Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Callback solutions are great, but how to plan for a WFM-related strategy? Let's discuss...
Calabrio Shorts is a fun-sized podcast that covers all sorts of topics around the contact center industry. No topic is off-limits as we cover frequently asked questions, industry trends and definitions, and yes, we will have fun doing it.
Callbacks and WFM
===
[00:00:00] Dave Hoekstra: Hello everyone and welcome to Calabrio Shorts. My name is Dave Hoekstra, a product evangelist here at Calabrio, and we are going to jump right into it. We have a great panel discussion. We're actually trying something a little different today. We have a panel discussion here. We've got a great team of WFM consultants here from the Calabrio stables as it were. And we're really excited. We've got Kristina Sabelstrom, Nick Hamilton and Shane Corey here, and we are gonna specifically talk about the subject of callbacks. Callbacks in a contact center are one of those almost magical solutions that seems to solve a lot of problems, but what it does do for a lot of organizations is
[00:00:36] Dave Hoekstra: there are some downstream things that need to be solved long and short term as we go through. So we're gonna talk about that, just try to give you some basic information about what it is, why it exists, and then what we do from a WFM perspective to enable contact centers to use that. So right off the bat, Nick, since this was kind of your idea, we're gonna start with you.
[00:00:57] Dave Hoekstra: Give us a little bit of a background on what a callback solution is and maybe some of the things that we might want to pay attention to if we're either looking at them or
[00:01:05] Nick Hamilton: implementing. Yeah. Hey, thanks Dave. Super happy to be here. So the callback solution from the ACD perspective, I'm sure most people have ran into this situation where you call customer service.
[00:01:17] Nick Hamilton: There's a longhold time and the IVR offers you a chance to leave your callback number and keep your place in a theoretical line, right? And when that, when you would then have come up the the AC will call you back and you regain your, you know, information and you know is, can be a really efficient
[00:01:38] Nick Hamilton: usage of staffing and being able to plot out where your agents might lie in that overall demand. But there are some things we just had to be really aware about and how from a workforce perspective, those callbacks are really handled and how you want to staff to them.
[00:01:55] Nick Hamilton: One of the main being that in a lot of ACDs the callback is actually DQed from the inbound queue at that whatever interval that it, you know, came in on, on whatever channel. And it goes to, you know, kind of a separate place. And then if it comes back to that queue, and if it is counted, a lot of times it's counted in the interval.
[00:02:17] Nick Hamilton: They are called back and not the interval originally was presented. And from a customer service standpoint, you could make the argument that you really want to answer, you know, that you would like to offer no callbacks if you could help it and only have to do that in a rare circumstance.
[00:02:34] Nick Hamilton: And what you end up doing is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where if you start making all your callbacks at nine PM, cuz that's where you have extra staffing, then your requirements are gonna start looking like you need to make all of your callbacks at 9:00 PM and you kind of,
[00:02:52] Dave Hoekstra: Yeah. And. And so that's really where we kind of run into the main crux of the problem, right?
[00:02:58] Dave Hoekstra: From a consumer perspective, callbacks are amazing. They are so great. I mean, I cannot, I love it when I contact a call center and it says, Hey, we can call you back when it's your turn. I'm like, Sweet. And I can just go and I have to listen to the whole music. I can go through all that, but the main crux of the problem is for a contact center, where do we count those calls?
[00:03:17] Dave Hoekstra: Right? And that's where it really kind of presents its main problem. So, Kristina, I'm wondering from your perspective, have you seen this have you seen, have you talked to a lot of contact centers that deal with this and maybe how have we approached the potential answer to how to solve this problem?
[00:03:33] Dave Hoekstra: First of all, there's no solution, by the way, spoiler alert, there's no true solution, right? But what are some ways that. Dealt with it before.
[00:03:41] Kristina Sabelstrom: Yeah. I mean, that's the real struggle and kind of like Nick alluded to it really in an ideal situation where forecasting for the call, where it originally came in, right?
[00:03:50] Kristina Sabelstrom: Because we want to be able to answer that call within the service level initially. But it kind of depends on the data, wherever we're getting the integration and how we capture that, right? So we're kind of at the mercy of that data that's coming in. Is to what we can do from a workforce perspective on that standpoint.
