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It sometimes feels like we live in an angry age. It certainly feels that way to customer-facing staff, who have been subject to a growing torrent of abuse since the start of the pandemic.

In fact, according to the Institute of Customer Service, 60% of customer-facing staff have experienced hostility from customers since early 2020, ranging from shouting and swearing to racial abuse, death threats, spitting and physical attacks. The Institute is running a campaign to highlight the issue.

But it’s not just abuse. Contact centre staff in many sectors are also fielding a growing number of calls from distressed customers who may be struggling to pay bills or meet other commitments.

Research from Forrester in 2021 found that nearly 67% of contact centres were dealing with more complex customer enquiries than a year earlier, and that 70% were facing more calls from “emotionally charged” customers.

Much of this research was carried out during the heat of the pandemic, but with the cost of living crisis in full swing, the situation is unlikely to ease.

With that in mind, we’ve put together six tips to help contact centre staff deal with angry or emotional customers.

6 ways to deal with difficult customers:

1) Have clear processes in place

In most cases, angry customers can be calmed by an advisor who takes their issue seriously and, if the matter can’t be dealt with there and then, describes a clear path to resolution.

Have guidelines in place for every eventuality and a consistent series of next steps. Make sure your team know them (intelligent scripting can help) and can talk them through with customers. Customers often get frustrated when they can’t see an end to the issue or worry they’ll spend long periods of time in call queues or being passed between departments.

When advisors take ownership of their issue, many customers quickly become calmer.

2) Give customers obvious ways to complain

It sounds counterintuitive, but making it easy for customers to complain is one way to keep them happy.

Most customers accept that mistakes sometimes happen. Frustrations arise when there’s no obvious way to draw an organisation’s attention to an error or oversight. Advertise a complaints line and email, and ensure they’re monitored. Customers will appreciate easy ways to report issues, as long as organisations respond promptly and appropriately.

3) Remain calm and constructive

However irate a customer gets, team members should stay calm, focusing on what they can do to help. It’s easy to get infuriated with customers who appear to be taking their own frustrations out on a blameless employee, but it’s also counterproductive. It will probably prolong the call, inflame emotions further and could lead to unnecessary escalation. Unless the customer becomes abusive, stay personable, and emphasise the steps you are taking – or will take – to resolve the problem. Empathy is crucial here. If the organisation is in error, agents should acknowledge that the customer has a right to be unhappy.

At the same time, advisors shouldn’t have to suffer insults and abuse. Have guidelines in place for them to follow in the event that an emotional caller becomes an insulting or threatening one. For example, some contact centres transfer rude and abusive customers to a recorded message.

4) Differentiate between angry customers and abusive ones

We should also reiterate again that customers have a right to complain about poor service or an error that costs them time and energy to resolve. An angry customer venting about the faulty processes of the organisation is not the same as an abusive one directing anger at an individual agent. Organisations should be able to accept honest criticism and act on it.

5) Offer callbacks

If a team member can’t resolve an issue during a call, the next best way to diffuse a difficult situation is to offer a callback. Advisors may need to involve another department in a customer complaint, or escalate it to a senior manager. Putting a customer on hold during this process can lead to growing frustration, especially if the wait is longer than a couple of minutes. Offer a callback so the customer can get on with their day while their complaint is dealt with. But if you do offer a callback you have to honour it, and at the time agreed.

6) Train your advisors

It’s a good idea to train your team to deal specifically with difficult calls, but training more generally is even more essential. In a nutshell, the more knowledgeable your team is, the more faith customers will have that they can and will resolve complex issues.

In fact, the kind of good contact centre management practices that help drive efficiency can also help to reduce the number of difficult calls agents have to deal with. For example, fast call answering can take the edge off a customer’s anger. Answering an email complaint within the advertised time shows you take complaints seriously. Intelligent call routing that gets them to the right person first time cuts out one cause of customer frustration.

In other words, having the tools in place to manage your contact centre effectively also helps to pacify difficult customers. Those tools should include intelligent scripting. Giving agents scripted guidance helps them lead difficult conversations to a satisfactory outcome. Download our ebook for more information on smart scripting and templates you can use in your own contact centres for dealing with difficult customers.  

