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Call Volume

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Consumer Opinion Services
Table of Contents

What is Call Volume?

The more your business grows, the more your call center starts receiving calls. While receiving a high volume of calls is expected, like a seasonal spike, in other cases, it may not be suitable for the company. 

Call volume should be equivalent to what you expect for your business. If the call volume increases more than the desired level, it can pressure your call center. So, it seems too many calls may not be a good idea.

Call Volume1

01

What is Call Volume in a Call Center?

Call Volume can be described as the number of inbound calls received by the contact center. Call center management software can quantify the volume of calls concerning various time intervals. The time intervals can be of every 15 minutes, every hour, or every day. 

Call Volume is considered and analyzed very carefully by a call center. This metric represents the workload call center agents need to do. Thus, call volume helps in creating schedules for the employees. 

Call volume can differ diversely during a day and also across various departments. The center may receive more calls during business hours and fewer calls in the evenings. Also, it may differ depending on the marketing campaign promoted by the campaign.

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02

What are some reasons for the increase in Call Volume?

With new campaigns, a call center is generally prepared to experience a customer surge. The call center is prepared beforehand to deal with the high volumes of calls, which subsided once the campaign is over. However, in case of an unexpected surge in customer service the call center struggles to meet the spike in call volume. 

With the increase in demand for customer service, call volume is affected. The increase in call volume leads to an increase in hold/waiting time. This leads to a decrease in customer satisfaction.

So, let’s look at the reasons for the unexpected rise in call volume.

Wrong Calls:

  • Sometimes with poor ad campaigns, call centers receive calls for wrong inquiries. The call center department leading sales call receives inbound calls for customer service. 
  • This mainly occurs when an ad campaign is poorly optimized. An ad format with no call center number but with FAQs and other information linked to the ad can reduce calls for general inquiries.
  • Track the calls received back to the keyword that triggered the search for the call center and led to wrong calls. 

Internal Issues:

  • Sometimes issues in some departments may also trigger high call volume for another department. Say a department has a backlog of service requests and the customer can’t get hold of the agents. The customer will call any number available on the website to have their issue resolved. 
  • The customer service should be monitored across all channels. Also, if there is an increase in call bouncing between departments, you may need to increase call quality monitoring. You may also need to review staffing levels for the department which is experiencing call bounce. 

Calls for Basic Questions: 

  • Customers calling to know about your business hours, location, or general questions will most definitely lead to high call volume. This can also keep your agents away from attending to complex and important calls.
  • To prevent receiving calls about general questions, provide such information on your company website. Your website should be well optimized for the customers to find the answers themselves. 

Less Contact Channel Option:

  • If a phone call is the only option available for the customers, they will contact you for all sorts of reasons. Whether the customers have a complaint, a question, or want to make a purchase, the customers have no choice but to call. 
  • Providing other options for omnichannel communication can help reduce the call volume. You can use chatbots to help customers get better and faster service.

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03

How do I manage my Call Center Call Volume?

An unanticipated spike in call volume may throw the call center off balance. However, if you plan to deal with such situations and agents are trained to work calmly, you may gain control of the high call volume. 

Following are some tips you can refer to when you face a sudden spike in call volume.

Schedule your agents 

  • Having a fully prepared team is the most important to handle a high volume of calls. Ensure you have enough contact center tools to manage any change in call volume. Keep records of vacations and agents on sick leave to not have any effect on work productivity using efficient call center workforce management software.
  • Keep the active and experienced reps on schedule and identify the number of cases each agent can respond to within a set period. You don’t want to overwhelm your agents who are already pressured by the high call volume.

Self Service

  • During campaigns and customer service surges, the agents will certainly receive calls for the same question repeatedly. This will only slow down the agent and they won’t be able to handle important needs. 
  • Providing a self-service resource like a knowledge base on your company website or an IVR Survey Software which can give the customers a guide before deciding to reach out to the agents. Identify the most commonly asked questions and provide answers to them in everyday language. The more extensive the resource is, the less issue your customers will have. 

Add more Customer Service Channel.

  • As mentioned above, limited options available for the customers can increase the call volume. Providing other options such as chatbots, live chat, social media, email, etc. can reduce the number of inbound calls.
  • The customer can use their preferred channel to communicate with the agent. The agent as well can reply to the customer and solve their issues. Live chats allow agents to work on multiple queries at the same time. This eases the phone line while providing customer service efficiently.

Analyze Call Center Data

  • You may not control the unexpected spike in call volume; you can still limit them. Looking through historical data of calls can help you find patterns and trends of spikes in call volume.
  • Following the pattern, you can look through the events or issues that took place during those times. This will provide you an idea of what caused the increase in call volume. You can plan ahead in time on how to go through those situations. 

Automate the Workflow of your agents

  • Using software that automates the agent’s task can save their time. Automate ticket routing and sending follow-up emails to customers can save the agent’s time and they can focus on attending calls of high value. This will contribute to the efficiency and productivity of the agents in your call center. 

Call Back Service

  • Under the pressure of customers being on hold and providing customer service, the agents feel pressured. Customers stuck on wait or hold get impatient and may sometimes behave rudely. This causes the agent to hurry their calls and often lead to inefficient answers. 
  • Providing call back service during high call volumes allows the customer to schedule their calls later. Rather than waiting in line for an agent to be available, the customer can schedule for the team to call them.

Install IVR system

  • IVR or interactive voice response system is your agent when you need to provide an immediate response to your customer.
  • Instead of putting the customer on hold, the IVR provides the customer with a menu of options to choose from. Each option directs the customer to an agent who can help. This reduces the number of calls an agent has to transfer and also the number of calls they need to answer. 
Call Volume2
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04

How can Voxco help you manage high call volume?

Voxco is a state-of-art integrated telephony system with advanced telephony features to ensure high call center productivity. Voxco’s telephony platform has the following features that help call centers manage high call volume. 

Workforce Management Software

With efficient workforce management systems, Voxco helps call center supervisors to forecast the call volumes based on historical data. Using efficient forecasting tools & call center automation software, call center supervisors can increase the number of agents available to reduce the call holds. 

Call Center Analytics 

Call center analytics allows supervisors to run in-depth contact center agents and call center performance reports. Live Dashboards and daily reports helps supervisors identify & forecast the call volumes in advance using the historical data. 

Automatic Call Routing System 

With advanced call routing systems, call centers can route the calls based on contact center agent skill sets. This reduces the average time to answer while improving call center queue management.

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05

FAQs

Call Volume in a call center is measured in terms of the number of calls a call center receives in a set time period. The call volume fluctuates depending on the events promoted by a call center. 

A High call volume is the result of a spike in the number of calls over a period of time. Depending on the type of business and ongoing events, the spike may vary. According to industry standards, a 10% increase from normal call volume is considered to be High Call Volume.

Reasons for the increase in call volume: 

  • Customers calling for the wrong query
  • Internal Issue
  • Calls asking basic questions
  • Less option for communication

Tips to manage call volume:

  • Schedule you agents
  • Add self-service
  • More Customer Service Channel
  • Analyze Call Center Data
  • Automate the Workflow of your agents
  • Call back Service 
  • Install IVR
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