Telephone communication continues to be an essential form of contact between businesses and their customers. Despite the rising popularity of emailing and text messaging, most consumers still prefer to speak verbally with a customer support agent when communicating with a business about something. It could be a request to place an order or a question about one of their products or services.
Likewise, businesses still like communicating with customers over the phone because it remains one of the most effective ways to address their concerns and persuade them to make a purchase. Furthermore, businesses can track and record their phone conversations with customers to help improve the quality of their customer support.
However, for the longest time, businesses have focused too much on only recording telephone conversations for compliance and training purposes while ignoring the “metadata” details related to the calls themselves. That is why an increasing number of companies are using a call logging system to track and examine their call statistics.
What is a Call Logging System?
Call logging is a systematic practice for recording, documenting, storing, and analyzing specific details related to a company’s telephone calls. The most common examples of these call details include the following:
- Time
- Date
- Duration
- Recipient (caller ID)
- Origin (location)
- Number of missed calls
- Peak calling times
- Call volumes
- Agent who handled the call
For example, if a company wanted to track all their voice calls made on Microsoft Teams software, they could find a service provider like Akixi that offers AI-powered call analytics, reporting, and conversational intelligence for Teams calls. There is even an API tool to connect and synchronize all of an organization’s Microsoft 365 data. That way, the company can gain better quality user analytics and insights and create better custom Teams integrations.
Why Businesses Are Investing in Call Logging Systems
Every successful business knows the importance of recording and tracking their customer interactions. After all, customer satisfaction is the key to successfully growing any business. The more you can find out about your customers and their experiences with your company, the better improvements you can make later on.
Every customer interaction tells a story about how a business operates. When a company integrates a comprehensive call logging system into its organization, its managers don’t have to make any assumptions about their customers. Instead, they can analyze call logging details as evidence for making better decisions in the future.
Below are the biggest advantages of a call logging system for a company:
1) Track All Inbound and Outbound Calls
A call logging system can track the communications of all inbound and outbound calls made throughout an organization. Each time the company makes or receives a call from a customer, supplier, or other stakeholder, a record of the call’s metadata is automatically captured in real time.
A call logging system needs to distinguish between customer calls and all other types of calls to ensure they don’t get intermingled. That will help produce more accurate call logging statistics regarding customers.
2) Identify Bottlenecks in the Organization
Company managers and executives are eagerly searching to identify bottlenecks in their organization. A bottleneck is a specific slow or weak point within an organization that restricts or prevents productivity. A call logging system can help identify bottlenecks by revealing where delays or inefficiencies occur when a customer calls into the company.
For example, let’s say a customer spends 20 minutes waiting for a support agent to answer. The call log will capture the 20-minute wait time and report it back to the company. If there are too many long wait times, it reveals a bottleneck in the company’s customer support, such as a shortage of staff to answer the calls.
3) Improve Customer Service
The information gathered by a call logging system can help improve customer service. A manager can use the information to understand customer demand trends, common complaints & inquiries, and frequently raised problems or issues.
By studying this information, company leadership can make the necessary changes to fix problems, resolve disputes, and improve customer satisfaction in the future.
4) Develop Better Training for Employees
Human resources and managers regularly review call logging data to assess employee performance and identify areas where improvement is needed.
For instance, if company leadership sees employees taking too long on calls or delivering unsatisfactory support to customers, the call logs will reflect these inefficiencies. Based on this information, they can develop better training courses and modules to help employees improve their performance.
5) Save Money and Increase Revenue
Long wait times and frequent call transfers are some of the biggest ways in which companies lose money. Not only do they increase operating costs, but they cause a loss of potential sales from disgruntled customers. Monitoring call logs can help companies save money and increase their revenue by improving employee productivity, customer satisfaction, and optimizing staffing levels.
Let’s suppose the call logs show a higher volume of calls on certain days of the week, such as Saturday and Sunday. A manager could give shifts to more agents on those days, and fewer shifts to agents on the other days of the week that have fewer calls. That will help the company save money on labor while maximizing their customer service efficiency.
How to Choose the Best Call Logging Service Provider
Companies often rely on call logging service providers to provide them with the software needed to run their call logging system. For this reason, a business manager must choose the best and most trustworthy call logging service provider imaginable. The quality of the call logging system can either make or break a company and its level of success.
When evaluating possible providers to use, look to see if they offer any of the following features with their services:
- Real-time dashboards
- Historical reporting
- Customizable reports
- Compatibility with Microsoft Teams
- Detailed call analytics
- Wallboard displays
- Easy-to-use interface
- Secure cloud-based access
- Scalability potential
If you choose correctly, your company’s new call logging system will boost the quality and productivity of your customer support team to unprecedented levels.