[00:04:05] Kristina Sabelstrom: So that's where you said there's no magic bullet at this point. But yeah, a challenge.
[00:04:10] Dave Hoekstra: So from your perspective, when we deal with someone who has a callback solution is there. Do you normally walk them through a kind of a discovery process of how do we want to tackle this?
[00:04:22] Kristina Sabelstrom: Yeah, so we may discuss depending, I think it really depends on the number of callbacks that we're experiencing too, right? If it's a smaller percentage We might handle that different than if it's a really large amount of callbacks that are coming in. But yeah, I might have to bounce this one to someone
[00:04:39] Kristina Sabelstrom: else.
[00:04:39] Dave Hoekstra: No. It's, no that's exactly the problem is I want to be very clear to anyone listening to this. There's no. Right answer to this problem. It's very dependent on the individual company. It depends on the acd which vendor are we connecting to? What reporting is available, right?
[00:04:55] Dave Hoekstra: Are we manually counting those calls? Are we dealing with those? Kind of things, right? So this is where we typically struggle. Now, Shane, from your perspective, these are these can be a benefit, right? What kind of benefits can a callback solution bring to a contact
[00:05:09] Shane Corey: center? Well, I think that's why most of my clients and many call centers out there are exploring callbacks.
[00:05:16] Shane Corey: It's because hold times, Being respectful of the customer's time and increasing the customer satisfaction. So I think you can read a number of surveys out there, but something around 60%, more than half of most individuals think that 60 seconds is too long to wait for a call. So to your point, Dave, hey, I'll take the callback option anytime.
[00:05:39] Shane Corey: A lot of my clients want to decrease their abandonment rate in. A callback solution can do that if you wanna manage your call volume more efficiently. There's some other side benefits such as increasing agent morale, right? So if your occupancy rate isn't through the roofs and everybody's burned out, you know, hopefully a callback solution will, keep those agents a little more less occupied and more energized to deliver customer service versus being burnt out.
[00:06:09] Shane Corey: But I think our industry has seen the benefits of what a callback solution can do, but, We're really starting to dig deeper and it's like, okay, we need more than a callback solution. We need to have a process behind that because while the, While answering a callback in a very simplistic form is easy to do, the process and the expectations you have to manage from the customer side and the operation side, I think is why we're here on this podcast today to talk a little bit about that.
[00:06:42] Kristina Sabelstrom: Yeah, and to add onto that, I mean, a callback solution, while it can be great, I think it also depends on, you know, the nature of your volume, when that works out. Because if you have, if you are constantly slammed and you have this callback solution, you know, when are those actually gonna be made?
[00:06:57] Kristina Sabelstrom: And if you're holding this theoretical group, Place in a line, you're actually then adding to those hold times. Right? So callback solutions work fast if you have peaks and valleys throughout the day. But if you just have this constant state of understaffing and not having enough staffed, it gets a little bit muddy there too.
[00:07:17] Dave Hoekstra: Yeah. It almost feels like we're kind of, it's coming down to saying that having a callback solution is great, but we need to make sure that it's fixing the problem and not the symptom, right? Is really what it boils down to. And so there, what are, So Nick, if you were to run into somebody that says, Oh, we have a callback solution.
[00:07:38] Dave Hoekstra: What are some of the things that you might be able to interpret as some of the symptoms that might need to be solved? Yeah.
[00:07:44] Nick Hamilton: I think they might very well have imbalanced staffing, right? Where they have you know, too many people in first shift versus third shift, or they have volatile call volume coming in, unpredictable call volume.
[00:07:58] Nick Hamilton: So we can look at, can we reign in forecasting right. Can we get a more accurate forecast and then be able to prevent those fires and staff appropriately versus having to put them out via a callback. Right. I think, you know, one of the main things you also want to, you know, potentially look as a, do I need to count it separately somehow?
