One of the most common pitfalls after implementing the Call Queue is setting too many Re-Calls within your Campaigns, such that your call center agents aren't able to call through all the Re-Calls which become Due to be called each day. Follow along with this Article to evaluate your Campaign Reports, the current metrics of your Call Center, and how you might adjust your Campaign Re-Call settings or Auto-Release Call Limit setting for better efficiency when working Campaigns.
If you have not reviewed our video series on Campaign Setup and Campaign Settings you'll want to familiarize yourself with the Setup of Campaigns first. Here are some Common Campaign Builds.
Below is a 30-minute recorded webinar on these same topics.
Evaluate Completed Calls
Next you'll want to review how many calls are being Completed each day by your call center agents. For this we will use another out-of-the-box improveit 360 Report, "Campaign Results by Rep This Week" You may want to adjust the Time Frame to use a Range of "Yesterday" or use an Average from the past week to determine how many calls are being successfully completed each day.
Note: If you know that your call center is "clicking-through" Re-Calls and dispositioning a Prospect without actually making the call, the metrics in this report will NOT be accurate. If you suspect your call center agents are padding their call numbers in improveit 360, we recommend using a Report from your phone system to get an accurate number of dials made each day. RingCentral for example provides Reports like "Calls Completed Today" to allow you to get accurate metrics for your number of completed calls each day.
Evaluate your current Pending Re-Calls
improveit 360 provides an out-of-the-box Report "Re-Calls by Campaign" which allows you to quickly see all the Pending Re-Calls in your system, grouped by the Campaign they will be called from. Note the Scheduled Re-Call Time field:
You can re-Group the Report on Scheduled Re-Call Time, to see the number of Re-Calls which should be made each day but are being missed. If you are not familiar with how to remove Groupings or add Groupings to a Report, see also: How to change a Report Grouping
Evaluate daily Lead Sources
The next Report you'll want to look at (if you are not already familiar with your daily Lead Source count) is the "Lead Source Performance" Report. Change the Date Range to This Week and note the average number of Leads received daily by your company.
When deciding on the Re-Call Settings and Auto-Release Call Limit settings for your Campaigns, it's important to understand your call center's daily calling capacity. Use the data we've just reviewed to estimate the Total number of Calls your team can reasonably call during a single work day.
You'll want to think about the total number of New Leads coming into your system, and the Total number of Re-Calls your call center will be making each day. Be sure to consider ALL Campaigns currently being worked as well as any new Campaigns you are looking to create.
For example, if your team can make 200 calls per day and you have 30 New Leads coming in each day, and you are calling from 10 Campaigns, you want to make sure you are not prompting more than 17 Re-Calls per Day from each of your Campaigns.
Understanding Re-Call Settings
Re-Call settings dictate how frequently you will Call the Prospect again after a call was dispositioned. The duration between Re-calls is based on the Disposition selected. For example: In the Campaign depicted below, if the call center agent chooses "No Answer" the Next Scheduled Re-Call will be set for 1 Day and 1 Hour later. If the agent choose "Left Message" the Next Scheduled Re-Call will be set for 2 Days and 1 Hour later.
Understanding Auto-Release Call Limit Setting
The Auto-Release Call Limit Setting dictates how many Re-Calls will be prompted in the Queue before this Prospect is Released from the Campaign and moved to a different Campaign.
Adjusting Re-Call Duration or Auto-Release Call Limit
If you find that your call center has a large number of Pending Re-Calls building up within a Campaign and you do not plan to hire more call center agents, the easiest way to relieve the congestion in the Queue is by lowering the Auto-Release Call Limit. This means your company will not be contacting the Prospect as many times during their time in the Campaign, but it also assures that an older lead's Re-Call is not holding up the Queue and preventing your staff from calling on fresher leads.
If you do plan to increase your call center staff and thus increase capacity for calling in the future, instead of changing Call Limit settings, you can instead shorten the Re-Call Durations so that your call center WILL be prompted to call the Prospect more often, thus completing all the desired Re-calls in a shorter period of time. If the Prospect reached the Call Limit or Age Limit they will be released appropriately.
