Winning Hearts and Minds: Five Ways Behavioral Pairing Improves Contact Center Performance

Interactions in the contact center are just like interactions in any other setting, on any other occasion, with any other people. They are better when those involved have a good connection. But “good” means different things for different people. Each person has its own circumstance, its personality, its own way of expressing itself and of wanting to be treated.

In your average contact center, this fundamental dimension of human interaction is usually not considered. Callers and agents can be paired based on agent skills, knowledge and performance but not on shared personality traits or personal qualities.

From the need to bring this critical human dimension into consideration in determining which agent takes on which caller, emerged the Behavioral Pairing solutions. Behavioral Pairing solutions pair agents and callers based on the predicted interpersonal behavior. They apply “big data” algorithms to analyze customer and agent information and interactions, as well as third-party information to identify patterns of successful and unsuccessful behavioral interactions.

In the end, the customer who calls the contact center with an issue is paired with the available call center agent of whom it is predicted that he or she will have the most productive interaction with the caller. This has been proved to be very beneficial to contact center performance, influencing virtually every critical metric in the contact center. Here are five reasons why this happens:

• Behavioral pairing helps contact centers make a positive first impression – As the caller identifies with the agent and the agent behavior resonates with the caller, the contact center has set the stage for the mutually satisfying interaction that both want.
• Behavioral pairing reduces costs – As communication becomes more efficient, conflicts and misunderstandings are fewer. Contact center metrics such as average handle time are reduced and first call resolution rises. Industry-specific metrics such has handset returns, successful collections or claims filled, also improve.
• Behavioral Pairing improves conversion rates – As communication becomes more effective, problem solving and transactions are quicker and easier, so that sales conversion and customer retention rates increase, upsell and cross-sell becomes more frequent.
• Behavioral Pairing increases customer satisfaction – As the communication meets more of the caller explicit and implicit needs, he/she feels listened and valued and this has a positive impact that is registered if there is a customer satisfaction measurement in place or in metrics such as first call resolution. The company creates more customer evangelists.
• Behavioral pairing increases agent satisfaction – Agents serve more customers with whom they have a positive interaction, they feel valued and satisfied, thus lowering turnover rates, hiring and training costs.

Current behavioral pairing contact center solutions, such as the Altitude – Afiniti joint solution, work by activating behavioral pairing rapidly and efficiently within a contact center environment. Contact centers benefit from omnichannel interaction management solutions with state-of-the-art skills based routing and IVR solutions to allocate agents to customers. Behavioral pairing technology can further improve customer engagement and loyalty by pairing agents and customers based on behavior and historic interactions. The customer interaction history and data provided by contact center customer engagement solutions are key to providing the richness of data that enables the optimal performance of the behavioral pairing algorithms.

Success in business ultimately comes down to satisfying the deep human need to be understood. Organizations that leverage new technologies to meet that fundamental need in their contact centers are innovating and defining customer engagement standards for a new generation—and achieving a decisive competitive advantage over others that don’t incorporate what is becoming an increasingly critical component in any competitive contact center environment.

Learn more about the strategic partnership between Altitude and Afiniti to optimize business results with artificial intelligence in the contact center.