Call automation

What is call automation?

Call automation is a technology available with most modern customer service solutions. It primarily enables your business to handle tickets efficiently by automating routine, time-consuming tasks and processes related to customer service calls. 

It uses advanced call center technology to eliminate or significantly reduce the need for human intervention in sales and customer service processes. 

Features like auto-dialing systems, advanced call routing, call scheduling and IVR constitutes call automation. 

It relieves the agents from the burden of repetitive tasks and decreases waiting times resulting in quicker resolutions and improved customer satisfaction.

Where is call automation software used?

Call center automation can improve various aspects of your call center. 

Call scheduling

You can use call scheduling automation to schedule calls as per the buyer journey of a lead/customer. 

For example, when a lead fills a form on your website and requests a callback, you can automatically schedule a call with them. 

You can use this feature with impeccable efficiency by having predefined criteria. Schedule your call depending on what action a customer takes in their buyer journey. 

Whether a customer approaches you for contract renewal or product purchase, you can schedule a call based on their requirements to fulfill their needs. 

Customer interaction

You can automate interactions with customers at different levels. 

When a customer comes to your website, a chatbot can understand their query and divert it to the correct department. 

You can use pre-recorded voice messages to respond to customer queries through interactive voice response automatically. 

Reduce the dependency on agents and route IVR-deflected calls to digital channels like WhatsApp, chatbots and SMS, leading to faster resolutions and better ROI. 

Sales and marketing

You can speed up your sales cycle with sales and marketing automation. When you analyze the previous purchase history of customers, automating and sending personalized offers to them becomes easier. 

Don’t just limit yourself to sending offers! Automate recurring tasks like customer onboarding, sending announcement messages and post-sales emails. 

Doing so helps you manage the overall customer lifecycle better, leading to an improvement in conversion rates. 

Forecasting 

If your contact center collects customer data, use forecasting automation to get insights into customer behavior. 

You can identify critical calling criteria like when your customer is most active, the ideal call duration and when not to disturb them. 

Forecasting automation gets into these minute details and helps you create a personalized customer experience.

Virtual call queuing

Why let your customers stay on hold when you can give them an instant response? 

When a customer calls, an IVR will respond and if no agents are available, the call will be placed in a virtual queue. 

Customers save time by not having to wait and can hang up expecting a callback. At the same time, agents can get back to them as soon as they get free. 

Workflow operations

Be it entering data or maintaining it, workflow operations are prone to human errors. 

You can automate your workflow operations with artificial intelligence. 

From entering data and keeping it to sending emails and following up regularly with customers, you can automate it with AI. It helps agents to focus on more demanding tasks.

Text messaging

With an open rate of 98%, SMS customer support is one of the best channels to communicate with customers.

You can send text messages using SMS automation after a customer fulfills specific behavioral criteria. 

For example, when a customer buys a product, you can trigger an automated text confirming their order is on the way. 

How is call automation technology beneficial?

Call automation is beneficial to call centers irrespective of what they do. 

Be it selling products or services, providing customer support or appointment setting, automation has some incredible benefits.

Better CSAT

Call automation helps you route customer calls to the right agents. 

It helps customers with instant solutions and puts them in a virtual queue if an agent or an instant solution isn't available. It leads to better CX and higher CSAT. 

Customer satisfaction can be the differentiating factor in a highly competitive marketplace.

Happier agents

Call automation takes care of the routine monotonous calls that deal with basic queries. 

It leaves the agents time to work on complex questions and interesting tasks.

Why would you hire top-level customer support talent if they have to waste their time answering routine calls? 

With call automation, they get to work on more exciting challenges. 

Higher first call resolution

Call automation helps you score a higher first-call resolution, a metric that takes into account how well you solved a customer problem during the first call. 

A good FCR can transform potential brand detractors into brand advocates, as solving a problem in the first customer interaction makes a customer feel special and more loyal to you.

As customers can get instant solutions to their queries with call automation, agents get more time to resolve complex issues faster.

Reduced service costs

Agents doing repetitive tasks for long periods can lead to errors costing you money and time. Automating these repetitive tasks reduces the probability of mistakes. 

It helps the call center lower its operational costs making it smoother and more efficient. 

24/7 customer service

Agents work for limited hours, but you can give 24/7 customer service with call automation. 

You can expand customer support hours with automation and support your customers whenever and wherever they prefer. 

What are some essential call automation capabilities?

