Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
How Chatbots Fit into Call Center Scheduling
Call center scheduling, the art of creating just the right balance of staff to handle communications is a constantly shifting target. Today, with the rise of digital communications and more people gaining confidence in online chat, phone calls coming into call centers have died down but the focus on answering queries and meeting customer satisfaction levels is only on the rise.
Chatbots provide a terrific response to this need in the market because they provide an automated, low cost way of handling an influx of web inquiries and leaving the other more dynamic requests for live agents.
When it comes to factoring in chatbots with your call center scheduling plans, it’s important to take a step back and look at how your company is handling calls overall (are they online more than the phone? Do you have adequate staff manning all channels?) as well as what types of communication are most in demand.
Having this overview of call types and needs before you create agent schedules makes factoring in the use of chatbots to help with the load easier to achieve.
While many believe chatbots and robots in general will take over the workplace where they’re used, the truth is they’re becoming in many cases an add on part of the workforce, and working together with and side by side with human workers, instead of replacing them.
Keeping this idea in mind, it’s easy to see that your call center scheduling plans won’t change too much. You still need to staff agents to man the important calls and to assist with handling more complicated issues.
Unlike their human counterparts though, these chatbot agents don’t need breaks, lunches and vacation time off so scheduling them into the functions of the day includes a lot less factors.
For those businesses that require 24/7 operations, chat bots can also be utilized for the off hours and provide a human-like experience for customers online when they’re in need of assistance and no one is there in person to handle the inquiry.
By using chatbots to reduce the time agents spend time on calls answering questions that aren’t critical or repeating the same information also means more time to focus their efforts on the crucial callers - driving up engagement and satisfaction rates.
Edited by Maurice Nagle