If you work in an office, you probably won’t go a day without your phone ringing.

For office workers who work within a limited amount of time, having to frequently interrupt their work to answer the phone may be a factor in reducing efficiency.

Of course, it is necessary to answer the calls necessary for business, but what percentage of the calls I receive during working hours I have to answer?

Some of you may be wondering if transferring calls to other people is something you really have to do.

In this article, we will explain “automation of telephone correspondence” to eliminate unnecessary telephone correspondence and improve work efficiency .

Problems with phone support

In companies, the priority of answering the phone is very high, and it is common business etiquette to pick up the phone within 3 calls when it rings .

If you can’t pick up the phone call from the business partner, you may miss the opportunity to receive an order, or you may not be able to obtain important information.

However, if it is not a direct line to the person in charge, but a representative number of a company or department, you will have to answer the phone without knowing who the person is or what the purpose is.

Once you pick up the phone, you have to take responsibility for the end, and you often end up spending more time and energy than you can imagine.

We must also pay attention to the fact that having people handle fixed-line telephones has various disadvantages and consumes internal resources.

• It takes time to make calls to other departments/outside departments
• Mistakes are likely to occur when listening to and relaying messages
• grab the sales phone
• out-of-hours response occurs

It takes time to make calls to other departments/outside departments

If the call is not for you, a referral will occur .

If it is addressed to the person in charge on the same floor, it may be handled immediately, but if he is absent, you will have to take a message.

In some cases, calls to other departments were mistakenly received, and the person in charge was unknown.

It is not uncommon for about 10 minutes to pass in the blink of an eye while listening to the business and looking up the person in charge on such a phone.

Mistakes are likely to occur when listening to and relaying messages

In many cases , I am not familiar with the content and terminology of matters that are not my responsibility , so I may mishear or misinterpret the matter .

In addition, in a situation where there are many calls and one has to answer one after another, there is no time to organize the contents of each call, and human error such as the contents of the message and the destination being mixed up is likely to occur. Become.

grab the sales phone

The company receives sales calls .

Even if you want to cut it the moment you know it’s sales, cutting the gacha is not appropriate as a company’s response.

It takes a lot of time and nerves to give a valid reason and gently decline, and you may feel tired after responding.

out-of-hours response occurs

It is not uncommon for employees to end up working overtime to answer phone calls just before the end of work .

Also, if the phone is set to receive calls even after business hours, it is not possible to ignore the phone when it rings even after work.

However, if out-of-hours support becomes the norm, business partners and customers will judge that “there will be support even after hours”, and this will cause a negative chain reaction in which the number of over-hours calls will never decrease.

Advantages of introducing automation services

If a person is answering all calls, the time for the original work will be cut and efficiency will inevitably decrease.

For companies that have a heavy burden of telephone work and are considering reviewing their response, we recommend introducing a system to automate telephone response .

If you introduce a telephone response automation service,

• no need to intercede
• Incoming calls can be sorted by subject or person in charge
• break free from sales calls
• Record a message out of hours

By having the system handle the primary phone calls, it becomes possible to pass the call directly to the person in charge without going through a third party. To do.

Also, it is difficult to turn down sales calls or after-hours calls if someone answers them, or to cut them off in the middle.

The benefits of entrusting these calls to an automated service are great.

no need to intercede

With the introduction of automated services, the need for human-to-human call brokerage is almost eliminated .

Received calls can be forwarded to the appropriate department or person in charge according to the conditions, so you will not be bothered by calls outside of your responsibility.

Your customers will also save time by not having to repeat the same thing over and over again with each new caller.

Incoming calls can be sorted by subject or person in charge

Automated services that respond to calls use voice guidance to select a number, recognize the other party’s speech, and sort calls by subject or person in charge .

As a result, you will be able to answer the call after obtaining information such as the business before the response and preparing for it, giving you more time to respond.

break free from sales calls

Sales calls often give up and withdraw when the call is on auto-answer.

If you leave a message, you can listen to the recording and contact the person only if you are interested in the content .

No more wasting time listening to uninteresting stories trying to figure out when to say no.

Record a message out of hours

You may be reluctant to completely shut off your phone if you think that you may receive a call from a business partner even after hours.

If you set it so that the other party can record a message after hours, like an answering machine, you can listen to the content and respond to it the next business day , so you won’t be rude to the person who has taken the trouble to call you.