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A recent survey of nearly 20,000 employers around the world found that almost 70% of businesses are having trouble hiring new employees, which is the highest level in 15 years.

In the face of such a challenging recruitment climate, the contact centre industry is in a particularly tough position. Attrition in the UK industry – the rate at which people leave their jobs every year – has been above 20% on average for almost two decades.

That is one person in five leaving their contact centre job every year. And that 20 year average may even understate the current situation, with one US study suggesting 40% of agents plan on leaving roles within the next 12 months.

Such high rates of attrition translate into substantial costs for employers.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development outlines where the costs come from.

The most obvious ones are:

• Administration of the resignation
• Recruitment and selection costs
• Induction training for the new employee

Hidden costs are more difficult to calculate but more serious in the long term and include the drop in productivity of new employees relative to experienced staff who have left.

Faced with these challenges, how should contact centre operators go about getting new staff and keeping existing ones?

Why is contact centre recruitment and retention getting even harder?

There is a widespread perception that contact centres can be a demanding environment to work in, particularly for agents. This has a knock-on effect on recruitment, with recent UK research confirming that “Entry level roles such as customer service agents and claims handlers are the most difficult roles to fill”

If entry level roles are difficult to recruit for, operators are then hit with the double-whammy of a high turnover of staff. Many of the reasons are longstanding and well-known, including a perceived lack of career progression.

The shift to remote working in response to the pandemic has added another complication when trying to understand and reduce staff turnover, because younger workers, who are among the most likely to apply for entry level jobs, can be the ones with most to gain from being in an office environment.

The youngest workers, so-called Generation Z (born after 1997), which includes recent school and university leavers, are the cohort who most want to spend time with colleagues and whose mental health is most likely to be affected by the potential isolation of home working, according to IPSOS research.

Isolation from colleagues due to remote working can also have a negative effect on training and staff development.

A high turnover rate of staff can quickly become a never ending cycle. Research has highlighted that:

• 70% of employees say a friend at work is crucial to job satisfaction.
• 50% said it gives them a stronger connection to their workplace. When an employee leaves, the chances are that their closest workmates will follow them.

Recruiting great contact centre staff

It’s not enough to post vacancies on a few jobs sites and wait for the CVs to roll in. Recruitment strategies have to be proactive, and mix and match different approaches.

How will you stand out from other local employers and reach people who might not yet be considering a job as an agent?

A fresh pair of eyes

There are specialist contact centre recruitment agencies. Why not invite one or two of them in for a meeting, or, more likely these days, invite them to an online meeting, and hear how they interpret the challenge?

Highlight progression opportunities

One of the main reasons contact centre agents give for quitting is the lack of progression opportunities. However, the contact centre industry does promote from within, and managers who started as agents are not uncommon. Why not tell those stories? Not only are team leader and manager roles often filled by former agents, but there are other parts of the business that agents can move into.

Turn a perceived weakness into a strength

Contact centres are often seen as stopgap jobs, but if progression opportunities are properly highlighted, then that can become a strength. Not everyone knows what they want to do after school or university, and a job as an agent is a way to step straight into the world of work, with on-the-job training from the start and a chance to weigh up other roles in the same organisation.

Flexible working, for those who want it

Working from home has become a fact of life during the pandemic, with two-thirds of operators supporting a combination of remote and on-site working in summer 2021. While flexible working will help you attract and retain staff overall, be aware that it is less of an incentive for younger workers.

Values matter for younger workers

In 2025, the youngest workers, Generation Z, will make up 27% of the workforce. Business magazine Forbes reports that these new workers are more value driven than their predecessors when considering which companies they want to work for.

[Listen] Aligning Culture and Organisational Strategy to Nurture Employee Engagement with Danny Wareham >

Tactics for reducing staff turnover

Once you have found and recruited great people, you want them to stay. Here are some of the ways you can reduce staff turnover.

Ask people why?

The best way to keep people is to find out why they leave. Conduct exit interviews,

and make it as easy as possible for people to be honest, even if you might not like what you hear. That means the exit interview shouldn’t be conducted by the agent’s line manager, and you should make it clear that the answers won’t affect future references.

Make sure people know how they can progress and learn

Is it clear to agents how they can progress within the organisation? Do they know what is expected of them in order to be considered for new roles? Do they have opportunities to upskill? Make this clear to staff members in order to give them a clear path and something to work towards.

