11 Contact Center Challenges to Conquer for Olympic-Level Performance

The thrill of competition, the joy of victory, the roar of the crowd... These moments define the Olympics and can resonate in the sometimes high-stakes world of sales – especially for contact center revenue teams. While you may not be in a stadium, the spirit of competition and the drive to succeed can be intense.

If you're a manager, your role is akin to a coach. You want the best equipment and training for your team to give them the strongest chance of winning. You want to outshine the competition and consistently hit your targets.

Achieving this level of performance takes more than just hard work. It requires the right strategies, tools, and teamwork to overcome obstacles and seize opportunities. Low contact rates, evolving compliance issues, and scaling for high call volumes are just some of the hurdles your team needs to clear. But with the right game plan, you can tackle these challenges head-on and come out on top.

Just like athletes overcoming rigorous trials on their way to the Olympics, call centers face many challenges on the road to peak performance. With the right tools and strategies, you can transform these challenges into opportunities for growth and success.

One of the biggest obstacles sales call centers encounter is low contact rates. You can't sell to people if you can't connect and talk to them. It's frustrating when your team puts in the effort, but inefficient technology stands in the way of connecting with prospects. This challenge can feel like hitting a wall in a race, slowing down momentum and hindering progress.

Many issues can lead to low contact rates, including poor (or no) voicemail detection and caller IDs that are blocked or labeled as spam. We'll get into those below.

Using an autodialer that aligns with your campaign needs increases efficiencies for data (leads/lists), agents, and managers. The built-in automations also work to improve contact rates. Here are four types of autodialers and the campaigns they’re best suited for:

• Predictive Dialer: Perfect for larger campaigns that aim for maximum talk time. It uses algorithms to predict when agents will be available and dials multiple numbers simultaneously, connecting agents only when a lead answers the call, saving agent time.

• Power Dialer: Best for smaller-scale operations wanting to reduce agent downtime by automatically dialing the next caller in your data on behalf of the agent as soon as they finish a call. It connects agents only when a prospect answers the call.

• Progressive Dialer: For agents that need to quickly review lead records prior to calls, but also need to maintain a consistent pace, this option builds in a limited timeframe for review before the next call is placed.

• Preview Dialer: Suitable for campaigns where agents need more time to review information before making a call, such as complex sales or high-value leads. Agents can see the lead's details before they decide to place the call.

Inaccurate and slow answering machine detection leaks voicemails to agents. And that's not only a frustrating nuisance when it's persistent, but is costly to the call center. Agents can spend an inordinate amount of time coding for answering machines instead of talking to live prospects, which takes a major toll on morale and productivity. This is similar to an athlete training rigorously but using outdated equipment, leading to wasted effort and missed opportunities.

Before switching to Convoso’s gold-standard voicemail detection, Jesse Daniels, VP of Sales at One Health Direct told us, “Our agents were spending about 70% of their day coding for answering machines. It was very, very unproductive."

Convoso's advanced Answering Machine Detection (AMD) delivers 97% accuracy, allowing agents to focus on live conversations rather than dispositioning for voicemails. This technology boosts productivity and morale, enabling your team to have more conversations and to close more sales.

Managing flagged numbers is a major challenge for call centers. When carriers flag your numbers as spam, it's like an athlete being disqualified before the race even begins. This issue drastically lowers contact rates, making it difficult to hit your sales goals.

Contact centers today need a strong caller ID management tool that at a minimum includes automated remediation, which identifies flagged numbers and rests or re-registers them automatically.

While you can manually do this, it’s a time-consuming process that’s almost impossible to do at scale.

Convoso's ClearCallerID Pro offers a suite of tools that not only automatically remediates flagged and blocked numbers, but also works to prevent the problem in the first place. Its analytics also provide greater visibility into how flagged or blocked numbers are affecting contact rates. For example, as the call center director for one of our home services customers told us, "With ClearCallerID Pro we’re seeing our contact rates increase from 12% to consistently hitting 15 and 16% for our freshest leads. We’re no longer paying a third party to manage our DIDs, which previously cost us $3,000 per month.”

