Call center avoidance refers to when agents intentionally dodge or neglect their assigned tasks, particularly when handling customer calls.

Avoidance can happen for any number of reasons. For instance, it could be because your agents are unhappy, stressed, burned out, improperly trained, or feeling overly pressured. It could even be that you have overly demanding customers and your agents feel ill-equipped to handle them.

While it might not be easy to pinpoint the exact cause (or causes) of call center avoidance, the sooner you act to alleviate it, the quicker you can find solutions. At the end of the day, the stakes are high because your business may rely on the service you provide to your customers.

The Subtle Signs of Call Center Avoidance

Call center avoidance often reveals itself through small tells that can compound over time—and meanwhile, your customers and business may be suffering.

Some of the most common behaviors associated with call center avoidance to keep an eye on include the following:

  • Extended breaks: Agents taking longer breaks than necessary, potentially to avoid dealing with difficult calls or a high volume of interactions.
  • Excessive call transfers: Quick transfers of calls to other agents or departments without adequately addressing the customer’s concerns, potentially in an effort to pass the responsibility to someone else.
  • Prolonged post-call documentation: Spending more time than required on post-call documentation, potentially using it as a way to delay or avoid taking new calls.
  • Abandoning calls: Putting customers on hold for an extended period, hoping they will eventually abandon the call, allowing the agent to avoid assisting them.
  • Unnecessarily long conversations: Continuing to engage with customers even after the issue has been resolved, possibly to avoid taking on new tasks or calls.

In isolation, most individual instances of avoidance behavior are innocuous, but keeping tabs on them can help you find solutions before any problems spiral out of control.

Why Your Agents are Avoiding Calls

It’s not unusual for many unrelated call centers to suffer from the same problems with employee behavior. The hard truth is that it’s often difficult to diagnose why agents avoid calls, and various factors can intermingle.

For example, poor management practices such as inadequate scheduling, overstaffing/understaffing, and even unrealistic expectations may cause agent burnout and resentment that leads to avoidant behavior.

In other instances, placing too much emphasis on performance metrics rather than customer satisfaction can create undue pressure on agents.

Of course, it’s not always management or an individual agent’s fault, because consistent unpleasant interactions with customers can also be problematic. For example, allowing difficult or abusive customers to continue their behavior unchecked can demoralize agents and make them more likely to find excuses to avoid taking calls.

Nevertheless, even without being able to diagnose the call center blues perfectly, recognizing the underlying issues that can lead agents to avoid calls is crucial to finding practical solutions.

9 Quick Fixes to Stop Call Avoidance

If you start by trying to identify the cause or causes of your problems, you can work your way through a number of steps to get your call center back on track.

Find the Root Cause

When something’s not right at a call center, an overwhelming feeling of stress can build up with your agents, triggering an avalanche of issues. You may have to investigate beyond the surface level to understand why some agents are avoiding their work.

Ask your employees questions and really listen, allowing them room to express their feelings. Once you’ve identified the cause (or causes), you’ll be better equipped to find meaningful solutions that work for them.

Improve Call Center Workforce Management

Call centers are busy, so finding an ideal staffing schedule to handle call workloads can be tricky. Understaffing can lead to agent burnout, which is a prime cause of call center avoidance—especially during peak times.

Ironically, overstaffing can play a role as well—because when agents aren’t busy enough, they tend to feel unproductive and disengaged, leading to a lack of motivation to handle calls effectively.

In order to solve these problems, it’s important to hire managers who can oversee the staff and settle issues as they arise. Also, ensure your VoIP and CRM software work well behind the scenes to help you effectively manage call center workflow.

Revisit Your KPIs

KPIs can be a major source of pressure for agents, leading to increased personal stress and sometimes unhealthy competition with other employees. For example, some agents may be more likely to avoid certain types of calls as a way of adhering to a strict average call duration or handling time. As a result, employees may become overly competitive, creating a hostile work environment.

To solve these issues, find out which KPIs may be too harsh or unrealistic for your agents, even if it means taking a more personal approach. You may need to adjust the KPIs you are tracking, adjust benchmarks, or provide additional training to help your agents reach their goals.

Keep the Difficult Customers at Bay

Sometimes, the problem is not with your agents—it’s on the other end of the line. Highly demanding customers can be a major drain for agents, especially if your agents deal with a ton of negative situations during a single shift.

Luckily, there are a few ways to tackle this problem. One effective strategy is to point customers to self-help documents or resources that address common issues, allowing them to find answers independently. However, in some extreme cases, it may be necessary to blacklist callers who consistently display abusive or inappropriate behavior.

Improve Your Training

When you offer comprehensive training, agents gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to handle customer issues without fear. By providing ongoing training, role-playing exercises, and access to helpful resources, you can empower your agents to solve any customer interaction like champs.

As part of this training, you may want to hold sessions covering de-escalation techniques, which can equip agents with the skills to handle more challenging situations. When your agents are at the top of their game, customer satisfaction rates can reach new heights and call center avoidance will become less of a worry.

Skill-Based Routing

Skill-based routing means connecting customers to suitable agents with the specific skills and expertise to handle their issues. This increases the chances of resolving problems effectively and giving customers a positive experience.

If you’re able to implement this, it’s a no-brainer—because when agents feel confident and equipped to take calls, they’re less likely to avoid them. This not only improves their job satisfaction but also keeps customers happy. Thus, skill-based routing is a win-win, leading to better outcomes for everyone involved.

Technology and Automation

Alongside the intangibles, the right technology can go a long way towards improving life for your agents. The best call center software bundles everything under one roof, minimizing the time it takes for agents to search through call records and empowering them to tackle specific complaints easily.

Likewise, automated interactive voice response (IVR) systems let customers navigate to an appropriate option before they speak to agents, minimizing the time agents spend on repetitive questions and manual call routing. IVR systems can also enable virtual queueing and facilitate callbacks.

Implement Callbacks

If you’re not already using callbacks as part of your workflow, now may be the time to start. These allow customers to bypass long hold times and receive a call later on when an agent is free—and the customer won’t lose their place in line.

Extending this small gesture to customers can potentially avoid negative conversations that can tax agents. Plus, it takes the pressure off agents to rush through calls, allowing them to give their undivided attention to solve issues while avoiding the stress of high call loads.

Dive Into Analytics

Studying your call center analytics can help identify bottlenecks and specific areas where your call center needs improvement. By analyzing data from customer interactions, you can gain insights into common pain points or recurring issues that customers face.

This information allows you to streamline your processes and train your agents accordingly, ultimately leading to a more efficient and satisfying experience for everyone.

How to Prevent Call Center Avoidance From Happening In the First Place

There are many ways to treat call center avoidance once it starts happening, but the best remedy—by far—is prevention. Running a smooth operation is all about identifying and tackling potential issues before they become bigger problems.

One way to do this is by regularly reviewing and updating agent training programs. This includes reviewing call center scripts, self-help documents, and FAQs to ensure they are all up-to-date and accurate. Equipping your agents with the right skills and knowledge will enable them to handle customer inquiries like pros, reducing the chances of frustration on both ends of the line.

You’ll also want to assist employees by giving them the infrastructure to perform their jobs at a high level. For example, if your call center hardware or software doesn’t support the latest enhancements, consider upgrading your infrastructure immediately.

Likewise, you should regularly review your call analytics and monitoring systems, and keep yourself up-to-date on current call center trends and new technologies that can improve operations.

Ultimately, by taking a preventative approach, you can make timely adjustments to deliver a smoother customer experience. As a result, it’s likely that you’ll see fewer problems, have happier agents, and reap the benefits of increased customer loyalty.