Giving agents opportunities to increase their knowledge and learn new things is vital. A programme of regular training achieves two goals. It helps staff to be more successful, and it shows them that you take their career progression seriously. In an uncertain world, skills are an employee’s insurance against obsolescence. Help agents attain new levels of competence and they won’t feel the need to find them elsewhere.

[Watch] How to improve staff wellbeing and engagement in your contact centre >

Team building

Employees feeling part of a team is one of the signs of a company with high retention rates. Team building can begin on day one for new employees with a well thought through onboarding process. As new agents settle into their careers, team building should continue. This means making people feel valued and enhancing the social aspects of work.

Time is often tight in busy contact centres, but giving agents opportunities to meet and communicate with their colleagues is essential for morale. With remote working, social breaks in the kitchen and quick conversations across the desk are no longer possible, so it’s vital to put regular time aside for colleagues to get to know each other. If having a friend at work is critical to job satisfaction, then opportunities for staff to make social connections can be a driver for better retention rates.

Show younger workers that values matter to you as a business

You could support local charities and community groups, and why not let agents nominate where the money goes? This needn’t break the bank. A donation of new gardening tools for a community orchard, for example, could make a huge difference while creating positive word-of-mouth marketing for your business. And that will help with hiring the right people in the future.

In addition, show that your values also include protecting the wellbeing of your workforce. That might mean appointing a mental health champion, or arranging mental health awareness training. Team leaders should use regular one-to-ones to ask agents about stress and workload, and look out for signs they might be struggling. Show you care about the wellbeing of employees and you’ll be rewarded with greater loyalty.

Give agents the tools to do the job well

It can be frustrating to have the right training and motivation to do a great job, then feel let down by the software you have to use. In one survey 80% of agents said having up-to-date software was critical to their engagement with the job, but only 30% said it was available in their current job. That gap speaks for itself.

The key ingredients in your recruitment and retention strategy

The fact is, recruiting and retaining good agents isn’t easy at the best of times, and it may be particularly difficult during a time that some have dubbed the “Great Resignation”.

But contact centre businesses can help themselves in this regard, creating the conditions that make them more appealing to a broader range of potential employees. Highlighting opportunities for progression, offering flexible working for those who want it and creating a caring and values-led environment are clearly key ingredients in any recruitment and retention strategy.

In other words, contact centre work may have an image problem, but confound expectations and you can attract and retain the professional workforce your business needs.

That’s according to our new study, Customer Engagement Burnout,¹ which surveyed 750 UK workers in customer-facing roles, including contact centre agents and those whose jobs regularly involve talking to customers over the phone.

Customer engagement workers play a vital role in the UK economy. The contact centre industry employs over 800,000 people, with millions more working in other roles talking to customers regularly on the phone, for example box office staff or sales professionals.

However, 72% of these workers say they are ‘burnt out’ or will be burnt out imminently, rising to 83% of those working in contact centres. As a result, the industry could be facing a similar talent crisis to the 2021 HGV driver shortage. Nearly half (49%) said they dislike their job and would be looking to move in the near future, rising to 62% of contact centre workers.

The reasons for this burnout are clear:

• 52% say their workload has increased dramatically since the beginning of the pandemic, and 43% are faced with long working hours
• 88% say the responsibilities within their existing role have expanded since the beginning of the pandemic, without a pay rise or promotion.
• On average, staff have taken on between one- and two-people’s work in addition to their own, with 10% even stretched to the capacity of three or more people.

Workers aren’t just overworked, they’re underappreciated. Nearly two thirds (63%) say their company thinks the end-customer experience is more important than employee wellbeing and 84% feel under pressure from management to deliver quantity over quality when it comes to interactions with customers.

Workers are also reporting that the support measures put in place aren’t having an impact. While just over half (54%) are aware of mental health support initiatives at their workplace, only 32% of them said their managers follow them ‘all the time’. And while 61% have some kind of specialist customer engagement technology to help them do their job, this is much more common in contact centres and is having limited impact on job satisfaction.

We’re calling for a commitment from industry leaders to make 2022 the year of the agent by transforming working practices to put the wellbeing of frontline customer service staff on the same footing as customer satisfaction.  

