10 Major Call Center Problems Worldwide & How to Solve Them

A neglected call center problem can have far-reaching ramifications for a corporation. Ignoring these issues can lead to dissatisfied customers, fewer call center employees, decreased business performance, and a ruined reputation. Addressing these issues as soon as possible is critical for improving call center agent performance, increasing customer and employee satisfaction, and optimizing cost-effectiveness.

This blog will discuss common call center issues such as low customer satisfaction, long wait times, insufficiently trained staff, and technical failures. Understanding the underlying causes and detailed solutions to these issues allows us to build practical solutions to provide an exceptional customer experience. 

According to research, the global contact center market was roughly 340 billion US dollars in 2020. The sector is expected to increase progressively over the next several years, reaching a value of $496 billion USD by 2027.

Improved call routing effectiveness and thorough agent training are two important actions that can produce favorable results. Let us now learn about common call center problems and how to overcome them.

10 Major Call Center Problems Worldwide & How to Solve Them

Call centers are crucial hubs for customer interactions and are crucial in determining a company’s reputation. According to research, about 96% of customers say that customer service deeply affects their choices. 

However, they do face a range of challenges that might affect their productivity and degree of client and employee satisfaction, like handling angry customers. Some of the top 10 common call center problems and solutions are written below. Let’s take a look at them!

1. Ineffective Training Sessions

Call centers often organize training sessions to keep their staff informed about changes in the environment. However, the agents find it quite challenging to use the knowledge gained in their daily work. This results in managers frequently giving negative feedback on agent performance and spending a lot of time helping team members.

Solution – Establishing a continuous training program that reinforces best practices at a steady and manageable pace is the best solution for this problem. The training needs increased creativity by including practical activities like role-playing customer conversations. 

Additionally, team activities, brainstorming sessions, and the use of multimedia content can be incorporated to make the training more effective for VoIP call center representatives. By doing so, agents will be better equipped to apply their learning, leading to improved performance and productivity in the call center environment.

Get Virtual Phone System from CallHippo

Start making and receiving calls in 50+ countries with CallHippo, the most trusted platform.

2. High Rate of Employee Absenteeism 

One of the common call center problems that occur in call centers is when multiple staff fail to show up for their shifts or call out without finding substitutes. This issue is particularly prevalent in centers where agents work long and irregular hours. 

While some employees are truly absent due to personal reasons, the majority of incidents of absenteeism are the result of job unhappiness, burnout, and frustration caused by insufficient support.

As a result of agent attrition, call centers become understaffed, putting great pressure on the existing agents, resulting in more customer churn, longer client wait times, overburdened call queues, callbacks, reduced customer satisfaction, customer service quality, abusive customer calls, and lost productivity.

Solution – Call center managers need to adopt a proactive strategy to enhance the agent scheduling procedure in order to effectively solve this issue. Managers may precisely predict call volumes, peak hours, and the required number of agents by leveraging AI-powered forecasting methodologies. 

These are provided by CCaaS systems and Workforce Management solutions. Tools for workforce management also offer automated agent schedules and monitor schedule adherence, giving managers the ability to quickly resolve absenteeism problems. 

3. Call Pick-Up Rate

Call centers often face a problem where customers reject calls from foreign phone numbers, wasting the efforts of their contact center agents. This issue is more common when the call center agency is in one country but calling customers in another country. People tend to avoid answering calls from unfamiliar foreign numbers.

Solution – To solve these problems in a call center, you must get your hands on virtual phone numbers. You can even get an Australian virtual mobile number if you wish to phone Australia. 

By giving the call a local number, you may make it seem more personal to your Australian target audience, which will encourage them to pick up the phone. By employing virtual phone numbers, contact centers may increase call pick-up rates and engage consumers from many nations more successfully. 

4. Balancing Competing Priorities

Different firms utilize call centers in different ways. Some work on customer service, while others handle sales and customer support. The function of a call center is determined by the individual demands of each organization. Uncertain goals, on the other hand, might cause issues for call center personnel, resulting in competing agendas. 

This might have a detrimental influence on employee morale and lead to inconsistency in service. When agents are required to achieve competing goals, their performance declines. They may be praised one day for their incoming conversion rates, then chastised the next for their average processing time. Because of this uncertainty, agents are unable to work properly. 

Solution – To overcome these challenges, it is essential to clearly communicate the business goals of the call center to all representatives. For small businesses using call centers as sales channels and call center CRM software, dividing the team into smaller units can be helpful. 

One unit can focus on making outbound sales calls, while the other can handle inbound customer calls. By providing clarity and setting specific roles, call center representatives can better understand their responsibilities, leading to improved performance and better service. 

