Today I want to share the journey of a contact center from inbound to outbound. This may sound self-serving coming from Acqueon, but the goal is to show the art of the possible by discussing what drove this transition and the benefits this nameless customer was able to get. 

The project was provoked by a massive influx of calls due to COVID. The call center became saturated and abandons surged. It triggered a snowball effect of repeated calls, further amplifying the situation. 

The first element of the solution was a conversational assistant front-end deployed across channels, web, chat, and voice. Self-service provided the foundation to bring down the traffic to a more manageable level. But virtual agents, as good as they can get, still require escalation to agents. Moreover, many callers want to talk to a person to confirm their understanding. 

Instead of a direct escalation to agents, requests are passed to a campaign manager which orchestrates callbacks. This is the second element of the solution. 3 things make it transformative: 

  • Sending SMS notifications to keep callers informed of their upcoming callback 
  • Triggering the callback when the right agent is available 
  • Grouping interactions by type to increase productivity 

Combined, these 3 elements lifted the capacity of the contact center by almost 20%! Of course, it might take a little longer to get a response, but most of us will happily trade it in exchange for not having to stay in line, especially if we get visibility into being contacted back. 

Learn more about campaign management