Ben Booth, CEO of MaxContact, said: “For those on the phone to customers every day, two years of working alone at the kitchen table, mounting workloads and little interaction with colleagues has taken its toll. People are telling us that they’re feeling overworked, under supported and aren’t hopeful that things are likely to change. Many are considering leaving their job, and even the industry, altogether.

“We need to make a change and fix the balance between customer satisfaction levels and investment in staff wellbeing.

“That’s why we’re making 2022 the year of the agent. While it’s down to each organisation to provide employees with competitive salaries, benefits and career progression opportunities to make these jobs attractive, we believe every part of the industry has a role to play.

“For us, this means putting workers’ wellbeing – the end-user of our platform – at the heart of everything we do. We’re making sure technology is actually helping staff, including reducing time spent on menial, repetitive tasks, increasing efficiencies of people and making it simple and easy to deliver great interactions with customers so they feel good about their work – without unnecessary stress.

“Those working in customer-facing roles are the hidden backbone of society – we need to make sure that we’re repaying their commitment with the support they deserve.”

1. MaxContact commissioned independent market research company, Censuswide, to survey a nationally representative sample of 752 workers employed in customer-facing roles, with 250 respondents that work in contact centres, and 502 respondents who speak to customers every day on the phone. The poll was conducted between 19^th and 26^th November 2021. Unless stated otherwise, all figures were drawn from this poll. 

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In the 1970s, big players in the burgeoning computer industry coined the phrase FUD.

It stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, and it’s what behemoths like IBM tried to sow in the minds of customers in relation to plucky young upstarts like Microsoft and Apple.

It’s fair to say that the FUD strategy didn’t work too well in that particular instance, but it’s still used today whenever a large enterprise wants to scare customers away from a smaller and often more nimble competitor.

FUD for thought

It’s easy to see FUD’s appeal. When an agile new company comes into the market with new ideas and innovations, it can be hard to argue with their technology, which is often leading edge.

So FUD attacks ignore the product, and focus on the business. Will a smaller Independent Software Vendor (ISV) have the resources to support your solution? If they’re not widely known, can you even trust them? Will they even be in business a year or two down the line?

Get your FUD attack right and the flipside hardly needs to be mentioned because it’s staring everyone in the face. With a big, long-established market leader you get security, longevity and a safe pair of hands.

The FUD attack works because nobody ever got fired for taking the safe option.

The problem is that the safe option is often the wrong option for businesses (small or large) that want the best technology combined with the best support.

ISV vs enterprise

MaxContact is an ISV, and we come across the “small supplier” problem a lot. A potential customer will ask why they should go with us over a big name contact centre supplier like Cisco or Avaya. Isn’t it safer to go with the big behomoths?

In response, we ask them why they think a large provider is better for them, and respond on a point by point basis. It tends to go something like this…

Customer:  A bigger supplier will have more resources

MaxContact: They will, but most of those resources will be pointed at large enterprise clients. A common complaint from customers who eventually make their way to MaxContact is that they were forgotten by the large players. For small and medium sized businesses using enterprise providers, it can be difficult to even get an engineer on the phone.

That’s because enterprise providers are focused on enterprise customers. Or as one of our customers put it, after leaving a multinational supplier for MaxContact: “At 250 seats we thought we were big enough to have some influence, but we came to realise that we were little more than a rounding error on the provider’s P&L.”

C: A bigger supplier will have more and better skilled staff

MC: It will certainly have more staff, but SMBs are likely to spend most of their time in conversation with non-specialist support staff with limited technical knowledge.

The right technical people definitely exist, but getting to them can be a time-consuming and frustrating undertaking, especially for smaller businesses. In large providers, departments are siloed and staff roles have strict limitations. The person you’re talking to is likely to be competent in their area of work and no other.

By contrast, your small business isn’t an afterthought to an ISV. If you have an issue, you’ll get to the right people straight away. Every employee at MaxContact is aware that, when your organisation wins more business and adds more seats, we win too. We have a vested interest in your success.

As to skills, with an ISV you’ll be dealing with people who are closer to the heart of the business, who have an in-depth knowledge of the entire organisation. If they need an extra pair of eyes on your problem, they’ll call in an individual, not pass you on to a different department. It means issues get sorted more quickly and more completely.

