Call Deflection Strategies: Enhancing Customer Experience with Smart Solutions

“Please hold, your call is very important to us.”

We’ve all been on the receiving end of that line at some point. But with 83% of customers expecting to interact with someone immediately when they contact your company*, even a short wait time could be enough to put off leads for good.

Let’s say you run an e-commerce business. One of your customers—we’ll call her Sally—has ordered a birthday gift from your website, but it hasn’t arrived on time. When she calls your customer support line for a tracking update, she ends up in a long queue behind other customers with more complex inquiries. As a result, she ends up refunding her order and never shops with you again.

But what if there had been another customer service option at Sally’s disposal?

From WhatsApp business chats to self-service FAQs, there are plenty of alternative channels you can offer your customers to ensure they get the help they need when they need it.

If your contact center is drowning in inbound calls, proactive call deflection can help you anticipate customer needs and resolve queries more efficiently. Here’s how it works…    

Key Takeaways: 

• Call deflection provides customers with a faster route to the answers they’re looking for, reducing call volumes and improving customer experience.
• Skill-based routing ensures complex requests are directed to agents with relevant expertise to avoid unnecessary frustration.
• CRM-integrated IVR systems like CloudTalk can send customers to the right channel when speaking to a live agent isn’t the best option.

Call Deflection and Its Role in Customer Support

Call deflection is a strategy contact centers use to transfer incoming calls to an alternative communication channel. This could be a help desk, live chat, community forum, email account, or social media platform that can deliver a quick and convenient customer service experience.

The term “call deflection” sounds negative, but it isn’t a way for your customer service team to avoid interacting with customers directly. In fact, it’s all about providing the fastest route to the most appropriate channel and reducing inbound call volumes to ensure customers can speak to a relevant agent.

This technique can help you close inquiries during initial calls to eliminate the need for follow-ups, improving your first-contact resolution (FCR) rates. Not only is this great news for your customers, but it can also make a world of difference to your call center operatives’ workloads. 

For your team, high call volumes mean lower morale and a greater risk of burnout. This is a big concern for contact centers given that more than 53% of agents who describe their stress levels at work as “high” said they’re likely to leave their organization within six months. With fewer available agents, customers will face longer wait times and less efficient support, leading to more mistakes and disappointment. 

That’s where call deflection comes in. 

Rerouting select inquiries to alternative channels avoids the frustration of waiting in long call queues for customers. Plus, it frees your reps to deal with more complex interactions first-hand, allowing them to deliver the personal and responsive support consumers have come to expect.   

Best Practices for Implementing Call Deflection Strategies

So, your call centers are overwhelmed by inbound calls and you want to use call deflection to lighten the load. Where do you start?

Here are five best practices that will help you point callers in the right direction:

1. Utilize AI-Driven Self-Service Options

Research shows almost half (49%) of customers turn to telephony services to deal with urgent requests. But in straightforward cases, such as Sally’s delayed order delivery, many people prefer finding solutions on their own. 

AI chatbots and virtual assistants are perfect for handling routine inquiries, including:

• Technical support and troubleshooting
• Subscription and billing information
• Account management
• Pre- and post-sales support

These digital solutions can be available 24/7, offering automated and immediate customer support. Self-service platforms are particularly useful for companies operating in global markets, providing a cost-effective way to deliver real-time support across multiple time zones.

Of course, speaking to a live agent is sometimes the best course of action. In these cases, ensuring a seamless transition from one channel to another is crucial. Implementing an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system gives your customers the option to continue the interaction on another channel. 

Not only do AI-powered IVRs ensure customers get routed to the right platform or agent, but they also incorporate advanced features like real-time Sentiment Analysis and intelligent Caller-Based Routing—helping your team optimize agent performance.

💡 Avoiding the Shortfalls of Call Deflection

Call deflection is a great tactic for streamlining your customer support service—but only when it’s done right.

Inefficient or poorly planned call deflection strategies can lead to:

• Confusion for customers trying to reach a support agent
• Prolonged resolution time for complex queries
• Decreased customer loyalty due to a lack of personal interaction

With that in mind, it’s crucial to deliver a smooth user experience across self-service channels. That’s why we recommend leveraging a smart IVR system to route customers effectively and harness data-driven insights to identify problems in your process.

2. Optimize Knowledge Bases and FAQs for Self-Resolution

Thanks to your self-service portal, Sally managed to resolve her tracking issue. Next time she gets in touch, she wants to find out how to reset a password to access your online portal. 

She tries to find the answers she needs on your website but with no success. As a result, she can’t get into the system, and she abandons the call (and the purchase) out of frustration.

This situation could’ve been easily avoided with a well-optimized knowledge base. By creating searchable, structured help centers full of clear, up-to-date information, you can provide answers to frequently asked questions without one of your busy agents needing to get involved. 

Lean on your customer relationship management (CRM) data to develop dynamic FAQs based on trending customer issues. Integrating multimedia resources like videos, step-by-step guides, and process screenshots can also help your customers self-serve more effectively.

This approach will help you reduce support tickets, meaning lower call volumes and higher customer satisfaction scores. What’s more, featuring help articles on your website can improve your search engine ranking, making it easy for prospects to find you.

3. Prevent Unnecessary Calls

Considering 57% of business leaders expect call volumes to increase by as much as one-fifth over the next couple of years, finding practical ways to reduce agent workloads is vital.

While call center agents provide irreplaceable support for customers, automated services and self-service platforms tend to be the more cost-effective option for businesses. So, it’s important to make sure you’re using all your resources efficiently to keep costs down and avoid overwhelming your operatives.