5. Lack of Time

This is one of the common problems encountered by call center agents due to the overwhelming volume of customer calls they receive, resulting in a shortage of time to handle each call properly.

Consequently, this leads to issues where customer complaints and problems are not accurately resolved, and there’s not enough time spent on customer issues on each call, leaving frustrated customers both dissatisfied with the customer experience and losing trust in the call center’s services.

Solution – To tackle such contact center challenges and problems, call center managers should implement simple yet effective strategies. First and foremost, they must ensure that there are enough phone lines and staff members available to handle the workload efficiently. By accurately forecasting periods of high call volumes, managers can plan employee shift rotations and even consider increasing staff strength during peak times.

6. Lack of Self-service Options for Customers

Every customer inquiry does not necessitate the involvement of a call center representative. In reality, some customers prefer to solve their problems on their own, but they lack the necessary tools and information. 

As a result, your agents are swamped with calls that could easily be resolved with a simple self-service system. Your representatives’ motivation and productivity may suffer as a result of this situation.

Solution – Addressing the shortcomings of self-service options offers an efficient solution to some of your call center’s problems. While timely customer service is still essential, it can be expensive to only use call centers as the main support channel. 

Implementing a thorough knowledge base with frequently asked questions (FAQs), thorough how-to guides, and troubleshooting instructions is essential to overcoming this.

7. Dependency on Call Scripts

Call scripts play a highly crucial role in the fast-paced world of contact centers for directing client interactions through various channels. These scripts offer a number of benefits, including ensuring brand consistency, raising agent output, and enhancing call conversions. 

However, there is a significant drawback when numerous staff overly rely on these scripts, which leads to robotic, tedious, and dishonest interactions with clients.

Solution – To address the issue, call centers should allow their workers to deviate from scheduled responses when necessary. This necessitates specialized training to provide agents with critical communication skills. 

Competent call center agents should be able to listen in both active and passive modes. Active listening entails paying complete attention to clients and utilizing phrases such as ‘I see’ to eliminate confusion and increase pleasure. Passive listening, on the other side, without apparent input, might make clients feel irrelevant. 

While scripts can be helpful for new employees and specific scenarios, experienced agents should use them as a jumping-off point for more authentic and individualized customer encounters.

8. IT Issues

The IT systems in many call centers routinely experience technical issues. One significant issue with call center processes is when phone lines go down during busy times. They may also have trouble integrating their systems with other business tools. For most call centers and agents, these problems result in irritation, lost time, and decreased productivity.

Solution – Call centers can leverage the user-friendly technology of virtual telephony to address these issues. Without sophisticated gear or software, virtual telephony, including VoIP phone lines, is simple to set up. A call center may be easily set up by service providers, and it requires little upkeep, offering an effective answer to the IT issues many call centers encounter.

9. Low First Call Resolution Rates

Low call center FCR rates can be linked to a variety of problems, including restricted access to customer information and a lack of power to address specific situations. Agents struggle to settle concerns during the initial engagement because they lack access to client histories.

Furthermore, calls escalate when personnel are confused about how to address customer issues or lack the authority to do so. Company policies, for example, may limit agents from further customer inquiries or processing refunds, resulting in needless escalation of customer frustration. Furthermore, many calls, such as those requiring technical assistance, are difficult to handle on the first encounter.

Solution – To address these challenges in call center and improve FCR rates, investing in a proficient Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or lead routing system proves to be an effective solution. By implementing an efficient IVR or lead routing system, call centers can reduce the frequency of escalations by directing callers to the most qualified agents capable of addressing their specific questions or concerns. 

10. Lack of Budget

This issue of few resources has long been one of the common contact center problems. Top-level executives perceive contact centers as a big drag on overall sales and profitability due to the high personnel costs that frequently result in financial losses. Because of this, some businesses decide against opening call centers and instead use less effective customer service options.

Solution – Adopting a business phone system is a viable choice for firms dealing with budget limits and difficult financial situations. These systems give low-cost calling rates, and many service providers are willing to customize price plans to match specific calling needs. Businesses may efficiently meet their customer service demands in a realistic and cost-effective manner by doing so.

Conclusion

Overcoming these call center issues necessitates investment in suitable technology, setting clear objectives, monitoring key performance metrics, providing continuous training, and actively seeking feedback. However, it’s important to recognize that these solutions are not exhaustive, and each company may require tailored approaches.

This article can serve as a foundation for crafting comprehensive strategies that elevate your call center operations to extraordinary heights, leading to amplified customer satisfaction and heightened employee engagement. Connect with our experts to dig deep into the vast field of call centers.