And at least in MaxContact’s case, at the top of the business you’ll find industry specialists with long experience in contact centre software, who are still actively involved in the development of the solution. If you want to talk to one of us, just pick up the phone.

C: A smaller provider might get bought out

MC: While that’s true, it’s also unlikely to affect the customer experience. Businesses get bought because they’re successful, and why change a winning formula? It’s also the case – as with MaxContact – that when specialist investors take a stake in a company they bring business nous, but are happy to leave product development and customer service to the people who do it best.

And things can change just as easily at large providers, especially when shareholders want better returns. For example, one enterprise recently outsourced its entire first line support services to Romania. It’s a move that will look good on the balance sheet but might not seem such a great idea to an SME with a system outage.

C: Large providers listen to their customers more

MC: In reality, the opposite is true. When you deal with an ISV, you’re dealing with the people who make the product. We’re agile enough to listen to what you have to say and take suggestions on board. In effect, your feedback becomes part of our product roadmap.

When you go with a large provider, in many cases you won’t be dealing with them directly at all. Instead you’ll be dealing with a reseller that operates its own support team and is several steps removed from the development of the software. You can feedback all you like, but the team that develops your solution will likely remain entirely ignorant of your existence.

The takeaway

The takeaway here is that while nobody should be fired for choosing the safe option, nor should they be promoted for missing out on a solution that is a better fit for their business.

Innovation in contact centre software is often concentrated in ISVs where industry expertise still permeates from top to bottom. These businesses build great relationships with customers, go the extra mile, and strive to create mutual success, because it’s in their interests to do so. In an enterprise environment, SMBs are too easily ignored. Organisations that feel undervalued by their provider should remember that great things really do come in small packages.

MaxContact is a cloud contact centre solution provider, offering predictive outbound dialling and PCI-compliant omnichannel solutions built around your needs. Find out more about us. predictive outbound dialling and PCI-compliant omnichannel solutions built around your needs. Find out more about us.

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For contact centres, retaining top talent is the key to hitting performance targets. It’s no secret that high turnover rates can lead to poor efficiency, customer complaints and increased operational costs.

So, how can you combat this challenge? Well, staff retention can be tricky but there are some effective strategies you can implement to encourage a positive and supportive work environment.

What is the state of play in contact centres?

According to our latest Benchmarking Report, the average turnover in call centres is 30.2%. But before we dive straight into retention strategies, let’s take a moment to understand the factors that contribute to high turnover in contact centres.

1. Increased Workloads: 42.0% of call centres are experiencing a surge in agent workloads, which will eventually lead to burnout and job dissatisfaction.
2. Lack of Reward: Despite higher workloads and the cost of living crisis, 56% of agents have not received a salary increase. Underpaid staff negatively impacts job satisfaction and motivation.
3. Lack of Career Growth: Feedback and training are essential for performance growth and provide agents with opportunities for advancement. However, 22% of contact leaders share coaching tips just once a month.  

Without the right call centre staff retention strategies in place, call agent turnover will increase. So what strategies should call centre managers implement?

It starts with onboarding

Onboarding really does matter when it comes to reducing staff churn. Failing to welcome staff effectively and prepare them for their first weeks on the job is hugely costly.

Have a structured onboarding plan

Make sure you have an onboarding plan that makes full use of their time. Leaving new starters twiddling their thumbs or unsure of what they should be doing next is not a good first impression. It smacks of a lack of organisation.

2. Share essential company information

Before you get to the role-specific stuff, give them the essential business information they need. Show them where to get a cup of coffee, and where to turn for help when they’re locked out of the company intranet. Let them know of any perks the company offers, and how to claim them.

Help new-starters to network

Introduce new starters to key contacts and consider assigning a mentor for support. Make sure you give new starters the opportunity to get to know the people they’ll be working with.

Provide them with the right equipment

Make sure new employees have the right equipment and set up. Don’t forget to consider their needs based on their working agreement – are they office based, hybrid or fully remote?

Have a role-specific training plan

An onboarding programme should prepare new call agents for their specific role. It needs to be thorough, with time for questions and feedback. It’s important for new contact centre staff to feel confident about handling live interactions with customers, so incorporate mock calls and role plays.

