Phone calls are often seen as a last resort and are usually more critical and require prompt attention. Unfortunately, call avoidance, a common issue in contact centers, can cause disruptions leading to inefficient workflow and poor customer experience.

Whether it’s due to employee stress, lack of training, or overwhelming workloads, ignoring calls can harm both customer satisfaction and business outcomes. In this guide, we’ll explain the root causes of this problem, how to spot it, and strategies that will help you fix it fast.

Key Highlights

• Call avoidance occurs in call centers when employees avoid taking phone calls. It affects workflow, customer experience, and the workload of other employees.
• Key causes of avoiding calls include stress and burnout, demanding customers, work pressure, lack of training, and personal issues.
• Common call-avoiding behaviors include failing to log in, taking excessive breaks, taking frequent sick leaves, intentionally dropping calls, and falsely setting profiles as busy.
• Strategies such as identifying root causes, setting realistic expectations, managing stress, coaching employees, and offering self-service and omnichannel solutions help alleviate avoidance issues.

What is call avoidance?

Call avoidance is when contact center agents intentionally avoid answering customer calls or other support interactions, such as live chat or email. This can occur for various reasons, including handling difficult customer complaints, overwhelming call volumes, or physical and mental fatigue.  

Agents may engage in call avoidance in different ways, such as keeping customers on hold for long periods, frequently transferring calls, or taking extended breaks. 

This act can negatively affect the call center efficiency, customer experience and increase the workload on other employees. 

While avoiding calls in call centers can be seen as a form of misconduct or intentional behavior, it is also important to learn the reason behind the avoidance before accusing an employee of avoiding calls. Sometimes, agents may delay taking new calls to properly assist customers who need extra attention.  

To effectively address call avoidance, businesses must first identify its root causes, whether they stem from workplace stress, inefficient workflows, or a need for better agent training and support. Further, effective management, proper training, and a supportive work environment are crucial as they will help resolve avoidance behaviors.

Why is call avoidance bad?

For call centers or businesses where customer service is paramount, ignored calls can be detrimental. Here are some of the major issues that it can cause;

• It can negatively affect call center workflow from increasing waiting times and unresolved customer enquiries.
• It degrades customer experience, which ultimately also degrades the brand’s reputation.
• It increases the workload of other employees. This often results in faster burnout and lowers their motivation.
• The act of avoiding calls can also manifest a bad working culture and environment. If it is not addressed early, it can increase the call center turnover rate.
• Avoiding calls also means avoiding high-quality leads and other potential opportunities.

Examples of call avoidance

There are many forms of avoiding calls that often depend on the working environment and the type of actions employees take to avoid phone calls. To give you a better understanding, here are some call avoidance examples.

• Failing to log in to the calling platform despite being present or available on the premises.
• Taking longer breaks or idle time to lessen the working time.
• Employees taking frequent casual or sick leaves without legitimate reasons.
• Staying on the line with a customer even after the call is already dropped.
• Often blaming IT hardware or software for avoiding calls.
• Transferring or forwarding calls to other extension numbers for other employees to handle the call.
• Avoiding call backs and follow-up calls in order to avoid interaction with the consumer.
• Falsely setting their profile as busy or as working.
• Dropping calls intentionally and labeling it as a network issue.
• Ignoring calls and letting them go to voicemails intentionally.
• Frequent bathroom breaks to avoid taking calls.

How to identify call avoidance?

To identify avoidance of call, you’ll need to monitor the employees’ performance, KPI or real-time phone call logs, report and analytics, and even perform customer surveys. Here are some of the steps you can take to identify this issue.

• Monitor attendance and maintain logs for breaks. This will give insight into the employee’s punctuality and tardiness.
• Employees who avoid calls often transfer them excessively and frequently. So, look for call transfer patterns to see whether they have been avoiding calls.
• If an employee handles fewer calls compared to their peers, it could be a sign of him/her ignoring phone calls.
• Customers are the greatest source of feedback. You can perform surveys and ask them about call handling, promptness, and their overall experience to get a proper understanding of employees’ performance.
• A sudden drop in call-handling KPI metrics can also be an indication of avoiding calls.

What are the causes of call avoidance?

The problem of avoiding calls can arise from different factors, including the work environment, job difficulty, stress, or even personal issues. Some of the most common causes are as follows:

• Stress and burnout: Call center jobs are the most demanding jobs by nature, as they require you to handle customers and their issues constantly. Over time, this can be exhausting, and employees may lose motivation.
• Difficult customers: Having to deal with difficult customers day in and day out can be mentally taxing. Employees often ignore calls to avoid dealing with such customers.
• Work pressure: Companies that evaluate their employees on the basis of performance metrics such as AHT or FCR often avoid taking complex calls and instead opt-in for easier enquiry calls.
• Lack of training: If the call center agents are not trained properly or lack sufficient expertise, they may also avoid taking complex calls and instead transfer them to other employees or supervisors.
• Personal issues: Sometimes, an employee’s poor performance is also due to problems in their personal life. Mental stress or physical health issues can severely affect the employee’s ability to think and work efficiently. This can cause them to avoid interaction with the customers.

