4 Ways to Get The Most out of Your Agents
Learn how to improve call center efficiency with smart strategies like dynamic bidding, lead routing by agent quality, and real-time agent availability. Discover actionable tips to boost answer rates, reduce dropped calls, and maximize your team’s productivity.
Effective call center management is crucial for business success. Common issues like dropped calls and idle agents can seriously affect your business, leading to lost opportunities and diminished customer satisfaction. This blog offers 4 strategies, focusing on innovative technology to keep your agents busy and reduce dropped calls.
You’ll learn about the Agent Availability API, dynamic bidding based on call volume, and how to tailor campaigns to different agent skill levels. These methods are all about making the most of your resources, improving response rates, and delivering a better customer experience. Dive in to find out how these approaches can streamline your operations and drive better results for your business.
1. Lead routing by agent quality:
Strategic lead routing is an advanced system that intelligently directs bought leads to the best available agent. This targeted approach streamlines the process and reduces wait times. It enhances customer satisfaction by ensuring they receive personalized attention from experts.
The routing can be done based on a couple of things:
- Lead routing by location: If you’re handling Medicare leads, strategic lead routing can allocate an agent based on their location. For instance, if a lead's location is in Alabama, assign it to an agent in that state. This ensures that the lead is managed by a representative who has a deep understanding of
the local market and regulations. - Lead routing by quality: Another option is to send the call to your best-performing agent available at that time. For instance, when a lead comes in, the system evaluates the performance metrics of available agents, directing the lead to the most skilled and efficient agent with the best conversion
rates. - Lead routing by-product: Last but not least, is to route calls based on a product. The call can be sent to agents with specialized knowledge. For example, based on the kind of Insurance they’re looking for or based on insurances matching their age.
2. Use dynamic bidding to boost your call flow:
Dynamic bidding is an innovative strategy tailored to maximize the efficiency of call center operations. This approach is about adjusting bid amounts in real time based on agent availability and call wait times. Essentially, if there are agents available, the bids are raised, so the call flow goes up. See how this integration could look like
in your systems:
For example, you can use a Google Sheet integrated with the API, updating every five
minutes to track the number of agents on calls and those available. This real-time data allows your account managers to proactively manage call volumes.
For instance, if agents are waiting for calls for 1-2 minutes, the bid is increased by 5%, and for 2-3 minutes, it's raised by 15%, continuing until no agents are waiting. If higher-quality agents are available, you can choose to raise the bids. Especially during periods like post-6 PM, when wait times typically increase, this system enables proactive bid adjustments to maintain a steady flow of calls. Listen to insights from industry leader Carida Insurance in our latest webinar below.
3. Optimize agent answer rate:
Agent Availability API is a game-changer for marketing and sales leaders, tackling the persistent challenge of dropped calls, which often leads to low answer rates hovering around 60%. The API ensures that calls are only initiated when agents are available, providing real-time updates on agent status and activity information.
When a call comes in, the API smartly attaches the state information, ensuring the call is only directed to an agent who is licensed in that particular state. This attention to detail drastically cuts down on calls being dropped due to licensing inconsistencies. By strategically appending campaign IDs and state-specific information, the API ensures not only agent availability but also compliance with state licensing, streamlining the call-routing process.
One of our clients saw their agent answer rate soar from 50% to a remarkable 90% while maintaining over 97% of their agents actively engaged with PX’s API. What sets the PX API apart is its ability to factor in the diverse state-level licensing of agents.
4. Build agent-specific campaigns:
The strategy of setting up different campaigns for varying agent quality tiers is a highly effective approach for maximizing lead conversion in call centers. It means that your lead bids are based on the quality of your agents. There are two approaches to do this:
- Grouping agents by performance: Divide your agents into groups based on their performance and launch campaigns determined by the average conversion rates of each group. This strategy enables you to bid the appropriate amount for leads and calls, thereby reaching your CPA goals. The initial campaign targets high-quality agents, employing higher bids to ensure consistent calls and engagement with top-notch leads. Simultaneously, a separate campaign is dedicated to lower-quality agents and leads.
- Individualized campaigns based on agent performance: Extend the before-mentioned structure to each agent's performance individually. Every agent is assigned their own lead and call campaigns to ensure that
they engage with the right prospects at the optimal cost, ultimately maximizing ROI.
Implementing PX's customer acquisition tactics can boost your call center's ROI and efficiency. Curious how?
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