloaded apps can be captured and entered into a company’s existing database.

if you are looking for IVR system for small business, you can avail it from asterCC. Here, we offer you top-notch solutions for your IVR system. Visit us to know more.

You must have heard about new billing software for small business that will make every bill calculation easy and quick. But every customer is not well-educated in this context that how billing software works and how it makes calculation easy. There is also doubt on its accuracy and security of use as there is no individual involved in checking the process of calculation. It is best to explain the process of billing system software in detail to earn the client trust and confidence.

Firstly, let’s understand that what is billing system software? Billing software is a computer designed program that automatically calculates the equal bill of a utility usage. To perform the task, variables are entered by the experts for instance amount per watt for electricity or per cubic meter of water used. This billing software is secured under normal conditions and faultless as it is designed only for that. As it is said nothing is perfect, anything can go wrong. This billing software is still man-made and can also go wrong. This will happen when an incorrect data is encoded or when data is already corrupted. There is no origin for any utility consumer to worry on the usage of billing software for small business as long as it is working fine.

Now, there is a need to understand the working of billing software for small business. As explained earlier that billing software is computer designed with variables. Billing person adds the name of a user and other important information on the document while making the statement. This information is generally on a data bank and more often this statement is stored on the billing software for small business. The wattage or cubic meter use of electricity or water can be encoded into the document manually or transferred from the portal of electronic device used by a reader. The billing system software will automatically make a computation that can be printed or sent to the recipient via electronic mail. It will take a billing officer just a few minutes from the encoding or shifting of data to print or send documents electronically. Those will surely challenge the fastest billing way in the industry!    

There are various advantages of using billing software for small business. One of it is time. It is the fastest way of calculating the usage of each household and establishment worldwide as there will be no more waiting time. In fact, billing software for small business also helps in solving the late payments and additional fees for every client. Another is overhead. Every individual effort is enhanced as he no longer requires doing manual tasks. In this way, half of the billing group can do other work. This will save the company a lot of workdays and overheads as well. After that, there comes efficiency and excellence. You can lessen your error than people working with calculators and spreadsheets using the billing system software. In this way, you can improve the services of given billing agency or company. If you are also looking for billing software for small business, AsterCC is the right place for you. Here, we offer the best software for the billing that will make your task easy.