9 Best strategies to deal with call avoidance

Dealing with call avoiding issue requires a better understanding of the root cause of the issue, supportive management, and effective measures. Here are 10 best strategies that can help you deal with this problem.

1. Pin out the root cause

The first and foremost step to deal with the call avoidance issue is to find out why it is happening. You can either conduct anonymous surveys or hold one-on-one meetings with employees to gain insights into the underlying issues. Employees might be facing personal issues, dealing with a lot of stress, or feeling fear of failure or inadequacy.

By understanding these root causes, you can adjust your solutions or strategies to better address that particular issue rather than using a one-size-fits-all solution.

2. Realistic expectations

Unrealistic performance targets can create unnecessary work pressure, often leading to employees not taking phone calls. It is quite important to set goals that employees can achieve without stressing. You should clearly communicate the work hours, responsibilities, and quality of service that are expected from them. 

When employees are clear about the expectations and they believe that the goals are attainable, they are more likely to stay engaged and motivated.

3. Flexible policies

Although policies are required to keep everyone in check and maintain good work discipline, they should not be overly harsh. It should be somewhat lenient to ensure a more friendly and positive working environment. 

You should impose a clear call avoidance policy with permitted and unpermitted actions, along with the penalties, that treats all employees fairly. When employees are well-informed about these expectations and consequences, they are less likely to be negligent in their responsibilities. 

4. Skill-based call routing

Call center solutions or platforms often have the option to route calls based on skill. What this means is that whenever a call center receives a call that requires more expertise, it is routed to the appropriate and most skilled person who can easily resolve the issues.

So, whenever an agent receives a call about enquiries or issues that require troubleshooting, skill-based call routing ensures that incoming requests align with their expertise. This also helps boost the agents’ morale, making them feel more confident about handling calls.

5. Self-service options

Implementing self-service customer service options is also an effective strategy to reduce call dodging and improve efficiency in call centers. You can incorporate FAQ pages, online community forums, knowledge base articles, automated Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVR), chatbots, etc.

This is helpful in situations where the customer’s issue or enquiry is minor. They can look it up themselves and get helpful solutions without human assistance anytime. Moreover, this also helps to reduce incoming call volumes and eases up the workload for all employees, and reduces call elusion.

6. Omnichannel solutions

Another effective strategy that will help prevent employees from turning away from calls is implementing omnichannel solutions. It allows customers to reach out to a business by various channels instead of only by phone calls. For example, email, chat, social media, SMS text messages.

Distributing the communication workload into multiple channels helps to lower the stress of call handling while maintaining a consistent call center experience. Moreover, customers can choose the channel that they feel the most comfortable with. Thus reducing the reliance on only phone calls.

7. Stress management

Stress and burnout are very common issues in call centers and customer service departments. It can often demotivate the employees and lead to poor call handling performance, such as avoiding calls. So, it is important to create and maintain a positive and supportive work environment.

You can help reduce early burnout by implementing flexible breaks, team-building activities, and refreshment holidays to help employees maintain a good work- life balance. Happy and energized employees not only work efficiently but are also motivated to put in extra efforts to make sure they are performing at their best.

8. Employee Training

In order to prevent call negligence, you’ll also have to ensure that all your employees are properly trained and skilled to handle complex calls. You can train your employees to deal with challenging customers, use proper call management tools, and improve their communication skills for more efficiency.

When employee are trained and feel confident in their skills, they are more likely to take the call instead of avoiding it. 

9. Rewards and recognition

Gratitude is a powerful emotion that brings a positive mood to the workplace. When employee are appreciated and rewarded for their efforts, they feel more satisfied and happy. For example, a call center or company can make positive efforts such as achievement celebrations, incentives for boosting employee morale. This also encourages them to put in extra effort in their work.

Conclusion

Call avoidance in call centers is a serious issue that negatively impacts day-to-day work, disrupts the work environment, and lowers employee morale. It problem mainly occurs when there are more work loads, stress, unrealistic expectations, or even inexperienced workers.

Identifying and addressing this issue early on is crucial in order to prevent the problem from getting worse. Strategies such as fostering a positive work culture, providing coaching, setting realistic goals, rewarding, and showing gratitude can make employees feel more satisfaction and confident in their work. Thus lowering the number of dodged phone calls. 

FAQs

Can you provide an example of call avoidance?

One example of call avoidance is when a call center agent avoids a call by transferring it to other employees, whether it is due to lack of call handling expertise or tardiness.

What are some indicators of call avoidance?

Some indicators of call avoidance are prolonged waiting times, frequent and excessive call transfers, and extensive break or idle time.

Is it possible for call avoidance to happen unintentionally?

Yes, it is possible for call avoidance to happen unintentionally. It can occur due to inadequate training or skills, high performance expectations, poor employee well-being, etc.

How can agents be encouraged to handle more calls effectively?

Agents can be encouraged to handle more calls effectively by addressing root causes, creating a friendly working environment, setting realistic goals and workloads, hiring skilled manpower and providing sufficient training, boosting morale via motivation quotes, etc.