[00:08:17] Nick Hamilton: And then a lot of times that can. Easier for Calabrio to consumes if we have a separate queue of callbacks, so when they are DQed from one queue kind of put into another, cuz then we can kind of aggregate that back together. Or we can start looking at trends just within the callbacks. And do they have their own sort of arrival patterns where, you know, that we're looking at where they're call or handle times might be different.
[00:08:41] Nick Hamilton: and I think there's a lot of kind of avenues. I think it's a very valid tool to have in your toolkit. And you just have to use it in a balanced method, right? You don't want to have employ a callback feature just for the sake of trying to improve all your metrics and then end up having a, like a long speed to call back, almost like speed average speed to answer, but this would be average speed to callback.
[00:09:03] Nick Hamilton: I don't want to call a customer service department and end up with a callback that says they'll call me back on, you know, Friday of next week. It needs to be in a balanced fashion. And just by having the callbacks if a customer is using that, I wanna look at forecasting. I wanna look at how their staffing is and only use that callback feature.
[00:09:24] Nick Hamilton: After we've dialed in those other kind of foundational levels. Does that make sense?
[00:09:31] Dave Hoekstra: Absolutely. You know, it. And that's the thing is, you know, we talk a lot about, one of the, one of my favorite things about workforce management is that it does involve math. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, very key things that, that it's very binary.
[00:09:45] Dave Hoekstra: It is or it isn't. Well, callbacks makes this a little fuzzer, right. The types of industries and businesses that can benefit from a callback solution are pretty easy to spot, right? For example airlines, what, you know, mass cancellations and things like that. Having a callback solution is really great.
[00:10:08] Dave Hoekstra: What I would say is that callback solutions should never be implemented as a way to keep your staffing levels low. You still need to have the appropriate number of people that that to make sure to handle those. And so, Shane, I don't know how much you've dealt with this in your past, but let's talk about a little bit between the differences between counting the original call when it comes in or counting the call when it goes back.
[00:10:34] Dave Hoekstra: Do you have a preference?
[00:10:37] Shane Corey: Well, obviously this is a very situational topic because depending on the call the contact center's technology stack, phone system, queuing, routing this could be very situational and different for everybody listening. You know, to this podcast. But I would say that you start getting into terminology that gets a little above what we're normally used to talking about.
[00:10:59] Shane Corey: Expected wait time, EWT per call, wait time. You know, P C W T and how do these work with, say, a Cisco or a Avaya or any of the other, you know, tier one phone systems or even lower out there. And so, here's my answer cuz I know we have a, probably a wide range. Of situational environments on the call.
[00:11:21] Shane Corey: I think that identifying this is the best practice identifying where callbacks are impacting the workforce management journey. So similar to the customer journey that we always focus on and the touchpoints and the omnichannel. Well, what stage in the workforce management process are we accounting for callbacks?
[00:11:41] Shane Corey: So whether I prefer it to be counted at the beginning. Should it be counted at the, in the next interval or at the end of the day? My best practice is because I work with clients in very different, you know, different technology stacks is understanding how your callbacks are counted in your environment, in your phone system.
[00:12:02] Shane Corey: You're hearing words on This podcast, DQed calls , abandons, short abandons , EWT, and I think that the key best practice here is just to identify how call backs are impacting your workforce management journey. But prior to that, where are they being counted? And I think that in the most simplistic way, if the callbacks can be their own queue, then it gets easier for my clients.
[00:12:29] Shane Corey: When they get DQed , is it abandoned? Is it's not? Is it counted in the first 30? Interval or after it's handled. I think what I'm dealing with the most is identifying where they are impacting the workforce management journey, and then also prior to that, you know, how are they being counted in the phone system?
[00:12:47] Dave Hoekstra: Yep. So the seems like the answer kind of keeps coming back to let's have a really good conversation and understand your process. Right. Those are the kind of keys Kristina if, when you, when a customer. A callback solution. Maybe if you were to give one piece of advice or one approach that would work really well what might you say to them before you even start their journey?
[00:13:07] Kristina Sabelstrom: I think
[00:13:08] Kristina Sabelstrom: you're saying once they have the solution in place and we're doing the integration for forecasting. Sure. You know, I think if you have that higher volume of callbacks, I think putting it into its own forecast group or skill, how we like to call it, can be really beneficial. As I think Shane and Nick have already alluded to.
