When you are setting up a call flow, it is important to remember that you are not just configuring a series of modules. Every configuration and change to the call flow structure affects the experience a caller has.

In the interest of optimizing this experience, this article will provide some basic tips and principles which can be applied to the call flow.

Business processes vary, and each flow will be different. However, usually the caller experience can be improved. Design questions should be approached with this in mind:

1. Things to consider at the beginning:

• The frequency and importance of each call reason.
• Your methods/channels of handling a call (web, IVR, SMS, voice) - which one is preferred for which call type.
• Your overall aims with the design e.g. to provide lots of voice support or optimize call center cost.

These questions should always be your starting point, because the design should be dictated by a) the desired function and b) the best possible caller experience. Once you have the fundamental scope and aims of your telephony processes outlined, the next stage is its implementation.

2. Principles:

Once you defined your aims and the conditions of your processes, start designing based on the following principles: 

• If lots of people call with a specific call type (i.e a particular problem), offer a service for that call type early in the flow.
• If you want to redirect certain calls to another channel, inform callers as early as possible in the flow.
• If there are, say, 7 overall service options but 3 of them are not very common, put these less common ones in a second menu (one 'tier' down).
• No one likes having to do mental work on a call like keeping track of long menus, lots of information, etc. Therefore, it is important to keep each interaction and decision short and sweet.

3. Process

This method can be outlined into a rough process to continually improve your call flow on the babelforce platform:

1. Plan based on the data you have
2. Apply the principles above based on the data and theory
3. Test
4. Optimise
5. Repeat starting with step 3