Percentage of Calls Blocked

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Percentage of Calls Blocked is a Call Center metric that tells you the numbers of callers who receive a busy tone when they call you.

Following this definition of Calls Blocked, the formula for the metric is:

A high percentage of Calls Blocked is an indication that your agents are losing revenue opportunities and also, a customer. Every time a customer gets a busy tone they get frustrated for not receiving the assistance they need. As a result, you will lose customers and fall behind in the business.

There is no industry standard but, Call Centers have a goal to keep the Percentage of Calls Blocked within 2% for inbound calls.

The way you can prevent this from happening is by making sure your agents are not missing out on any opportunity to connect with the customers and the leads alike. Keep track of the metric and understand the reasons your customers are experiencing Calls Blocked.

Let’s see some factors that may be causing your agents to miss out on customers.

What are the reasons for the increase in the Percentage of Calls Blocked?

Before you can make plans to reduce and prevent “Call Blocked” in the future, you must understand what is causing it. Without understanding the cause you cannot cure the problem.

Your call center may have fewer or no available agents. You should check if your staffing level can meet the demand for inbound calls. You may need to hire more agents in order to ensure that agents are available to handle calls all the time.
The system you use is not optimized with Call queues. If you don’t have call queues to put your callers on hold you will lose customers. The customers won’t call back after trying to connect with your center once or twice.
Your call queues may not be optimized properly and so, the customers hear a busy tone and are asked to call back later. If your call queue is not optimized to its full potential your customers will experience a busy tone.
The system you are using may not be capable enough to handle the call volume. The software you use for your workflow may not be efficient to work through your increasing call volume.

For an inbound call center, it is often the case that they suffer from these issues leading to an increase in the Percentage of Calls Blocked. To prevent losing customers and opportunities you can refer to the following tips.

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How can you reduce the Percentage of Calls Blocked?

Use Software capable of supporting your Call Volume

If you are using outdated software that cannot provide full support to manage the call volume, this is the reason why you are suffering from Call Block.
In order to support your agents ensure that your software infrastructure has the capability of simultaneously calling. Check to see if you have enough trunks and bandwidth to support the increase in call volume from your customers.

Call Queue

Now that you have a proper software infrastructure you need to configure it with features that can further help you reduce Blocked Calls.
Call Queue is one such feature that allows Call Center to handle high call volume efficiently. Optimize it in a way that it can be categorized for every agent, department, phone number as well as a call center. Additionally, set it up to ensure that the queue is at its maximum capacity.
Your agents should also get a real-time update about their Call Queue on their screen. This way they can change and adapt their approach according to the call volume. The agents can come up with ways to interact with their customers to reduce the calls in the queue.

Callback and Voicemails

With your Call Queue all-set, you should configure the features of Callback and Voicemails. Callbacks give the caller the option to schedule a call at their preferred time. This ensures that the caller is contacted by an agent from the call center.
With Voicemail the customers can leave a message regarding their issue to the Call Center. The agents can address the voicemail whenever they are available and provide solutions to the customer.
These are some simple features that provide huge support to maintain a smooth flow of work and reduce the number of customers hearing a busy tone.

Call Forecast

You can use all previous data to forecast Call Volume to plan your staffing level. You can hire more temporary agents to spread out the workload in a much better way. More agents can successfully reduce the chance of a missed opportunity to help a customer.
You can use a Workforce Management System to collect data and design data-centric plans to approach the issue.

Agent Schedule

You have to make sure that you have all your best agents working during these times. You can benefit if you schedule the right agents with just the right skills working when they are most needed. This can ensure that the work will go on smoothly.
You can also set up a remote call center to manage the high call volume effectively. This will ensure that no customer experiences a blocked call.

Train your Agents

Trained agents can help the most in making sure that your call center is providing optimal service to the customer and reducing the Percentage of Calls Blocked. Train your agents about the protocols, the impact of blocked calls, and how to reduce blocked calls.
When the agents understand perfectly how to handle the call queue, resolve customer queries and navigate through the tools, they can efficiently decrease the number of calls blocked.
To conclude, you cannot try to reduce the Calls Blocked by increasing the Average Speed of Answer. You cannot rush through calls to clear up the queues.
The best way to approach this is to optimize your Call Center, and train your Agents. This way you can keep your customers satisfied and also reduce the Percentage of Calls Blocked.

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FAQs

What is a Trunk in a Call Center?

A Trunk is a high-capacity communication line. It is also known as SIP, i.e., Session Initiation Protocol. The purpose of the trunk is to deliver voice calls and data from the location of a client to the Internet.

What is the Usual Amount of Time spent on an Average Call?

Across all types of Call Center Industry, the average duration of a call is 5.97 minutes according to the report of BenchmarkPortal.

How long will a Customer wait on Hold?

60% of customers will wait for one minute in a call and then hang up, according to the research from Velaro.

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Survey organizations around the world have maximized their phone survey ROI with the advanced features, hosting options, seamless telephony integration, and flexible pricing of our CATI software.