The objective of call automation is to reduce the cost of phone calls by eliminating error-prone work. A call center can make the best of it by leveraging the following automation capabilities: 

Auto-dialers

An auto-dialer is an outbound dialer software that helps contact center agents bulk-dial several numbers in the least amount of time automatically eliminating the manual effort of dialing numbers. 

Once a customer answers the call, they are connected to a customer care agent and if the agents aren’t free, they hear a pre-recorded message.

With automated dialing agents go a step further and you don’t have to waste time inputting telephone numbers. 

Call scheduling

Long waiting times frustrate customers. It can ruin their experience to such an extent that they may consider making a switch. 

With a call scheduling feature, you can easily schedule calls, automate dialing and call your prospects at specific times. 

Calling your prospects at the right time and engaging with them in real time can make a considerable difference in CX. 

IVR + conversational AI

A combination of IVR and conversational AI is heads and shoulders above plain IVR, thanks to the power of natural language processing and artificial intelligence. 

It's an AI-powered system that can understand customer intent and the context of the conversation. 

Customers can talk to a chatbot, convey their issues and get an apt response without an agent being involved. 

Advanced call routing

Advanced call routing is a cloud-based AI-powered feature that enables you to route calls to multiple channels for self-service or agent support. 

It helps you enhance customer experience by improving the call queue experience. 

When a customer calls, they can choose a preferred department based on their issue and the call will be routed to the right agent or self-service channel. 

Power your contact center using call automation with Sprinklr

When customers need support, they don’t like to wait. Modern contact centers should be capable enough to handle high call volumes quickly and efficiently. With the call automation capabilities, Sprinklr Service has to offer, you can improve the efficiency of your contact center operations dramatically.

Solve customer queries 30% faster

You can classify messages across 30+ channels and find out conversations that need the involvement of an agent by understanding customer intent. 

You can identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities and give a faster response. 

With Sprinklr's automated spam detection, you can filter out unwanted and malicious content from customer channels in real-time leading to better operational efficiency.

Reduce repeat calls by 40%

You can reduce repeat calls by 40% by routing cases to the right agent based on skills, availability and past interactions. 

Doing so will help customers get faster and more meaningful responses. 

Cases can be routed to the best agent based on previous customer engagements and dynamically-updated agent skill profiles. 

Make your agents more productive

Agents can save time and effort with Sprinklr’s AI-powered Rule Engine. It classifies and prioritizes messages based on keywords, issue type and sentiment. 

With automated workflows, agents can proactively engage and re-engage at multiple points with customers in their journey. 

You can turn routine queries into guided workflows for agents, which would help them to resolve cases quickly.

Call automation FAQs

1. What is call center automation or call automation?

Call automation enables your company to handle calls efficiently by automating routine, time-consuming tasks. It is a type of technology available with most modern customer service solutions and consists of features like auto-dialing systems, call routing, call scheduling and IVR. 

2. Why is call automation necessary?

Call automation is necessary to make your call centers more efficient and agile. Unless you don’t leverage it, it’s hard to scale up when call volume spikes. It reduces the risk of human error and can prevent unnecessary call transfers ensuring the call gets transferred to the right department. 

3. Are auto-dialers illegal?

No, using an autodialer is legal as long as you comply with federal regulations and state regulations. Organizations can contact US consumers on their phones through calls or text without any need for consent under federal law and the new TCPA ruling. They just need to ensure the auto-dialer doesn’t generate or store sequential phone numbers.

4. How do I set up an automated call?

To start an automated call, here’s what you need to do:

1. Record your message on your preferred call automation software

2. Schedule the date and time for the call

3. Choose the contact/set of contacts you want to call

And you are done!

5. How many calls can an autodialer make?

While outbound call centers usually register about 50-100 calls per agent daily, autodialers can scale the volume of outbound calls and connect rates by up to 300%. Agents experience a steady flow of connected calls throughout the day with up to 40 or 50 minutes every hour on calls. 

6. What kind of call automation capabilities does Sprinklr provide?

Sprinklr has all the call automation capabilities to enhance your call center operations, like call scheduling, IVR + conversational AI and advanced call routing.

Sprinklr Service helps you improve your customer service by enabling you to manage customer calls proactively. With call automation features, you can deliver seamless service to your customers through voice channels without overburdening your agents.

Try Sprinklr Service today for free and see your CSAT go up!

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