After Call Work (ACW): What Is It and How Can It Be Improved?

Almost all businesses face fierce competition today. When it comes to creating a loyal customer base and satisfying your customers, the customer experience is one of your organization’s greatest assets.

Recent studies have shown that a better customer experience increases the likelihood of customers making additional purchases and improves customers’ retention rates. Because of this, many organizations outsource their customer service to expert outsourced call centers that have a substantial track record of providing superior customer service.

Often, call center managers strive to optimize efficiency by decreasing after-call work, which is the work that agents finish after a call has ended. Although you can limit agents’ “After Call Work” time in your call center software, it’s not as straightforward as that.

To reduce after-call work, the call center must optimize agents’ skills, equip agents with the right tools, and streamline business processes. Here we’ll learn more about after-call work and how we can improve it.

What Is After Call Work, and how long should it take?

After Call Work is the work to solve the customer complaint problem, it mainly includes scheduling the follow-up call and actions, recording call details like contact problem, contact outcome, further steps, updating colleagues, writing notes, etc.

Because it is performed after the customer has called, it is also known as post-call processing. The time is also known as wrap-up time and is included in calculating Average Handling Time even though it does not involve customers.

After Call Work is the only parameter that can be effectively reduced in a call center where customer experience is a top priority item, and average handle time is a critical KPI.

Factors Affecting After-Call Work (ACW)

Different factors affect after-call work, and some of these factors are the type of your call center, internal process, call types, etc. Depending on these factors, the after-call work time often varies from call to call and call center to call center.

1. Type of Call Center

After-call work time depends on the type of call center. The different kinds of contact centers tend to spend different amounts of time on after-call work, some spending no time at all while others prefer to capture as much extra information as possible.

2. Internal Process

It is also greatly affected by the internal process of the contact center. As an example of how an internal process can lengthen wrap time, some contact centers, such as agents, add extra customer information into the CRM during after-call work.

3. Agent Behaviour

The conduct of the agent can also influence After-call work time. Sometimes, agents may want to prolong their wrap times to avoid dealing with another call, and some may be slower at typing than others.

4. Call Type

It is unlikely that a long wrap-up time will be experienced if the contact is simply transactional. In some instances, however, logging the call outcome may take longer if the call is more unique.

Tips to improve after-call work

You can reduce after-call work in a number of ways, and here are a few ways to reduce after-call work:

1. Improve agent training

A good training program can significantly reduce the amount of after-call work. A call center’s agents should be proficient in using the software and business tools during the agent training process.

After-call work can be extremely time-consuming simply because it involves finding the right tab to enter information, browsing business tools, and consulting training manuals to find answers. Make sure agents understand everything about your business tools and processes before they call by training them before they begin to speak.

When training agents, it is also important to teach them effective listening behaviors, note-taking, and who to ask when they do not know what to do. A properly trained frontline agent will eliminate minutes, seconds, or even hours of after-call work every week.

2. Automate tasks

Automation is the standard method of managing repetitive tasks in call centers. The automation of after-call work reduces the amount of work your partners require while reducing errors and ensuring the information in all of your integrated solutions is always accurate.

In the call center, many tasks are repeated, including listing missed calls, creating a new contact, recording calls, etc. You can reduce your average after-call work time by automating these tasks, which helps you improve your call center’s average call handling time.

Automation will reduce post-call work for agents, improve productivity, and streamline business processes. Similarly, you can integrate various business tools into one unified desktop, eliminating the need to enter information multiple times in multiple systems.

Your agent will update information in one tool, and the updated information will be reflected in all the integrated tools. Also, when you finish a call, your help desk, CRM, call center software, etc., will be updated with call metrics, call recordings, disposition codes, and any notes associated with it.

3. Optimize business processes

Call center agents have to follow several steps in order to complete their tasks. In order to eliminate unnecessary steps, management must analyze each step carefully.

The process should be a continual and periodic one, and agents should be trained to follow changes to the process as soon as they are made. By doing this, agents will also get more satisfaction out of the process.

Call center agents can significantly reduce their after-call workload by streamlining business processes. Examine the various steps your agents have to follow in your call center and see if any redundant steps, inefficient processes, or even paperless processes can be eliminated.

In addition to reducing after-call work, streamlining business processes reduces agent burnout and frustration. It is important to optimize your call center software to improve your agents’ overall efficiency, thereby reducing the amount of time they spend on tasks while their after-call work clock ticks.

4. Use a Knowledge base

When completing after-call work, nothing wastes time more than to have to consult training manuals, email engineers, or call a colleague to find an answer to a common question. It would be best if you always had the solution to the customer’s problem available when they explain their problem.

First, you should list all the frequently occurring problems and their solutions and compile them in the Knowledge Base. Additionally, as new problems come up and their solutions are found over time, you should update your database.

In this way, answers to questions can be quickly found without involving third parties or searching multiple databases. All information regarding the system is to be available in real-time to the agents via the CRM software and other call center software.

5. Encourage internal communication

While the agent’s after-call work clock is running, you don’t want them walking across the hall seeking help from another colleague to complete a task when the answer isn’t available in the agent knowledge base.

A system like Slack, Element, and others, which were developed especially for internal communication, makes it easy for call center agents to ask a question of the technical team, a manager, or a colleague, avoiding the need to search for the answer everywhere. As a result, work after-hours will be reduced, and collaboration and cohesiveness will be increased.

Final Thought

After-call work is the task done after hanging up the call with the customer to make sure the customer’s problem is solved. It is the important part while calculating the average handling time. If you want to improve Average Handling Time at your call centers, then you must reduce After call work time.

Various factors influence how long the wrap time takes, including technology, the type of contact, and internal processes.

If you are aware of this, you can put preventative measures in place to reduce wrap time while protecting the morale of your advisors and improving the quality of the information they are entering into your contact center.

Think carefully about these tips to reduce ACW presented in this article and determine which would be most beneficial to your organization if you are searching for ways to reduce wrap time.

KrispCall is one of the emerging virtual phone systems for your business. And if you are looking for a solution to improve average call handling time, then KrispCall might be the one.

With features like Intelligent Call Routing, Call transfer, Voicemail Drop, CRM Phone, and many more, you can easily improve your after-call work. In addition to these features, what makes KrispCall compelling is its affordable subscription packages. You also have a Schedule Free KrispCall demo now, to explore the features and confirm that it’s best suited for your business.

So what are you waiting for? Try Krispcall and improve your business communication!!!

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Head of Content @ KrispCall (or, in plain English, I'm the guy responsible for ensuring that every blog post we publish is EPIC).