10 ways to make the most of Talkdesk Callbar

Now that you’ve successfully become a work-from-home (WFH) agent, it’s important to develop a deeper understanding of the tools you’ll be using in your day-to-day. If you haven’t already, we encourage you to participate in our robust training and certification program. This is a great way to hone your skills and show potential employers you’re ready to hit the ground running.

Talkdesk Callbar® may be the tool you rely on most. It’s where you’ll do everything from making and receiving customer calls, adding post-call notes, setting your availability and more. Thankfully, Callbar is incredibly easy to use, even if you’re brand new to call center software. Here are 10 ways to make the most of Callbar.

1. Getting started

Last week, we published a blog on everything you need to get started as a WFH agent, including technical and non-technical requirements. When using Callbar, here are the points to keep in mind: 

• Make sure the browser is up-to-date and properly configured. Learn how to set up your browser correctly here.
• Check out the welcome email from Talkdesk in your inbox and be sure to accept the invitation!
• Installing Callbar is like installing any other browser application and can be done in a few simple steps.
• After installation, it’s time to log in!

2. Make and receive calls

Callbar will be the main way you make and receive customer calls while on-the-clock as an agent. It’s essentially a phone that lives on your computer. Callbar functions as an independent application that can “float” anywhere on your desktop. Because it’s not restricted to a browser tab, it’s a flexible tool that allows for easy, convenient access when making and receiving calls.

3. Set your availability

A contact center agent’s day is dynamic. You’ll be constantly moving between being on calls with customers, updating customer contact information and more. That’s why it’s important to set your availability and have it reflect the activity you’re engaging in. This way, you won’t receive calls when you’re not available, and vice versa.

4. Save time with click-to-call

Agent success often includes metrics around speed and efficiency. Rather than manually dialing a caller’s phone number every time, you can leverage click-to-dial functionality to shave a few seconds off each call.

5. Access a customer’s information in an integration

If your company has Talkdesk integrated with Zendesk, Salesforce or any other CRM or support tool, you’ll see an integration badge in Callbar when you’re on a customer call. Clicking it will quickly display the customer’s profile. This is a quick and easy way to access key information during a call, helping you provide a more personalized experience for the caller.

6. Mute, hold and transfer calls

Since many of us are now working from home, unavoidable, background noise interruptions are likely to occur. Since this can disrupt your conversation, it may be necessary to mute yourself while the customer is talking.

If a customer presents you with a problem, you may need to hold or transfer the call to get the proper information. Use Callbar to quickly call a colleague or your manager to explain the customer’s issue and use their insights and past experiences to come up with a resolution to your customer’s problem.

7. Initiate a conference

Some customer calls may warrant a collaborative effort with your teammates or manager in real time. Initiating a call conference lets you add other people to your call, so that everyone can contribute to listening and solving the customer’s problem.

8. Pause the call recording

Keeping customer information safe and secure is one of the most important things to maintain in a contact center. If a customer starts discussing sensitive information, such as their credit card number, it’s important to pause the call recording so you don’t capture that information in your company’s call recordings which could put your employer at risk. Once you hit pause in Callbar, you’ll see a visual indicator showing the call recording has been paused. To resume the call recording once the customer is no longer sharing sensitive details, simply click the pause button again to resume the recording. While every company’s policies and tools to achieve this will vary, it’s helpful to keep this best practice in mind. 

9. Add notes to a caller’s activity history

Personalizing your customer conversations is a key way to stand out as a top agent and provide a better, more friendly experience for the customer. By capturing important information shared during a call, you can stay in tune with the context of past conversations and their outcomes, helping you provide better, more personalized interactions in the future. Adding notes to a caller’s interaction history helps other agents provide equally personalized experiences as well. 

10. Create and merge contacts

As an agent, you will interact with customers every day. Sometimes, you’ll get on the phone with a caller whose information isn’t yet logged in Talkdesk or your CRM. Because you want to capture all relevant information about a customer to help assist them better in the future, you should add this caller to Talkdesk by creating a contact. Eventually, you’ll come across a caller who’s already in the Talkdesk system, but is calling from a new phone number. In this case, rather than creating a new contact, you’ll want to merge this new information with contact information that’s already in Talkdesk. This helps you avoid duplicate contact entries in your systems, which can lead to incomplete and confusing data.

Becoming skilled with Callbar is a sure-fire way to set yourself apart as a contact center agent within your company. You’ll have more opportunities to create “wow” moments for your customers by being efficient and effective While these basics are a great starting point, we encourage you to think about the skills you want to develop long-term. Talkdesk Academy™ is a comprehensive training and certification program that equips you with the skills you need to help you move up the ranks as a contact center agent. If you haven’t yet, sign up and get certified today!