Explaining the Importance of First Call Resolution

Nowadays, everything is instant - from food like instant noodles, microwaveable meals and instant oatmeal, to businesses that promise "instant profits", or even delivery services that promise speedy delivery of goods and services or your money back, everyone seems to demand that everything gets done in a jiffy.

If you think about it, you can't blame these people either. Nowadays, innovation, focus and speed are keys to stay ahead of everyone else. If you can't keep up, you're likely get run over and left behind in the dust.

This fast-paced environment is not limited to people's personal lives. Anywhere you look, new products are being introduced promising better results at half the time. New services are continuously enticing people with instant health, wealth or fame.

Amidst all these, the corporate world has continued on to be one of the fastest paced environments to be in. As such, organizations are constantly scrambling for new and better concepts - new and automated solutions, such as interactive voice response and speech recognition, which are faster, cheaper and more effective than they ever were.

Customer Service, a vital part of every organization, has not been exempted from this "immediate results" thinking. Thus, customer service experts have had to devise ways not only to adapt but to thrive within these fast changing times. With the higher level of demand from customers, organizations have to fill the need to supply clients with instant solutions.

With today's client based market, most customer concerns that used to take days or even weeks to solve should now take no longer than a few hours to sufficiently address. Failure to do so would reflect negatively on your brand or organization's image and reputation.

The demand for immediate answers to clients' concerns has driven customer service standards so high that the first call resolution concept was developed. Customer satisfaction is of top importance and the speedy resolution to their problems is key.

Defined by experts as fulfilling the customer's need during their first call, and meaning the customer will not need to make a second follow up call. Simply put, there is a need to understand that customers are not willing to wait. They want someone with authority to provide solutions quickly, effectively and personally.

With the emergence of advanced call centre technologies like Interactive Voice Recognition software as well as speech recognition applications, Customer Service Centres and Call Centres alike are now better equipped to take on the challenging task of delivering first call resolution in order to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction. IVR, defined as a system that allows customers to interact with a company's database via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition allows businesses to customize solutions suited to each individual client. Automatic speech recognition takes this approach even further as it is defined as a more advanced and broader solution which refers to technology that recognizes speech from arbitrary voices.

From having to hire hundreds of Customer Service Representatives and/or Call Centre agents and running three shifts in order to operate continuously to be able to answer customer calls, using IVR and speech recognition software has now enabled call centres to consistently and efficiently operate at a high level with much less manpower, all at a fraction of the cost they once were. First call resolution has now been transitioned from fantasy to reality, thanks to these breakthroughs in call centre technology.

These innovations ensured that no matter how much call volume there is, all calls will be answered instantaneously. This alone is already a huge first step towards establishing and maintaining good customer relations as well as customer satisfaction. Clients are relieved to find out that they no longer had to wait for minutes just have their calls taken, much less have their concerns addressed. On the other hand, this also benefits the business entity in terms of savings in time and manpower. Supplying solutions to all sorts of customer concerns has never been this easy, thanks to these marvellous advancements.

As the saying goes: need is the mother of all inventions. The crucial importance of customer satisfaction paved the way for the first call resolution concept, which in turn set the standard for technologies such as the interactive voice response as well as the Automatic speech recognition.