Provide training on contact centre features

The best contact centre software is intuitive to use. But ongoing training is essential as new features are introduced. Start with basic functions and progress through more advanced features. At Maxcontact, we offer full training for our clients and their teams, for free, forever.

Create a positive work environment to reduce staff churn in your call centre

Even if you nail the onboarding process, there are still plenty of strategies you can put in place to make sure your workforce stays motivated and your call centre is a happy environment.

Prioritise the well-being of your staff

Investing in employee well-being is essential for a thriving contact centre. Here are some processes you can put in place to prioritise employee engagement and reduce burnout.

• Organise regular one-to-one chats and make yourself available for impromptu meetings.
• Measure satisfaction and engagement levels with surveys and questionnaires.
• Organise team social events to blow off steam.
• Train mental health champions and give employees access to wellbeing resources.
• Encourage a switch-off culture: employees should disconnect from work at the end of every shift.

NOTE: Even with all this in place it’s important to spot signs of staff disengagement and intervene early.

Pay attention to your recruitment strategy

It’s inevitable that employees will eventually move on. But it’s important to have a recruitment process in place so you can keep staffing levels up. If you’re understaffed, workloads increase and this leads to burnout.

But recruitment strategy doesn’t just apply to replacing staff – it’s much broader than that.

• Attract top talent through effective recruitment channels, including social media, job boards and employee referrals.
• Invest in talent development programs to identify and nurture high-potential employees within your organisation.
• Create clear career paths and progression opportunities to motivate agents and retain them long-term.

Prioritise continual learning

Agents are less likely to burn out if they’re confident in what they do. Well trained staff are less likely to feel overwhelmed. So provide your team with specific training and schedule regular feedback sessions.

Invest in the right technology

Investing in the right contact centre software and technology can ease workloads and increase job satisfaction. Software such as intelligent diallers can reduce manual labour, while self-serve IVR payments can reduce customer contact and free up staff time for more complex calls. Meanwhile, good scripting and on-call coaching can help agents deal with difficult situations.

Offer them a career path

Make sure every agent knows how far ahead the next step on the career ladder might be, and what they need to do to reach it.

It might be achieving better monthly figures, taking extra training or just making gradual improvements over time. If an agent can see a route to greater responsibility and better rewards, they’ll be more likely to stay with your company. If they feel trapped at their current level, they’ll be more likely to leave.

Some agents may show little interest in promotion; the job is a stopgap. That’s fine, as long as they do the job satisfactorily. But focus more time and resources on those agents that clearly see a future with your business.

By implementing these processes, contact centres can significantly reduce staff turnover rates and create a positive work environment. By prioritising employee retention and keeping their staff motivated, call centres can improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

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Sports coaches talk about marginal gains, and how lots of small changes can add up to the difference between winning and losing in a tight contest. But if Gareth Southgate found a new strategy that would boost his team’s performance by 200-300%, he’d jump at the chance.

That’s the level of improvement delivered by outbound dialling software over manual dialling. Like any good team performance though, it’s about getting the right balance right, in this case between reaching new targets and remaining compliant with Ofcom regulations.

Increased productivity of automated dialling

Automated dialling vs. manual dialling

A manual dialler is like a traditional phone. An agent manually dials numbers from a call list, one after another. Whereas an auto dialler, as the name suggests, automates much of the dialling process. It digitally dials numbers, and can also dial multiple numbers at once, passing answered calls to available agents.

Most call centres opt for auto dialling because it significantly boosts productivity, eliminates human error and allows agents to spend more time talking to customers and less time dialling.

Spend 2–3 times longer speaking to people with automated dialling

Where does this productivity leap come from?

Some of the productivity gains from dialler software are built on predictive dialling, in which calls are placed at a rate the dialler expects agents to become free from their previous conversation. Calculating this rate is done by the predictive algorithm.

Predictive dialling is supported by two further modes, progressive and preview dialling. In progressive mode, the dialler waits to make the call until the agent becomes free, rather than estimating that time in advance. Preview dialling allows the agent to review information about the contact before the call is made.

All three dialler modes have a role to play, and getting the right combination means agents typically spend two to three times longer actually talking to clients, and so meeting the overall aims of the business, than if they were managing their own calls manually.

