Streamline Your Business Processes with the Best Call Routing System
With the advancement in technology, the usage of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is growing at an exponential rate. For businesses, this has opened up a world of possibilities, which were initially incredibly challenging to manage. Streamlining business operations, especially customer service with the right technological aid has become imperative to keep up with the current industry standards. Call center software, IP PBX solutions, broadcasting software, etc. are some of the prominent adaptations that have helped businesses gain a competitive edge. One common feature that helps optimize business communication is call routing.
Call routing serves as the most important feature for delivering a stellar customer experience. In this blog, we begin with decoding call routing and its management. We will also explore the factors that determine how calls are transferred inside a VoIP infrastructure along with the perks of leveraging the best call routing system for your business.
Decoding Call Routing
No matter whether you run a small or a big business, the customer support department acts as the primary point of contact for your customers to get in touch with you. But if you’re a business with a large volume of calls coming in, it may lead to prolonged call queues and call waiting, which further results in poor customer experience. In such a scenario, a call routing feature comes to your aid.
Call routing is a call management feature for business phone systems to prevent long calling queues. When the phone call routing software receives the call, it is transferred to a specific agent or group of people based on predefined parameters.
A survey conducted by Time Trade shows that 75% of businesses lost their customers because of the long wait times on call. So, how can you ensure that you’re not losing customers and business? Customers expect you to provide them with a stellar customer experience by connecting them with the right agent or department in one go. Therefore, call center routing software is a must-have feature for your business phone system.
What is Call Center Routing Software?
Call center routing software, also called Automatic Call Distribution System, is a useful tool that distributes all the incoming calls to the right department or an agent based on the preset rules. The parameters of call distribution are set based on call volume, caller’s language preferences, agent availability, time of day, the department requested, and agent skill set. And HoduPBX, a new-age IP PBX system from HoduSoft, is designed to help businesses ensure that every call is handled appropriately.
Read Also: What is First Call Resolution (FCR): A Complete Guide
Leveraging this phone call routing software, you can route all your business calls to specific skilled agents or departments based on different strategies, which ultimately may lead to improving first-call resolution rates.
Top 4 Call Routing Strategies
Some of the top call-routing strategies businesses can use to route customer calls include:
Least Cost Routing
Least cost routing, abbreviated as LCR, is a call routing strategy that refers to choosing the best path for outbound calls. This is done based on the lowest available cost of the route between the business and the destination. It’s one of the best call routing system strategies that looks for rates of other routing channels and compares the charges to identify which VoIP channel costs the least.
With the use of this call routing strategy, the routing of incoming calls is done in such a way that the call gets connected to the relevant destination. Not just that, even the customers are charged very less for call routing. This type of strategy is one of the best solutions for businesses with high call volumes.
Priority Call Routing
Priority call routing strategy refers to routing done on a priority basis and provides call center businesses with the ability to build various call queues depending on the caller’s priority. For example, the call center of a wholesale business could set up an automatic call distribution system that routes the calls of existing customers calling for billing queries to a VIP queue and others on a normal queue. In this, the calls are routed immediately to a relevant department to deliver best-in-class customer service. As this call routing strategy ensures providing customers with VIP treatment, its cost is relatively higher than other strategies.
Geography-based Call Routing
Another important call routing strategy is geography-based routing, which routes customer calls to a set destination based on their current geographical location. It refers to an automated call routing strategy that routes calls based on the customer’s current location. In this functionality, the system either enters the zip code manually or identifies the area code through the caller ID. This call routing strategy is ideal for businesses that offer multilingual customer support.
Skill-Based Routing
Skill-based routing is a call routing strategy using which a customer’s call is assigned to an agent with the most relevant skills to resolve queries faster. For instance, if a customer has been charged higher for the service they have used and calls your business, then the call here is automatically routed to an agent from the billing department to quickly resolve their billing-related queries. This strategy works well for improving the customer service experience.
Benefits of using a call routing software
When it comes to using phone call routing software, the system offers a myriad of benefits for businesses that helps them achieve their desired goals and objectives. Some of these benefits include:
Makes the billing process seamless
Businesses can use HoduPBX as a VoIP billing system, which makes the billing and payment processes easier and more time-saving. With the help of this software, businesses can automate their invoice generation process for customers. The system keeps track of each call routed by the system and accordingly generates the bill. This functionality eliminates resource wastage, delays in responses, and discrepancies or accuracy in billing. It is a plus for businesses having multiple branches as bills are generated for every branch individually as per predetermined rates.
Brings efficiency to business
As multi-tenant PBX software like HoduPBX offers benefits like quick and easy installation, lower bills, and improved communication, it drives efficiency to the business. Not just that, our HoduPBX software allows businesses to save resources by automating billing and payment, as well as optimizing customer service. With this software, there’s no need for businesses to have an in-house IT team as all technical issues that may arise are resolved by the service provider.
Enhances functionalities
HoduPBX comes packed with several advanced features that enhance the functionalities of your call center business. Using SIP trunking, this software can also execute outbound calling along with internal business communications. While the call routing of this software boosts the performance of your call center agents, the call queue management features elevate the overall customer experience.
Reduces employee attrition
Call routing software streamlines high-volume calls distributing the workload for agents. It establishes a balanced workflow making it easier for agents to serve customers better. HoduPBX supports agents to outperform themselves by reducing their work pressure through enhanced call management. As a result, overall agent productivity is uplifted, leading to greater customer satisfaction and thereby improved revenue generation.
Improves customer experience
When customers get prompt and appropriate responses to their concerns, they become loyal to your business. Call routing software helps businesses in providing customers with a positive experience to earn their loyalty. It also prevents customer frustration due to longer waiting time. Some software may also have IVR systems to keep customers engaged when on hold. Moreover, it allows prioritizing calls so that your business does not offend any high-value customer. It also reduces call abandonment rate and allows your agents to serve maximum customers in the least time. Therefore, the customer service experience is significantly enhanced with this feature.
How call routing and billing can be used together?
When it comes to routing and billing, these are generally two different solutions for which businesses need a solution such as a class 4 Softswitch to access routing features and a VoIP billing system solution to use features related to billing. Usually, software providers today integrate a VoIP billing system into a business phone system that supports call routing features. The main purpose of this integration is to allow these two systems to work in a harmonized manner.
HoduSoft has an advanced business communication system to provide businesses with an integrated platform to use call routing and VoIP billing features.HoduPBX provides multi-tenant billing and payment support, saving time, costs, and resources for multi-location businesses. Our comprehensive Unified Communications product suite is designed to help businesses streamline their end-to-end processes and boost the productivity of their workforce.
Upgrade your call center with HoduPBX
Now that you know call routing and billing are two aspects of the same software, choose the best call routing system that aligns best with your business needs. Invest in HoduPBX, a robust business phone solution that can enable you to handle large volumes of inbound calls with ease and also allows you to track and manage billing on an integrated platform. To learn more about our comprehensive product suite, get in touch with our sales team at [email protected] or call us at +1-707-708-4638.