How to Maximize Call Center Efficiency with Blended Call Flows

Call center efficiency translates to better margins and profits, explaining why collections agencies and customer service departments pursue ever-more efficient agents and operations. A smart method to achieve optimal call center efficiency happens with blended call flows. The process “blends” inbound and outbound calling initiatives, producing productivity and efficiency gains across your call center, agency, or department.

Here, we’ll look at the two types of call flows, inbound and outbound, and what happens when you merge the two.

Inbound Calling

Inbound calling occurs when a customer calls into your call center, collections agency, or customer service department. Your agents are passive in this role until the moment of contact. At that point, they spring into action, ready to serve the customer.

Unfortunately, inbound calling may not be sufficient in today’s world. Customers seek answers from Google, friends, and family members long before contacting a call center or help desk. To reach these people, your agents may need to take a more active approach and call customers about their experiences, good and bad, and offer solutions or upgrades.

Outbound Calling

With outbound calling, agents reach out to customers first. You can call it a sort of preemptive strike. Agents call with information about products, services, or other features. In other instances, they contact customers to ask for revised contact information, conduct surveys, or verify customer identities.

But outbound calling alone won’t make your call center thrive. You need an inbound calling engine, too. Customers have questions and desire answers. They experience problems and need help solving them. An inbound calling agent generally provides that information, not an outbound one.

Blended Call Flows

Blended call flows combine outbound and inbound calling to create a highly efficient and effective call center environment. Agents no longer twiddle thumbs (or scroll through the Facebook feed on their smartphones) because they participate in both inbound and outbound calling efforts. Some agents may be better at one activity than another—that’s fine. With TCN’s cloud-based platform, you can assign agents by skill level, activities, and other parameters.

You can think of it as developing understudies for both the outbound and inbound sides of the equation. One agent may be King Outbound, but he performs adequately as Knight Inbound. Another agent presents the opposite case. She excels at customer service but can step in, as needed, to provide outbound calling support.

In the past, you would have built such a setup with hard breaks from one activity to another. Not now, using TCN’s cloud-based call center solution. Our platform seamlessly transitions agents from outbound to inbound calling and back again. They remain productive throughout their scheduled work shifts, and that’s no small thing.

Productive agents tend to be more fulfilled and happy about coming to work, which helps them remain empathetic to and patient with customers. Customers, in turn, more often purchase value-add services and complete surveys. Such impacts influence your bottom line, as do your super-productive agents. They increase business productivity and efficiency, affecting your margins from the top and bottom.

Now that’s something to get excited about. Request a demo of TCN Platform 3.0 today!