5 benefits of building decision trees for contact centers

What is a decision tree?

A decision tree is a guided workflow that represents data in the step-by-step flowchart, illustrating how each decision leads to a specific outcome. Using decision trees is particularly helpful in a contact center scenario, where a contact center executive is expected to have the relevant responses to each query and issue raised by a customer.

An interactive decision tree is represented in chart form. Hence, a contact center executive can easily understand and comprehend without reading or comprehension. Since the decision tree is a step-by-step guided workflow, they interactively guide users to arrive at the solution step-wise, leaving no areas or possibilities that lead to the solution untouched. 

The decision tree starts with a question node and is then subdivided into yes or no tracks that are the used basis of the customer’s answers. This straightforward logical reasoning becomes a robust tool that can be used to strengthen many service processes. The use of strong decision trees for contact centers better equip your customer service executives for excellent customer service.

Most Organizations use a decision tree tool as it relies on vital organizational data to generate outcomes and help managers make critical decisions.

5 benefits of using decision trees in contact centers to improve customer service

A decision tree is an all-rounder when it comes to tools of knowledge management. There are several benefits decision trees offer. Let us look at a few of them below: 

1. Improved First Contact Resolution(FCR)

The decision tree software can be used to create call center scripts that help agents identify and choose the right actions to solve a customer’s query. 

As decision trees for contact centers typically map out the likelihood of a positive or negative outcome after a specific decision, customer service agents will be better equipped to handle multiple scenarios and steer them towards positive results.

This, thus, increases the chances of first-contact resolutions (FCR), ensuring that the customer walks away satisfied as quickly as possible. By implementing decision trees, you stand to improve customer retention and loyalty in the long run.

2. Reduced hold time

When customers call a customer care center for support, they are often placed on hold while executives search for the correct queries. The search process can include:

• Locating the appropriate documents
• Searching for customer service content
• Quickly brainstorming ideas with colleagues

All of this translates to long hold times for the customer. When you use decision trees for call centers, you must type in a keyword to locate the right tree for the topic on the system and follow the steps illustrated for the next best action. This means agents can search for solutions and call flow scripts while speaking with customers, ensuring they don’t have to stay on hold.

3. Boosts productivity

Quick access to verifiable solutions also means that agents are less likely to take a long time to resolve a single call.

This offers two main benefits:

• Customers don’t feel wasted time
• Executives are freed faster to attend to more calls

In other words, you can expect a boost in your agent’s productivity. A productivity boost helps customer care executives resolve more critical issues than waste time on one call, thus keeping as many customers as possible happy. 

4. Aids SOP adherence 

One of the critical areas of worry, particularly for a call center, is tracking the quality of an agent’s responses. With over a thousand calls every day, ensuring that each employee’s adherence to SOPs & his/her responses to customers is appropriate, becomes a difficult challenge. 

Decision trees for contact centers can be a very beneficial tool in this regard, as they can assist agents in standardizing their responses and meeting compliance requirements.

While this guarantees that customer service executives do not unintentionally provide customers with incorrect information, it saves operators time while considering an excellent response to relay to customers. 

5. Enhances customer experience

Decision trees are not just for the backend of customer service but can be extended to the front end of customer service through customer self-service portals. By doing so, decision trees help customers make simple decisions while being guided by step-by-step workflows. 

The step-by-step- workflows essentially create the same call center script into a front-end user interface to access this without calling customer service. 

When your call volume is high or if some simple customer queries can be answered without the need for human assistance, decision trees are your best bet at giving exceptional customer service. 

Conclusion 

Decision trees are the one-of-a-kind, all-in-one solution for customer support. Decision trees help empower your agents to navigate calls more efficiently and managers to make effective long-term decisions. This knowledge management tool can put your organization on the fast track to growth and success.