Note: Changing Campaign settings will only impact new Prospects brought into the Queue AFTER the change was made. Any Pending Re-Calls in the Campaign will still maintain the original Auto-Release Call Limit setting that was in place when that Prospect was pulled into the Campaign. For this reason, you may need to Release Campaign Members from the Campaign in order to clear out Re-Calls which have a larger Call Limit or possibly no Call Limit.
How do we know if we're generating more Re-Calls than we can handle?
Use the out-of-the-box Report "Re-Calls by Campaign" to quickly see all the Pending Re-Calls in your system, grouped by the Campaign. Note the Scheduled Re-Call Time field:
You'll want to re-Group the Report by Scheduled Re-Call Time, to see the number of Re-Calls which should be made each day. Change the Date Range to Scheduled Re-Call Time equals "Tomorrow". If you are not familiar with how to remove Groupings or add Groupings to a Report, see also: How to change a Report Grouping
Call Center managers will want to regularly keep an eye on the number of Re-Calls being generated each day, in comparison to the number of new Leads coming in, and the number of Completed Calls each day. Noticing Re-Call trends and adjusting Campaign Re-Call Durations and Call Limit settings will assure that your call center does not have an abundance of old Leads in Campaigns they do not belong in.
What if we have Old Leads stuck in our Campaigns?
You'll want to Release older Campaign Members to assure your Call Queue list stays fresh and up-to-date. Particularly if you find you have a large number of old Pending Re-Calls the best course of action (after changing Call Limit setting) is to Release the Campaign Members from the Campaign. See also: Retiring Campaigns and Releasing Campaign Members
Open your Campaign and Click the Retire button.
Section 1 labeled Remove uncalled Prospects is where you can remove anyone who has not yet been called if you plan to discontinue use of this Campaign and Retire it. In this example, we are trying to remove old leads that are clogging up the Queue, so we will disregard this section.
In the Resolve pending Re-Calls section you can take action on any pending Re-Call in this Campaign based on the 'Re-Call Reason'. Click the 'View by Re-Call Reason' and select a 'Call Disposition'
Click the checkboxes next to each Re-Call you would like to take action on. Click the checkbox at the column header to select all records in the list:
If this Prospect should be in a different Campaign, click 'Move to another campaign' to send the Re-Calls to another active Campaign. This is the best practice to ensure none of the Re-Call information is lost and the Prospect is called back according to the Re-Call times set in the previous Campaign:
Click the 'Assign to campaign' dropdown and select the Campaign you would like to send the Re-Calls to:
If these Re-Calls are incredibly old (more than 180 Days ago) you'll likely want to move them into a larger Campaign like "Past Customers" (for Prospect's who have purchased from you previously), or "Existing Database" (for Leads who never made a purchase). See also Common Campaign Builds and Campaign Structure Diagram.
If you notice the Re-Calls are approximately a month old and your Campaign structure is based on Lead Age, you can Assign the month-old Re-Calls to the appropriate Campaign. For example: Assigning a Re-Call from a "0-30 Days Fresh" campaign to the "31-60 Days Fresh" Campaign.
Click the 'Reassign' button to move all of the selected Re-Calls to the selected Campaign:
Once the Re-Calls are reassigned, you will notice the 'Total pending Re-Calls' number decrease. Repeat this process for all of the Re-Calls still in the Campaign:
Keep in mind, Pending Re-Calls re-assigned to a different Campaign will still maintain the original Re-Call priority setting and Auto-Release Call Limit and Age Limit Settings the Campaign where the Re-Call first originated. If you are adjusting any Global Campaign Defaults or Campaign Auto-Release Settings, you should always Release Campaign Members from the Campaign in order to clear out Re-Calls.
Also, if you are clearing Re-Calls that are extremely old, you may want to simply Complete the Marketing Opportunity and Release the Prospect from all Campaigns, allowing them to organically fall into another Campaign based on lead age and the criteria you have set for your Campaign structure.
Click 'Mark as complete' to complete the Re-Call and release the Marketing Opportunity out of the Campaign. NOTE: completing a Scheduled Re-Call will prevent your Users from taking action on the Re-Call. Once complete the Marketing Opportunity will be organically pulled into another Campaign, based on Lead age and your Campaign Structure.
