Can you imagine driving your car without a dashboard? Would you feel safe stepping into a vehicle without a dashboard monitoring & control mechanism? The most likely answer to these questions is: no, you would not. In this day and age we are so used to having mechanical devices that guide us daily over the roads and highways of our life, that we feel, and often are, less safe without the support of an automatic control panel. But, if this is the case, then why do we not also use such a dashboard for another important form of daily traffic: call traffic. TeleForwarding explains why a telephone dashboard is as essential as the control panel of your car.
TeleForwarding, a multinational telecom company offering inbound voice services such as toll free contact numbers, has over ten years of experience implementing a virtual telephone dashboard, the so-called IVR Manager. The online dashboard can be delivered with the toll free numbers implemented by TeleForwarding, but can also be installed for clients who already own a toll free number with another provider. This virtual control panel has many different functions that can be divided into four main categories: management, monitoring, control and special, tailored features. With these four functions the online dashboard transports your call traffic safely, quickly and easily, to its final destination. Thus, this mechanic device will support the flow of your call traffic while you yourself are holding the wheel.
But what does this mean concretely?
The first two functions of the TeleForwarding online dashboard are also the most obvious ones: management and monitoring. Let’s say that you are the owner of a universal international freephone number, a 00800 or UIFN number, that is activated in 10 different countries.
With the virtual dashboard you will be able to manage the various destination numbers behind this universal 00800 number. You might want to disconnect a destination number in Rio the Janeiro, for instance, and activate a destination number in São Paolo instead. With a virtual dashboard you will be able to do so in real-time and without the interference of a technical support agent, provided you have previously added the numbers to the dashboard system.
The monitoring function of this control panel allows for a more pro-active form of traffic management. With this tool you are able to monitor, for example, the call queue that is installed behind an international, 0800 (ITFN) or 00800 (UIFN) number. By monitoring this call queue you can easily spot an increase in the number of calls waiting to be answered. Obviously, you would want to prevent your call queues from turning into a traffic jam, for this would only frustrate and irritate your clients. As a good traffic supervisor using the online dashboard, you will be able to anticipate a possible traffic jam and take measures according to the capacities of your company; perhaps you could open more telephone lines, provided you have the number of employees necessary for this, or otherwise an expansion of the IVR menu might provide a solution. Thus, by monitoring your call traffic with the online dashboard, you will be able to deal with any changes in your call traffic in a flexible manner and prevent traffic chaos.
While monitoring the volume of your call traffic and managing the routes of your incoming calls, it will also be useful to be able to recognize regular changes or fluctuations in your call flow. For this reason, the TeleForwarding online dashboard includes a function that helps its user to create call reports. Such a report allows you to summon data about your call traffic, such as the number of calls that took place within a specific time frame and the duration of these calls. These data can then be exported as a CSV-file to Excel where it can be edited and adapted and where you can compare it with data from previous periods. If you own a call centre, for instance, and find it important that all calls are handled within 3 minutes, you can create call reports that highlight the duration of each incoming call. This way, the online dashboard provides you with the necessary information with which you can easily and quickly monitor the targets you have set for the handling your call traffic.
Of course it is always possible that you need information more specific to your particular business. If you have a toll free number in several countries, for instance, it could be useful to know the number of calls and their duration for each separate country. By creating a special reporting option in your personal dashboard, TeleForwarding ensures that you will get hold of this information.
Such tailored options, moreover, can entail much more than the creation of special call traffic reports. It is possible, for example, to indicate your company’s office ours and ‘instruct’ the online dashboard on when your employees are available to answer calls. With the help of a time/date routing extension, the online dashboard will then ensure that all calls coming in after business hours will be rerouted to other offices or will be answered by a recorded voice message. These messages, moreover, can easily be changed and adjusted by the dashboard operator without the interference of a technical support agent. This will give you full control over the content of the recorded voice message while also allowing you some flexibility with the time scheduling of this message within the time/date routing extension. Thereby, the dashboard will enable its administrator to be flexible and in control and will help your call centre to perform at its best.
This all sounds very well, doesn’t it? But what does it really mean for your business? Tarek Othman, manager technical operations at TeleForwarding International B.V., is happy to give a more concrete
example: “We have a customer who is active in the entertainment industry and owns a small company with a staff of three. These people provide their clients with information regarding special events in their industry and for this reason needed a premium rate number where their clients could reach them. However, they then received an extremely high number of calls and were unable to answer them all.”
“This client”, Mr. Othman explains, “ asked us if we could reduce the number of actual calls to the company but still give them the option to provide their clients with the information they wanted.” In order to realize this, TeleForwarding then created a special call script that incorporated a call menu. Each caller was given the choice to talk to an employee or to listen to a recorded message that contained the answers to many of the frequently asked questions relating a certain event. “And it worked”, Othman underlines, “for they were able to reduce the amount of calls they had to answer in person by 75%.” This freed up the time of the three employees and gave them the opportunity to further develop their business. Thereby, this solution presented and realized by TeleForwarding reduced the cost of this client and helped them to take their business to the next level.
Thus, using the TeleForwarding Dashboard with IVR management functions enables the owner of an international free phone, 00800, or toll free,
0800 number to observe and manage the routes of all incoming calls, monitor their speed and the amount of call traffic on each line while spotting trends and changes in the call flow. Thereby, you can manage and create the transportation network best suited to the call traffic of your company. With the special features of the virtual dashboard you can, moreover, create the necessary signposts (such as a call
menu) and place them next to the routes of your call highways, directing your callers to the right employee while you yourself function as traffic controller who is able to anticipate and prevent possible problems. Consequently, the online dashboard is a vital instrument that will drive your call traffic to its proper destination and helps the system to perform well.
Would you like to find out how our dashboard can optimize your call traffic and reduce your costs? Click right through to our website http://www.teleforwarding.co.uk/or call us (toll free and from any country) at 00800 00123456.
