Maximising Agent Resources by Pre-Validating Numbers: An Efficient Solution for Cloud Contact Centres

With workforce optimisation high on the agenda of most contact centres, a cloud contact centre provider was looking for a way to help its customers be more efficient in their outbound calling activities having calculated that it cost, on average, £20 for every call an agent made, whether it was successful or not. Therefore, it needed to find a solution to provide to its customers that would enable them to minimise failed calls and eliminate wastage.

It needed a simple and efficient way to determine whether the numbers its customers were trying to reach were active and valid before agents initiated the call. It needed to ensure that every call an agent made had the potential to connect, to minimise losses, achieve predictable margins and ensure agents were getting the most out of their interactions.

The provider selected XConnect’s Global Number Range (GNR) data as a first pass to enable its customers to pre-validate number ranges in its system, followed by its Mobile Number Portability (MNP) data to catch any inactive or invalid numbers, before any agents make a call. The solution ensured that its contact centre customers could build greater efficiencies into their operations and quickly remove the risk of dialling a number that would fail to connect.

 

The Challenge

The cloud contact centre provider wanted to deliver more added value to its customers, which would in turn make it more competitive in the market. With potential costs of up to £20 per each failed call, it could see that enabling its customers to pre validate numbers before making a call would provide real, tangible cost benefits to them. The presence of invalid and inactive numbers in its systems made it harder for contact centre agents to meet their monthly targets and leaves them vulnerable in a highly competitive market.

The provider had already helped its customers to derive added value from their inbound operations through the roll out of automatic speech recognition and interactive voice response tools to optimise the way its audiences interacted with them before being directed to agents. The challenge was to ensure that the same levels of efficiency were being delivered to achieve maximum potential within outbound voice call operations.

It needed a solution that could quickly pre-validate the numbers in advance of its customers’ agents making a call to reduce their exposure to revenue-damaging waste of resources.

 

The Solution

XConnect understood the contact centre provider’s need to help customers with a simple approach and so it provided a solution that could be rapidly deployed and integrated into the contact centre provider’s existing systems and processes. 

It chose XConnect’s GNR and MNP data to rapidly expand its use of number intelligence and pre-validate phone numbers via a simple API connection, to ensure it could rapidly incorporate new data sets into its existing systems with ease. Simplicity of connecting is key to deploying the service as soon as possible.

The contact centre provider gained the ability to enable customers to pre-validate all of the numbers in its system and reduce the risk of failed outbound calls. With new levels of visibility into its operations, this would enable the provider’s customers to focus their time and efforts on creating more meaningful interactions, capturing a greater number of sales and driving bigger revenue streams.

XConnect’s data has a track record of successfully delivering accuracy when returning queries to its database. The cloud contact centre provider gained not just new data sets, but a valued partner that provides them the ability to offload complex data management challenges and helps them provide their customers with a seamless solution. It also allowed for higher conversion rates and higher outbound calls which increased the performance of each operator.

 

Benefits

Predictable Margins

• The solution offers an easy way for the cloud contact centre provider’s customers to limit their exposure to wasted time on the phone, not to mention increased profitability from their operators.

 

Increased Profitability

• The contact centre solutions provider is able add more value to its customers margins by giving them a way to focus their efforts on contacting valid and active numbers.

New Visibility

• The solution enables end users to gain control over their outbound call operations and provides visibility into the validity of the numbers to ensure that every call has the potential to connect.

 

 Rapid Validation

• The solution provides contact centres with an easy solution to solve an immediate challenge and threat to their business, with an API-based approach.

 

Expert Support

• The cloud contact centre provider gains a long-term partner that can advise on how they can help their customers to mitigate losses and provides them the ability to offload complex data management challenges. 

 

 

“The key to success in challenging markets is driving efficiency. The ability to pre-validate numbers is a necessity for organisations to gain the edge against competitors in the outbound contact centre industry. Understanding to whom and for what purpose a number allocated is vital in most telecommunications applications. We are committed to addressing customer pain points with a consultative approach further and help organisations tackle multiple challenges across their businesses and captured new revenue streams.”

 

Eli Katz, Founder and CEO, XConnect