[00:13:27] Kristina Sabelstrom: So you can really have a good grasp on those when we have that queue to look at. Especially when you're getting above, you know, 10%. of your calls, you know, more than 10% of your calls are being forecasted, it's a smaller percentage in there and also depends on overall volume of your queue. As we keep going back to this thing, it really depends on your contact center.
[00:13:46] Kristina Sabelstrom: But if we're looking, you know, percentage wise, smaller percent, maybe you can lump it in with your existing queues that you have into your little forecast groups. But I think being able to pull that out into reporting and just really keep a close eye on those can be really important.
[00:14:01] Kristina Sabelstrom: Especially because, you know, we talked about lowering abandon rates, but we also don't wanna have a false sense of security with our service levels. Because ideally with our service levels, you know, it makes our service levels look a little bit better than they are because we can answer those in due time.
[00:14:17] Kristina Sabelstrom: So just a lot of different aspects to keep in check.
[00:14:22] Dave Hoekstra: Yeah, I love it. We, I almost feel like we could have just done like a three second podcast and the answer is well, it depends, right? And, but that's what makes this such a difficult subject to kind of talk about, is that it really does depend on your process your ability to count, your ability to segment calls how much percentage of the volume is going to callbacks.
[00:14:43] Dave Hoekstra: And these are all important things to kind of discuss with your consultants. Right? And that's kind of really the whole reason we wanted to do this particular episode is that if there is someone out there that's either considering using a callback solution or currently using it and looking at workforce management, these are some of the discussions that likely you will have with your consulting team as you get closer to implementation or working through this.
[00:15:05] Dave Hoekstra: So, so far, fantastic. This is exactly what I was hoping for. So, Nick we started with you. I think we're gonna end with you. If you had a piece of advice or something that you would really wanna make sure that customers take into account before before trying to combine a callback solution and a workforce management solution, what would you say?
[00:15:23] Nick Hamilton: You know, I, I think just having a good roadmap of what you want to accomplish, having your goals in mind, having some realistic expectations of how things are gonna work is gonna be the best starting point. Know that, you know that callbacks, they're part of the work. Load. So we need to account for them from a workforce perspective so we can account for where that staffing is gonna contribute and how that blend of inbound and callback is going to look within our call centers.
[00:15:49] Nick Hamilton: Theoretically anything that can be counted. Can be forecasted. So we have, you know, we want to explore all the avenues of making sure we have that volume being consumed into Calabrio and make sure that we can forecast it aggregated along with our with our inbound volumes and be able to then analyze performance on that and give us ultimately, Better insights into the performance of our overall contact center.
[00:16:17] Dave Hoekstra: Yeah, I, whenever I talk to customers about forecasting and integrations into various systems, usually my first question is, can we count it? And I know that you guys probably go with that too. And if the answer to that question is yes, Then we are 80% of our way there. And with callbacks you can count them, but then we branch into a completely different question.
[00:16:39] Dave Hoekstra: Well, where do you want the count them? Do you want to count them when they come in? Do you want to count them when they call back? Do you, do we want to count them as a handled call in the original interval or do we want to count them as a handled call in the second interval? Do we want to count them as an abandoned call?
[00:16:52] Dave Hoekstra: I hope not. But you know, those are the kind of things that we go through. So, Really, this is the whole point of this conversation that I wanted to have, was to ensure that people were thinking about it, to making sure that we cover this. All right. From my perspective, this has been a great conversation.
[00:17:07] Dave Hoekstra: Thank you guys so much for spending some time with us here on Calabrio Shorts to make sure we get the information out there. So, Kristina, Nick, Shane, you guys are the best. Look forward to lots of great conversation with our customers as far as we go on. For me, Dave Hoekstra , this has been another episode, of Calabrio Shorts.
[00:17:22] Dave Hoekstra: Make sure you subscribe and download all of our current episodes, so lots more to come. So we're really excited that you guys are here with us and we will talk to you soon on the next episode of Calabrio Shorts. Thanks everybody.