Call Reduction Strategies for Contact Centers in 2025 (2025)

Companies were at risk of losing $3.7 trillion in global sales in 2024 from bad customer experiences. Now, 85% of customers expect a brand to respond within 6 hours after their inquiry, and failing to meet those expectations leads to churn and a lousy customer experience.

If you want to be one of the telecommunications providers seeing a 30% drop in call volume after integrating generative AI into their processes, keep reading. In this article, we’ll teach you how to use AI to reduce high call volume for your contact center overnight. And we’ll also show you 6 other call-reduction strategies on top of that.

1. AI Voice Agents Are the Best Call Reduction Strategy

According to IBM, contact centers are already answering 70% of inbound calls with AI. Here are some ways AI voice agents can reduce your contact center’s inbound calls.

Answer Calls Immediately and Filter Calls for Your Agents.

Customers are impatient. In fact, 90% of customers expect an immediate response when asking a customer service question.

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Fortunately, AI phone agents are now here to help solve this issue. For example, Synthflow is an AI phone call platform that uses human-like AI voice agents to handle basic calls and admin tasks. These Synthflow AI agents are available 24/7 and can simultaneously pick up to 100 concurrent calls.

If a customer’s problem is more complex, Synthflow automatically forwards them to the most capable human agents.

Unlike other strategies, this approach is a win-win for your customer and your contact center. Customers still have the convenient option of just making a phone call for help, while your contact center reduces the number of inbound calls with the help of AI voice agents.

Simplifying Complex Queries.

Even if the AI agents can’t solve a complex inquiry, they can still understand and collect information for human agents. The AI agent collects the customer’s problem and information and then sends a summary of that to your human agent when the call is forwarded.

This way your human agents can understand the problem at a glance and customers won’t have to repeat themselves. According to HubSpot Research, at least 33% of customer complaints are from repeating themselves to different support reps.

Information continuity makes your customers feel cared for and improves customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Automating Appointments and Basic Admin Tasks.

A good portion of inbound calls are from customers who want to schedule appointments or are asking about availability. Synthflow AI agents can answer these calls and do the backend admin task of setting up the appointments automatically.

For instance, Medbelle, a healthcare provider, used Synthflow.ai to manage patient appointments. The AI voice assistant integrated with consultants’ calendars and scheduled the appointments. Medbelle saw a 60% increase in scheduling efficiency in just a few days of adopting Synthflow to their system.

AI solutions like Synthflow are trusted by enterprises like Zapier, Jobflow, and more. This isn’t some experimental AI agent. This is a real solution that’s only been recently possible with the advancements of AI.

2. Empowering Customers Through Self-Service and Proactive Communications.

Contact centers can reduce inbound call volumes by allowing customers to help themselves and by being proactive with communicating maintenance and service downtimes.

Self-Service Tools: Knowledge bases, real-time tracking tools, and customer portals.

61% of consumers prefer self-service options, but some contact centers make it impossible by having bad support threads, outdated FAQs, and an overall lack of a public knowledge base. If you want to reduce inbound calls, you need to revamp your self-service options with these methods:

  • Knowledge Base: Build a knowledge base with FAQs, tutorials, and troubleshooting guides
  • Customer Portals: Let users update their details, track orders, and review account history without needing to phone an agent for assistance. For example, a healthcare company could open a customer portal with each customer’s medical history
  • Self-Booking Systems: Allow customers to schedule appointments through your website. Not only is this easier and faster for customers, but self-booking systems will reduce a large portion of inbound calls for your agents
  • Real-time Tracking Tools: Real-time tracking tools for deliveries or repairs track customer requests’ progress. For example, a logistics company could provide real-time tracking of packages on their website or app.

Self-service options shift reactive support to proactive by showing customers what they need without calling. This reduces call volume and improves customer satisfaction by being convenient. Once you’ve built a knowledge base, you can feed it to Synthflow AI agents so they can learn the FAQs and answer basic inquiries.

Proactive Updates: Notifications for service disruptions, reminders, and delivery updates.

Tell your customers about updates or emergencies before they need to call. Proactive communication can significantly reduce support calls to contact centers by addressing issues before they escalate. Here are some examples of situations when your customers need to be updated before they call:

  • Timely Issues: Inform customers about service disruptions, planned maintenance, or known issues to prevent a surge of calls from concerned customers
  • Service Updates: Keep customers informed about the status of their orders or deliveries as soon as possible. Like status changes or unexpected shipping delays
  • Reminding customers: Automate reminders instead of letting your human agents call for follow-ups
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Proactive communication is all about preventing calls from needing to happen. It’s especially important for urgent issues, like system disruptions which can cause an influx of customer calls.

With Synthflow AI agents, you can edit the welcome prompt to inform your callers if a delay or service issue is happening at that moment. For example, your welcome message can be, “Thanks for calling. We’re undergoing planned maintenance right now that will last until 8PM. If you still wish to proceed with the call, kindly hold.”

3. Expand Contact Channels with Omnichannel Support

An omnichannel strategy involves offering other communication channels to cater to different preferences. Some options can complement phone calls, like having live chats on a website for immediate help.

