I recently had a conversation with a client who manages a robust inbound sales team. He said to me: “We’re really lucky because we’ve got a great team in place. The ‘problem’ is that we’re struggling to properly manage the increasing volume of calls. The wait can be really long. Callers are not connected to the right agent. It frustrates our customers and it frustrates our team. I’m afraid that we’re losing business over it.”

Here’s the thing: He is not alone in this issue. In fact, I hear from people with this problem every month. The good news is that a high call volume doesn’t have to be a “problem” at all.

We love lists. This is our list of our top three scalable solutions to make inbound sales operations more efficient, organized, and capable of handing larger call volumes:

Call Queues

The first step to organizing growing teams and call volumes is with call workflow management. Creating a system of Call Queues lets you place the calls in priority order, create announcements for team members and callers, configure a strategy for managing the queue, and equitably divide work between team members.

This highly-configurable feature allows managers to configure how long a phone will ring before it’s passed to the next agent, the time it takes for the caller to be connected, and how much time an agent is allocated between calls. This is a great tool that lets them finish up entering information from the last call before moving on to the next. To learn how this works, check out our help desk tutorial.

Escape From Queue

When wait times are high, customers will become frustrated and you might lose their business altogether. For callers who don’t have urgent issues or don’t have time to wait on hold, Escape from Queue provides the opportunity to be rerouted to voicemail or other options. With Escape from Queue, you can make sure that you don’t lose an important call, key information, or even a potential customer.

Queue Call Back

In my opinion, Queue Call Back is a game changer for inbound sales teams. 

As a customer, waiting on hold just to hear the same “the next available representative will be with you shortly” message over and over again is mind numbing. Instead of perpetuating this unnecessary frustration, give your customers a choice.

Surprise them with this: “If you would no longer like to hold, please leave your number and our next available agent will call you right back”. Now instead of waiting on hold, they’re free to do other things, while the peace of mind that you will call them back shortly. In addition, a friendly call back is the kind of personal touch that customers are excited to receive.

As I always tell my clients, having the right tools and resources in place keeps employees happy, and happy employees means happy customers.