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A recent blog post outlined the increasing demand for phone skills.

Automation and self-service have ensured that the calls agents get are more complicated than ever. Meanwhile, the phone is still the most popular channel for customers who wish to reach a live agent.

All this means the phone is definitely not dead.

So what are you going to do about it? Here are five steps you can take to improve the customer experience for people who call your company.

Solution #1: Reduce Wait Times

Customers hate to wait. Nothing makes our call feel less important than listening to a recorded voice on loop tell us that our call is important.

When customers call, it's likely because their issue is urgent, complex, or both.

The obvious solution is to add additional staffing, but companies worry about costs. Contact center expert, Brad Cleveland, has some great suggestions for making extra staff pay for themselves.

You can also add a callback option, where customers can opt to receive a callback when an agent is ready rather than waiting on hold.

Solution #2: Make the Wait Seem Shorter

There are times when you can't reduce the actual wait time. Perhaps it's an unexpected spike in calls, or a storm has prevented half your team from coming in.

You can still make the wait seem shorter. Here are a few ideas:

• Avoid looping hold messages.

• Let people know the approximate wait time.

• Make button pushing count.

That last one is critical. If your interactive voice response (IVR) system asks a customer to punch in information like an account number, they had better not have to repeat it when they get a live agent on the phone. 

Solution #3: Answer with a Live Person

Raise your hand if you've ever yelled, "Human! Human! Human!" into a phone. 

Customers find it extremely frustrating to have a clumsy IVR act as a roadblock between them and service. They're likely calling because they already tried self-service and it didn't work, or they feel their issue is so urgent or complicated that it needs a live agent.

Some companies have skipped the IVR altogether and have a live human answer their phones. It costs a little more on the front end, but it's a breath of fresh air for your customers.

Solution #4: Improve First Contact Resolution

Customers really get aggravated when they think their issue is resolved, only to realize they have to call back again a short while later.

This is where first contact resolution (FCR) comes in. Focusing your agents on FCR delivers two big wins:

• Customers don't have to call back.

• Reducing repeat contacts reduces your contact volume.

Don't get hung up on measurement. It’s very hard to come up with an accurate way to measure FCR. Frankly, it doesn’t matter that much. 

It's the idea of preventing the next call that counts. Work with your agents to identify the reasons customers might have to call a second time and brainstorm ways to prevent that from happening. If you want to measure something, including “call prevention” as an item in your monitoring process.

For example, let’s say a customer calls with a question about setting up the voicemail on her new phone. Is there a reason that the customer might have to call back? Perhaps the follow-up is the show the customer how to set an out of office message.

Ready for the really good news? Average handle time tends to stay the same when you focus on FCR.

Solution #5: Reduce Transfers

It can be frustrating to call a company, tell the agent your story, and then get transferred to another agent where you have to tell your story all over again.

Some transfers are necessary, but many can be prevented.

Identify the top reasons calls must be transferred to another department, team, or tier level. See if there are ways the initial agent can handle more of those issues with just a little more training, resources, or authority.

This empowers your frontline agents to provide better service, and frees up your experienced agents to spend more time on the really complicated stuff.

Take Action

The phone is not new or exciting, so it might be tempting to short-change this channel. Yet the phone is still the most critical channel for most contact centers.

Customers don't want to call you. They feel they have to because:

• Their issue is urgent.

• The problem seems complex.

• Another channel didn't work.

This makes the case for providing the very best experience over the phone.

For even more ways to improve the phone experience, I recommend The Effortless Experience by Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick DeLisi. It's chock-full of activities you can use to engage your agents and make things easier for your customers.