April Fool’s Day: How to Save A Call Center from Prank Calls

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It’s the 1st of April, so Keep Calm and Troll.

Yes, it is the 1st of April, April Fool’s Day and unlike all other days, everybody is officially allowed to play pranks and tricks today. Since the bracket is vast, call centers are often the commonest target for prank calls –  particularly on April Fool’s Day..

Customers are usually frustrated because of ‘n’ number of reasons, despite your endless number of tries to make them happy and elevate customer satisfaction scores. This is the day, when they might get revengeful. However, what can you do to stop or reduce the number of prank calls, especially when it is an official markdown to play pranks? You cannot ignore their calls. Can you? You cannot deny them service. You cannot put your business on hold because of few fake and malicious calls.

To combat them and save your time and energy, you can choose to play a bit smartly. You can choose to pick, prioritise and safe-mark your callers. Also, you can in certain exceptional cases, play along and greet them (in a polite and official manner) – the first day of April. This can also act as a nice conversation trigger and can be a golden chance to build rapport with them.

Keeping jokes apart, pranks and fake calls are acceptable till a certain level. What can you really do if this continues over a long period of time? If this happens repeatedly?

You can follow these simple fundamentals and deal with your notorious callers in the best way possible. Here’s how:

1. Verification then Clarification

This is the rule by which all call center agents actually live by. There can be a caller, who is insisting you to take quick action on a query or a grave concern. But, that should not stop you from going ahead with the verification process, especially on this day. The caller can be somebody just trying to play a ‘little prank on you’, which can actually cost you your job. No agent, under any circumstances, should process or proceed to give any personal detail and information to anyone who fails to complete the identification and verification process.

2. Make and Leave Notes

If you feel that there is a caller, who doesn’t really seem to be authentic or is making frequent blank calls-  make sure that you leave a note on the caller profile. While typing the note, be precise and clearly mention the complete scenario as to what led you to raise suspicion. This way, the next time a call comes in, the next agent would not panic and would know how exactly to deal with the prank call.

3. Spam or Not Spam?

Keeping aside the hoax callers, there can be a scenario where some customer is actually in need of assistance and is calling for the first time. In this case, the CRM would not fetch caller details and there are chances that the call would show up in spam numbers. In such cases, give your customers a little benefit of doubt and take them through the registration and verification process patiently. Once this has been done, you can expect lesser numbers to be reported as spam callers.

4. Persistent Prank Caller

If you are facing serious trouble from a caller, who is repeatedly calling without any purpose or is being offensive, you can go ahead and flag him/her. This will ensure that their call is routed to the IVR directly and they are not occupying a spot on the queue. This way you can save your time, energy and service other customers instead.

5. Software to Counter Prank Players

If you are under constant pressure to reduce hoax calls and detect customers who call frequently with the sole motive of hampering your productivity, you can also consider using certain softwares to be integrated with your CRM, to reduce or subside such numbers. Such softwares can easily pick up fake customer profiles and prevent their calls from getting through to live agents. This will ensure that no time or energy is wasted while dealing with ‘such callers’.

If you have any feedback, any prank call incident or any April Fool’s Day pranks to share with us, do let us know in the comments section. Happy April Fool’s Day!

Related Links: Motivational Videos To Boost Your Customer Service Efficiency

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