U.S. Auto Parts reduces call waiting times 80% with VoIP call center
With a Voice Over Internet Protocol call center system installed earlier this year, U.S. Auto Parts Network Inc. has cut its longest waiting time for customer service calls from 5 minutes to one minute, founder Sol Khazani tells InternetRetailer.com. U.S. Auto Parts Network sells automobile parts through retail site PartsTrain.com and its wholesale operation, USAutoParts.com.
The VoIP system from Interactive Intelligence Inc. provides a range of benefits over the retailer’s prior call-center phone system that make its call center more productive and easier to manage, Khazani says.
The system can be easily expanded to accommodate additional call center agents, and it provides web-page administration for monitoring criteria such as the length of calls, the number of calls per hour, the amount of time callers wait to get an agent, and the number of callers who hang up before an agent answers, Khazani says.
The VoIP system assists agent training by letting managers listen in on calls and advise agents with spoken comments that can’t be heard by the customer. The system also lets managers see on a web page the performance of each agent, such as his or her average length of time per call. U.S. Auto Parts can then configure the system to have it automatically route particular types of calls, as well as faxes and e-mails, to the agents with the most appropriate skills.
And by getting information on peak call volume periods and matching that with agent performance records, the retailer can better schedule the right number of agents to handle high volumes. “The system lets us know the peak times for phone calls, so we can use more or fewer people as necessary,” Khazani says.
The biggest advantage of the VoIP system, he adds, is sharply reducing the amount of time callers are on hold while waiting for a customer service agent. “Our main problem was people staying on hold up to as many as five minutes, but we’ve brought that down to one minute,” Khazani says. “This will definitely have a positive impact on our sales, because happier customers keep coming back.”
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