Contact Centers Improve Satisfaction and Productivity, Reduce Costs as Customers Can "Skip the Line" for Over-the-Phone Interpretation
Most organizations today strive for inclusion. One in five U.S. residents speaks a language other than English at home — that’s more than 64 million people. Contact centers, in particular, seek to deliver an optimal experience to customers who speak limited English.
Fortunately, there is an innovative capability that greatly improves customer satisfaction. It carries with it the added benefit of enhancing contact-center productivity, while significantly reducing costs.
Providing language access in a call center has typically involved an agent putting a limited-English caller on hold, then dialing out through a series of manual steps that ultimately result in a connection with a professional over-the-phone interpreter service.
Those steps could include a conversation with an operator at the language service provider; or the agent could be required to navigate an interactive-voice-response (IVR) process on their own, identifying the required language and keying in any needed information along the way.
The need for the agent to repeat information to an operator and the opportunity for bad data entry is significant. On top of that, this sequence of events adds a significant amount of time to a call. The IVR process alone averages 30 seconds.
What if your callers could simply skip the line, bypassing the IVR or required data collection steps altogether?
LanguageLine(R) has an elegant “skip the line” capability that offers contact centers the ability to streamline interpreter access by maximizing the power of their customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
This remarkable solution empowers agents to access over-the-phone interpreters directly. Not only does this provide a better customer experience, but it also reduces total call handle time and cost.
How It Works
Each organization’s starting point will be unique to them.
Most traditional models begin with the agent putting the limited-English caller on hold and then connecting with a language access provider via a toll-free number. The agent may hear “Press 1 for Spanish or 2 for all other languages.” Even more time-consuming, they may have to speak with an operator who prompts the agent for language and account information before searching for the interpreter. This process can take up to 30 seconds.
The “skip the line” capability dramatically quickens access to language support, potentially eliminating this 30-second delay.
Once a call is received, the call center agent simply clicks a button in their CRM indicating the language needed. The call bypasses any IVR or data collection steps and is routed directly into the appropriate interpreter queue for the target language. It’s like an “Easy Button” for language access.
This capability is a major enhancement that improves customer experience. By seamlessly integrating language support into the contact center call flow and saving around 30 seconds per call, productivity is increased, customer satisfaction is enhanced, and costs are greatly reduced.
Who Can Implement the “Skip the Line” Capability?
Any organization that has a contact center with support for outbound session initiation protocol (SIP) capabilities can implement the “skip the line” capability. The amount of technical support will vary depending on the platform. Those that have older, premise-based PBX contact center platforms may be able to implement this solution, as well.
Benefits
“Skipping the line” has several benefits:
- Contact centers save approximately 30 seconds in connecting to an over-the-phone interpreter. Call handle times are reduced, and call completion rates are improved
- Overall customer satisfaction is improved by virtue of faster connections
- Productivity is increased
- Costs are reduced
LanguageLine Can Help
Does your organization have a large contact center operation and a diverse customer base for which language support is a constant need? If so, please contact us to discuss “skipping the line” as a way to enhance customer satisfaction and productivity while reducing call handle time and cost.
