8 First Call Resolution Tips: Smart Ways To Improve Your FCR

By applying proven first call resolution tips, you can resolve customer issues more quickly and accurately. This is critical to your business because speedy solutions from support departments are one of the most important aspects of the customer experience.

Is your contact center team clear on how to “get it right the first time” during customer interactions? Consider our top tips for better first call resolution (FCR) rates and why they matter.

Key Takeaways:

• A high FCR strengthens your brand with customers and employees.
• A better FCR is a smart step toward increased profitability.
• Rely on analytics to determine how to improve your FCR.
• Regularly train your staff with top first call resolution tips.
• A robust online knowledge base makes it easier for customers to resolve problems quickly.

Why You Need To Try These First Call Resolution Tips

FCR correlates directly to customer satisfaction and employee engagement. The benefits of improving your FCR include:

• A stronger brand and more loyal customers
• A higher customer lifetime value
• Confident and productive agents, leading to less churn and lower employment costs
• Customers becoming brand evangelists

Naturally, loyal customers and efficient agents result in higher revenues as well.

8 of Our Favorite First Call Resolution Tips

Boosting a key performance indicator (KPI) requires more than some cursory reminders. These first call resolution tips are essential for better FCR results.

1. Use Analytics To Understand the Root of the Issue

Start by figuring out where challenges lie by examining your current FCR. Calculate this by measuring how many calls come from the same customer in a specific period.

When you figure out which agents were the initial contact, talk to them and review other data to figure out why customers had to call back for more help. Your contact center’s analytics and reporting features simplify this process.

For example, Intermedia’s AI Agent Evaluator uses speech analytics to show customer sentiment on calls. It can also quickly let you know call topics to see which issues are leading to repeated contacts.

2. Set Balanced Priorities

One reason you may be struggling with FCR is that agents are focusing too much on lowering their average handling time. If you’re incentivizing speed over accuracy, you need to figure out how to strike a balance with rewards for higher FCR rates.

3. Educate Your Staff

Don’t throw new agents into the fire too quickly or move someone to a new area of the contact center team without proper training. In that training, prioritize sharing and demonstrating first call resolution tips. Over time, be sure to update agents on the company’s initiatives and goals so they can anticipate questions and be ready to answer.

4. Make It Easier for Agents To Find Answers

Of course, agents can’t know everything. Help them by providing tools that allow them to get fast answers to customer queries. A key way to do this is by integrating productivity software into your contact center app.

It’s also a good idea to get your private branch exchange and contact center as a service from the same provider. This streamlines communications between agents and internal subject matter experts. For instance, this integration makes it easier for employees to see who is available to help.

5. Give Experienced Agents a Little More Leverage

Another issue might be that your agents don’t have enough agency. If any of your policies are restricting capable agents from solving a problem, find ways to give more experienced employees additional latitude.

You might do this by creating levels of seniority that come with new privileges. This would also serve as a practical way to give agents a sense of progress before they’re ready to become supervisors.

6. Give Customers a Comprehensive and Accessible Knowledge Base

This may be one of the most surprising first call resolution tips. However, knowledgeable customers also lead to better FCR. Typically, customers are going to search online for answers before calling your support team. As a result, they might not need to call at all, leaving agents more time to deal with more pressing matters.

Even if customers can’t find the answers online, they gain a better understanding of the product and can let agents know what they’ve already tried. Furthermore, agents can refer callers to this help center to give specific guidance on various support topics.

7. Use a Contact Center With Intelligent Call Routing

Intelligent call routing gets customers to the appropriate agent from the start. This also prevents transfers, which contribute to confusion and exasperation when customers have to repeatedly explain their situation to new parties.

8. Keep Monitoring Your Progress

This first call resolution tip is essentially going back to step 1. Keep evaluating and seeing how your team is doing. FCR should be an agent performance metric that’s at the top of your list.

Don’t just celebrate improvement. Use your analytics dashboards to figure out why you did better. Ask:

• When did FCR improve?
• What was different?
• Who was supervising, or what was the makeup of the staff?
• Which techniques were responsible for the improved FCR?

By keeping FCR top of mind, even after you seem to have mastered it, you won’t slip back into any old habits or get lax about the customer experience.

Make These First Call Resolution Tips Easier With a World-Class Contact Center

These first call resolution tips will help you satisfy your customers and earn more brand loyalty. Getting it right starts with using a platform that supports your efforts. Reach out to our Intermedia team to learn more about how our Contact Center software helps you improve FCR and other KPIs.

Rob Oscanyan

Robert Oscanyan is a Senior Director of Product Marketing at Intermedia, where he focuses on helping businesses improve their customer experience using Intermedia's award-winning cloud communications solutions. Rob has over a decade of experience spanning market research, messaging, and elevating the voice of the customer. In his free time, he constantly creating new adventures with his wife, seven kids, and a small army of pets.