Compliance myths in the contact centre industry

In order to get compliance right, the first step is separating facts from myths. There are two persistent compliance myths in the call centre industry.

Myth 1: Ofcom specifies a target of 3% for dropped calls.

Some software diallers might even be calibrated to produce 3% dropped calls and claim this is compliance.

This is not the case. Ofcom wants to see 0% dropped calls, and a contact centre operator needs to demonstrate they are doing everything they can to achieve that. The 3% figure is a benchmark. It means that so long as an operator is doing all they can to minimise dropped calls, Ofcom accepts that mistakes can and will happen.

Myth 2: A dropped call number cannot be rung again within 72 hours.

Wrong again. What matters is that an agent must be on hand if the call is answered.

Explore our no-nonsense guide to all current Ofcom regulations >

Real world conditions that lead to dropped or silent calls

In a perfect world, a predictive dialler would make outbound calls at a rate that always exactly matched the agents available to connect to clients. But it’s never that simple. Instead, let’s run through some of the ways outbound dialling can get out of sync, and ask what the consequences are.

The most obvious way is that agents are people. They log in and out unexpectedly. They have to go for meals and comfort breaks.

Then there are blended environments. Agents taking inbound calls means that they aren’t available for outbound calls, and so the predictive algorithm gets the rate of outbound calls wrong. Blended environments are like a football match against Brazil. They’re always going to be tough.

In effect, there’s always the risk of an avoidable own goal, which simply means making too many outbound calls when there aren’t enough agents available to cope.

Dropped Calls

All of these real world conditions can lead to dropped calls. And dropped calls aren’t the only compliance challenge. Redialling the same number too soon after a dropped call can be an issue if not handled properly. As is repeatedly dialling a number that has asked not to be called.

Silent Calls

Then there are silent calls. A silent call is when answer machine detection (AMD) registers a false positive, meaning a person answers but the dialler software thinks it’s an answer machine and hangs up.

“For some people – for example, those living alone – these calls can be particularly frightening,” says Ofcom.

The penalty for getting compliance wrong

Ofcom has fined several call centres over the years for various violations, including making nuisance calls, breaching regulations regarding silent and abandoned calls, and failing to provide proper customer service. The fines can vary widely depending on the severity of the violations.

Back in 2013, TalkTalk was fined £750,000 after the company swamped potential customers with silent calls and Barclaycard has received a £50,000 fine. For repeat offenders, it can mean a potential fine of up to £2 million!

The good news is that, according to Ofcom statistics, the average number of nuisance calls – including silent and abandoned calls – reported by consumers who received them, is at its lowest point ever.

• Over the last six years, the number of complaints Ofcom has received related to silent and abandoned has decreased by 65%.
• In 2022, Ofcom received a total of 15,186 complaints related to these calls, compared to 42,822 in 2016.

Data Source: Enforcement programme into silent and abandoned calls

How to balance agent productivity and compliance?

A dialler software solution that can deliver outstanding productivity gains without putting compliance at risk will have a checklist of key features.

1. It should head off the causes of dropped calls before they happen. That means agents have to request their next action, such as logging off. Given this information, the predictive dialler can adjust its outbound call rates to match.
2. In blended environments, the predictive algorithm has to allow for inbound calls.
3. The dialler should move seamlessly from predictive to progressive dialling at times when there are fewer agents, for example during lunch breaks.
4. When recalling numbers within 72 hours, the dialler should switch to preview mode so that an agent is guaranteed to be available if the call gets through.
5. It should eliminate silent calls due to AMD by passing the call to an agent if there is any doubt, and should leave a message in any circumstances where a call isn’t picked up, completely avoiding any silent calls.
6. Finally, the dialler software should automatically integrate and update Do Not Call lists, and allow clients to add themselves to the list.

The most compliant dialler will always be the most productive

Contact centres need to do all they can to avoid falling foul of these rules, and potentially taking significant financial and reputational damage.

MaxContact has 25 years experience performing at the highest level across all forms of contact centres. We understand compliance because we help to define the standards through involvement in Ofcom consultations around persistent misuse of software diallers.

Book a customised demo today to learn about our dialler software and ask us any questions about compliance in your contact centre.

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