By using these advanced caller ID reputation management features, your call center can maintain high contact rates and a solid reputation, allowing your team to concentrate on connecting with prospects and increasing conversions.

Like an olympic sprinter shooting out of the starting blocks, lightning-fast speed to lead is vital for call center campaigns because new leads are most receptive shortly after they express interest. The first company to contact a prospect has a 35% to 50% chance of closing the sale, so a slow speed to lead can decimate your conversions.

Most companies strive to reach out to prospects within seconds of receiving a contact form. If you wait even a few minutes, the likelihood of making the sale drops significantly.

To stay competitive, your call center must engage new leads first. Set up your lead distribution to route new leads instantly to available agents, and use omnichannel outreach strategies that automate repeated attempts to connect through multiple channels such as phone, SMS, and email. These strategies increase the chances of immediate contact.

A software provider that offers a powerful dialer engine, like Convoso’s DX5, helps you engage new leads almost instantly, ensuring that your team connects with prospects when they’re most likely to respond.

It can be difficult to deal with high call volumes during peak times, such as seasonal industry bumps, product launches or special promotions. Without proper management, this can lead to long wait times and frustrated prospects.

Purpose-built sales dialers have the capabilities to rapidly scale up or down to accommodate fluctuations in call volume - without "breaking." This includes the ability to scale campaigns as large lead lists are fed into the system.

Automated systems manage workflows and schedule callbacks, ensuring leads are contacted at optimal times. This maintains a steady flow of communication and prevents leads from falling through the cracks.

Skills-based routing and automated systems are essential for efficiently handling high call volumes. Skills-based routing can be used to match calls with the most qualified agents based on their skills and experience. This ensures that high-value leads are handled by top-performing agents, improving customer satisfaction and increasing conversion rates.

By using these advanced features, your contact center can maintain smooth operations, reduce wait times, and enhance overall productivity. Just as athletes benefit from a coordinated training plan, your call center will thrive with well-organized and efficiently managed call routing and automation systems.

Ineffective lead management is like an athlete training without a strategic plan. Without a robust system to track and nurture leads, your team can miss valuable opportunities, leading to wasted efforts and lower conversion rates.

To manage leads effectively, you need advanced tools that automate omnichannel workflows and set tailored outreach cadences. These features help your team contact leads at the optimal time, streamlining your lead management process and improving engagement and conversion rates.

One critical aspect of effective lead management is having lead-level control, especially for managing expensive, high-quality leads that require a customized approach. Without it, any change made to a lead in a prospect list affects every lead in that list, making it impossible to be highly strategic.

Michael Francik, Co-Founder of TruAlliant, said, “With Convoso, you have a lead-level of control. Although it has that campaign list lead structure or hierarchy, we can customize how we want to process a lead based on dial attempt and disposition...It's the only predictive dialer that gives you a lead level of control.”

The best athletes have a well-crafted workout and training program intentionally developed and deployed to accelerate and improve their performance. For contact centers, a disjointed campaign management can significantly hinder efficiency. When campaigns aren’t organized effectively, they increase agent downtime and reduce overall performance.

To improve campaign management, look for call center software with these features:

• Flexible Campaign Configuration: Tailor each campaign to specific needs for better organization and execution.

• Simultaneous Campaigns: Keep agents busy and maximize productivity.

• Efficient Design and Management: Reduce the time spent setting up and maintaining campaigns for smoother operations.

• Real-Time Monitoring: Track performance metrics and make adjustments on the fly to ensure campaign effectiveness.

With well-organized and efficiently managed campaigns, your call center can maintain smooth operations, reduce agent downtime, and enhance overall productivity.

Olympic athletes meticulously track their performance to fine-tune their training regimens and improve results. Call centers must likewise rely on detailed reporting to optimize everything from outbound campaigns to list viability to agent performance. Unfortunately, many struggle with software providers that offer limited reporting capabilities.