Depending on your industry and customer needs, there are many practical ways call deflection can help here. For example:

• Sending automated SMS or email updates for order statuses, appointment reminders, or service outages
• Using push notifications to alert customers about self-service options
• Implementing proactive communication cycles to address common customer concerns before they escalate

By using chatbots and other AI-based agents to redirect customers to alternative communication channels, you can provide the information they need before they have to pick up the phone. 

The outcome? Your live agents will have more time to focus on high-priority interactions without compromising the quality of support available for less urgent inquiries.

4. Leverage Omnichannel Support

Remember Sally? She’d have had a much easier time resolving her problems with an omnichannel framework in place. Here’s why:

• Enables smooth transitions between chat, email, and phone without customers repeating themselves
• Uses CRM integrations to maintain a full interaction history
• Directs customers to community forums or support portals for peer assistance

Omnichannel support is a must-have when implementing call deflection for AI-driven call centers. With an omnichannel platform, callers can access whatever service they need without having to repeat themselves every time they’re directed to a new channel. 

Using CRM integrations to maintain full interaction history, omnichannel support unifies data from multiple sources to allow customers to seamlessly transition between communication platforms.

Let’s think about how this could’ve helped Sally. Instead of reaching a communications dead end, she’d find the option to ask for help on your customer self-service portal. From there, she’d be transferred to a community forum, advice article, or live chat instead of calling the busy support line—no need to sit in the queue.   

This approach can benefit your customer service teams, too. Agents are increasingly expected to switch between phone, live chat, email, and other self-service channels to gather the information they need. Omnichannel support makes it easy to do that without having to ask repetitive questions or spend extra time tracking down the caller’s interaction history.

5. Ensure Only Necessary Calls Reach Agents

Skill-Based Routing should be a core part of your call deflection strategy. Its purpose? Ensuring simple inquiries are handled by AI-powered chatbots and messaging channels while complex requests are directed to agents with relevant expertise.

This approach is key to improving call center efficiency, boosting customer satisfaction, and resolving calls faster. By creating automated Call Flows with priority-based Queuing, your agents can harness AI-powered routing to provide the right support to the right people in the right channel.

For example, Sally’s simple password request could be managed by a good self-service infrastructure. But what if the manager of her company’s account had a more urgent request? 

In this case, you’d want to have VIP Queues set up to ensure important clients like Sally’s manager can skip to the front of the line and get the assistance they need.  
You may also consider using a business communication platform like CloudTalk to implement an automated Callback function. This feature can save customers from long hold times and help them reach relevant agents as soon as they become available.

Measuring the Impact of Call Deflection on Customer Experience

The main purpose of your contact center telephony infrastructure is to empower customers to find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. To achieve this, you need to identify the strengths and weaknesses in your support system to ensure it meets expectations.

Analyzing call deflection and the impact it has on customer experience is an essential step in this process. Here are some of the key performance indicators (KPIs) you should be tracking to monitor the performance of your current strategy:

Call Deflection Rate

(Self-service interactions – Transfers to live agents ÷ Self-service interactions) x 100

E.g. (5,000 – 2,341 ÷ 5,000) x 100 = 53%

Your call deflection rate outlines the rate at which your non-call-based customer service channels handle inbound inquiries. If your rate is high, it means you’re successfully redirecting calls away from agents to elsewhere in your support system.

Self-service resolution rate

(Resolved self-service interactions ÷ Total self-service interactions) x 100

E.g. (2,200 ÷ 5,000) x 100 = 44%

A high self-service resolution rate suggests your call deflection strategy is helping your customers resolve their queries on their own. If your rate is on the lower side, you might want to work on optimizing your knowledge bases and self-service options.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score

(Number of satisfied customers ÷ Total responses) x 100

E.g. (120 ÷ 800) x 100 = 15%

This metric is crucial for determining whether your call deflection approach is actually making a difference in customer experiences. If your rate is low, it might indicate that callers still feel frustrated by your support services.

FCR rate

(Number of cases resolved on first contact ÷ Total cases handled) x 100

E.g. (156,000 ÷ 450,000) x 100 = 35%

You might remember we mentioned FCR rates earlier. A low FCR score might indicate that your customers are being diverted to inefficient self-service channels, prompting you to reconsider your routing infrastructure.

Inbound call volume reduction

(Baseline call volume – Current call volume ÷ Baseline call volume) x 100

E.g. (15,000 – 8,000 ÷ 15,000) x 100 = 47%

Comparing the number of inbound calls your agents receive before and after implementing call deflection measures will highlight how big of an impact they’re having on your call center. The bigger the percentage, the more successful the deflection!  

Reclaim Control of Your Customer Support Workflow

If your call center is struggling to manage high call volumes, you’re not alone. According to Deloitte Digital, three in four organizations say their agents are overwhelmed by systems and information, leading to poor outcomes and unnecessarily long call times.

Customers like Sally want fast, frictionless support. To meet their expectations (and save your agents a headache), it’s crucial to implement smart customer service solutions that leverage automation to streamline your call center workflows. 

Call deflection encompasses all the best practices you need to deliver better customer experiences. By optimizing your knowledge base, leveraging AI-driven self-service, and enabling seamless omnichannel navigation, you can empower customers with convenient solutions while providing personal support where it’s needed most. 

With AI business calling software like CloudTalk, you can make every interaction count. 
When the phone isn’t the best option, our CRM-integrated IVR system will send callers to an alternative channel. When it is, your live agents can leverage advanced Sentiment Analysis, automated Callback, and Skill-Based Routing to provide the best support experience for your customers.

Sources:

Salesforce, 2022