If there is a separate after-hours counter, you can use voice guidance to guide you there.

Service that automates phone calls

The most popular service for automating corporate phone calls is the IVR (Interactive Voice Response System) , which is familiar to call centers.

In addition to this, recently, an automatic response service using AI has also appeared.

IVR (Interactive Voice Response System)

An IVR is a voice-guided automated response system suitable for handling high volumes of calls .

When you make a call, an automatic guidance will ask you a question, and the customer will answer by pressing the corresponding number.

If you press “1” with the guidance “Press 1 for a new application, press 2 to change contract information, and press 9 for other matters,” the system will call the person in charge of new reception.

IVR can respond not only to multiple-choice questions, but also to those that are completed by entering numbers, so it is also possible to have contract numbers and phone numbers entered by automatic response.

By linking with CTI, it is possible to search customer data based on the member information entered and prepare the customer information on the computer screen in advance, shortening the time spent listening and waiting after the call is connected.

By registering standard answers to frequently asked questions, you can resolve them with voice responses only, without the need for an operator to respond.

In addition, IVR also supports outbound, so you can make a large number of simultaneous calls and play voice guidance when the other party answers, so it is also used for dunning work and inside sales that require call efficiency .

Uses of IVRs

• Receiving calls for call centers and customer centers
• Calls for sales, reminders, and questionnaire surveys

AI automatic response service

It is a system that responds to calls using AI (artificial intelligence) voice recognition and natural language processing .

In the case of IVR, the more options you have, the longer the automatic voice will be, but AI recognizes human utterances, so you can just have them speak normally.

Although it is not yet at a level where it is possible to handle conversations with a high degree of freedom, it is possible to narrow down the matters in a scenario where you can answer with “yes” or “no”, and to sort calls by listening to the name of the department or person in charge.

Even if the contents of the other party’s utterances are not in the pattern, you can transcribe the message or message, so you can rest assured that the person in charge can check and follow up.

It can be used 24 hours a day and does not get busy even if the phone calls are concentrated, so it is also suitable for accepting reservations for restaurants and clinics.

Uses of AI automatic response service

• Primary support for representative phone
• Acceptance of reservations and orders

Will customer satisfaction change?

An obstacle to the introduction of automated services in many companies is that “customer satisfaction will decrease if telephone correspondence is automated.”

Certainly, it cannot be denied that automated voice and AI give an inorganic impression compared to employees responding .

However, it is also a fact that the speed of the service is slowed down by “intermediation” and “verbal/memorandum messages” that occur because people are responding.

Also, if the original work is interrupted to answer the phone, other customers who are related to the work will be burdened.

Respecting your time also helps you respect others.

Recently, automatic reception systems have become popular in government offices and banks, and there is less resistance to voice response and AI support.

Various products have also appeared in automation services, making it easier to introduce services that meet the conditions of the company.

Automating phone calls increases productivity, which in turn improves customer ratings .

Recommended for automating phone calls “Canario”

In recent years, not only departments specializing in telephone calls, but also office representative telephones have introduced an increasing number of automated telephone support tools.

“I want to automate phone calls, but I don’t know which service is better.”

“I don’t need high functionality like a call center. I want to choose based on cost performance.”

For such companies, we would like to recommend the AI ​​phone support service ” Canario ” provided by NEC Networks & System Integration Corporation.

• No phone number needed as AI provides primary support
• You can appoint a person in charge by name transfer
• Even if the person in charge is unknown, it is possible to call the group all at once and not miss anything.
• When there is no response, the message is converted into text and sent, so there is no transmission omission

With “Canario”, when the other party appoints a person in charge, the person in charge is called on their mobile phone.

You can receive calls directly from important customers even when you are on the go or working from home.

Even if you can’t make it, the message will be transcribed and sent by email, so you can quickly respond to important matters.

It is also a nice point that you can put off low priority projects that do not need to be returned .

Article Summary

In our daily work, we spend a surprising amount of time answering phone calls and doing post-processing.

By automating phone calls,

• Eliminates work interruptions due to phone calls, allowing you to concentrate
• Eliminates agency mistakes due to personalization
• Since the person in charge can respond directly, communication becomes smoother
• easier to prioritize

Such effects can be expected.

If there is no intermediary and circulating, the stress of not only the company but also the customer will be reduced.