To make smart data-driven decisions, call center managers and directors need access to both real time and historical information. That said, different call centers will have specific metrics that they monitor, so it's important to find a vendor that offers highly customizable reports and dashboards.

Convoso’s advanced reporting, offers a multitude of standard reports like Lead Penetration or Agent Revenue that pull in relevant metrics. But the system is capable of pulling any combination of data important to your operation, which allows you to get a granular view of performance in different areas so you can identify aspects that need attention.

According to the managing partner of a health insurance broker customer, "The insight that I’m able to get from this system is better than anything in the market today...Having that [data readily available] has allowed us to be much more efficient in operating our business."

By tracking KPIs in real time and customizing reports to meet specific needs, you can quickly respond to changes and make strategic adjustments. This approach eliminates guesswork and ensures that you drive campaign improvements, agent performance, and overall call center efficiency.

Navigating compliance risks is another significant challenge for contact centers. Similar to sports, breaking established rules can be costly, and as regulations continuously evolve, trying to operate in compliance can feel like running a marathon with unexpected hurdles dropped onto the course.

Contact centers need technology that supports compliance by automating rules wherever possible. Choose a software provider that prioritizes compliance to help you manage data properly, contact customers at the right times, and avoid over-contacting. Robust features like DNC scrubbing, automated consent checks, time-of-day restrictions, and real-time monitoring help call centers stay on top of regulatory changes.

As Convoso customer Heath Wilson, VP of Operations at 448 Recruitment, said, "In this day and age, with all TCPA rules, you've got to properly manage your data. You've got to make sure you're contacting customers at the right time. And that's something that Convoso helps us to do to make sure that we've got the right cadences, and we're contacting customers when we should and, more importantly, that we're not over-contacting."

Convoso’s compliance features, such as DNC scrubbing, StateTracker™, Click-to-Comply™, and CallCatalyst™️ support your call center’s compliance efforts, much like a coach who helps athletes follow all the rules to avoid disqualification.

Static scripts can be a major problem for call centers. Agents get stuck with long, cumbersome scripts that don't personalize conversations or adapt adequately to the interaction at play, leading to lower engagement and productivity.

Dynamic scripting offer a more effective solution. This software tool changes the script in real time based on customer responses and pulls data from your CRM to personalize information like the customer’s name, location, and history. This adaptable approach helps train new agents, lending confidence and landing success quicker.

This flexibility helps agents navigate conversations smoothly, boosting their performance and morale, leading to higher conversions and customer satisfaction. Another bonus of dynamic scripting is in supporting compliance around required language to be used according to different states, ensuring consistency and mitigating risk.

Convoso customer Zach Helton at Innovative Financial Group Holdings said, "The scripting has been the bread and butter for us. Especially for the agents, all they have to do is read the script based off of what [customers] answer…It used to be a 17-page long document. It was a headache."

Low agent morale is a significant hurdle for many call centers, and it’s often due to issues outside the agent’s control, like low-performing dialer software or inaccurate voicemail detection. Even an Olympic-level athlete would struggle to maintain their confidence and performance level if every training session was bogged down in unproductive tasks or wasted time waiting around.

This issue can lead to high turnover rates and decreased overall performance. As a result, recruitment and training costs rise while revenue falls. To tackle this, look for software providers that offer tools to streamline tasks and enhance system performance so agents spend more time talking to live prospects giving them more opportunities to convert the lead.

Real-time performance dashboards can provide agents with instant feedback and progress tracking, helping them stay engaged and motivated. Like any athlete wanting to improve performance, persistent agent coaching is essential for growth and improvement.

Ready to take your call center performance to Olympic heights? Equip your team with the best tools and strategies to overcome challenges and achieve gold-medal success. Schedule a demo today to learn how our solutions can help you stay ahead of the competition and drive your call center to victory.