Here are some examples:

  • Live Chat: Live chat allows agents to resolve issues without needing to commit to one customer, like a phone call. Agents can talk to multiple people at once in a live chat and answer basic questions with templated responses. Live chats are known for quick issue resolution, often faster than phone calls.
  • SMS: Use text messages for quick updates, reminders, and notifications. For example, a reminder text about an upcoming appointment. Or a notification about an incoming service outage can prevent unnecessary calls to the contact center.
  • Email: Email is the best channel for providing detailed responses to customer inquiries and handling non-urgent issues. This allows customers to communicate at their convenience and have a written record of their interaction.

67% of customers feel frustrated when they can’t reach a business on their own terms. Expanding your support channels is just another way to let customers help themselves.

5. Reduce Call Volume with First Call Resolution Rate (FCR)

Improving your FCR rate is all about training your agents. Agents need to teach customers how to use your company’s knowledge base for future problems. And agents need to provide alternatives to calling for repeated issues. Here are some ways to achieve this:

  • Resolve the customer’s issue and then redirect them to the knowledge database immediately. Tell them that this was the step-by-step process you followed to help them resolve their issue and teach them where to find this on their own
  • Train your agents to teach customers about how to use the knowledge base or support threads. How customers can find FAQs or reported issues that they might be facing in the future
  • Tell customers that you’ll open up a support ticket for them after the call where they can reach out for additional assistance. This prevents a 2nd call and turns it into an email follow-up instead. An open support ticket also guarantees customers that they won’t need to provide context again like in a new call

When customers have their issues resolved promptly and efficiently, they are less likely to call back. Improving FCR rates directly contributes to a reduction in inbound calls by eliminating the need for follow-up calls or escalations.

6. Analyze Call Volume Drivers and Address Root Causes

Some contact centers have deeper problems that need a thorough analysis to solve. Sometimes analyzing and solving these problems can stop recurring issues and reduce inbound call volume. To find these problems, you must analyze the call drivers and the root causes of your customers’ calls.

This strategy touches all bases, including:

  • Agent Proficiency: Are incapable agents causing repeat calls or having difficulty resolving complex issues
  • SOP Documents: Are your SOPs or knowledge bases incomplete or need an update
  • Service or Product Problems: Is there a repeated issue from the service or product that needs to be updated, like a faulty button or error
  • Self-Service Effectiveness: How many users are actually visiting your support threads and self-service platforms

Track call reasons to find repeated service or product problems. Analyze call recordings to check on agent skill and competence. And track page visits for your support or self-service pages to see if users are reading your knowledge base.

7. Optimize your Call Center IVR Systems and Call Routing

A well-designed IVR makes calling easier for customers by providing clear options. Customers can check orders, pay bills, get account info, or find answers to common questions—all without talking to an agent. Smart call routing ensures that if they do need an agent, they quickly reach the right person.

This is another self-service approach that directly reduces the number of calls agents have to handle.

Here’s how contact centers can improve their IVRs:

  1. Study call data: Look at call logs and recordings to see why people call, when they call, and where they get stuck in the current IVR
  2. Simplify menus: Make menus short and easy to understand. Avoid too many layers of options. Use clear language
  3. Offer self-service: Let people do things like check orders, pay bills, or get account info without an agent. Make these options easy to use
  4. Route calls smartly: Send calls to the right agent based on the caller’s needs. Use information like caller ID or what they entered in the IVR to help
  5. Test and get feedback: Ask real customers to test the IVR and see if it’s easy to use. Keep track of call data and get feedback from agents and customers
  6. Make it easy to reach an agent: Always have an option to talk to a live person. Make it easy to find
  7. Improve hold times: If people have to wait, give them useful information or music. Don’t leave them in silence
  8. Review and update regularly: Check the IVR regularly (every few months), update information, and change the menus as needed

While optimizing an IVR can improve customer satisfaction and reduce call volume, IVR technology still has limitations of being rule-based and static. They can’t match the flexibility and natural interaction of AI-powered voice agents.

Synthflow AI agents understand and adapt to the context of the conversation to provide a real conversational experience. AI agents don’t let customers wait and instead allow them to communicate naturally, just as they would with a live human agent.

If you’re a contact center with an outdated IVR, it might be time to upgrade your system entirely.

8. Use Asynchronous Channels for Better Agent Efficiency

Asynchronous communication lets agents manage more clients at the same time by not committing to a phone call. While this strategy won’t reduce the number of inbound calls, it shortens the average call handling time to free up agent resources. Many calls are inquiries for order status, delivery confirmations, and so on.

Instead of putting the caller on hold while the agent fetches that information, the agent can offer to create a support ticket to end the call and continue communications through the support ticket. This means customers get off the phone quicker and receive their ticket update within minutes.

If the caller prefers a phone call, Synthflow AI agents can do outbound calls to follow-up or update the caller on their ticket.

Handling requests asynchronously avoids long holds and stressful interactions. Agents can manage multiple emails and chats, unlike sequential phone calls. This frees up substantial agent time for complex issues for a better customer experience.

Conclusion

Call reduction strategies are all about giving customers more options for help. Like building knowledge bases, allowing omnichannel communication (email, SMS, live chat), and avoiding repeat calls by prioritizing first-call resolution. These strategies empower customers to find solutions independently, reducing call volume for your agents.

However, if you want an overnight improvement then you need AI voice agents like Synthflow. These AI agents are the first point of contact for incoming calls, handling routine inquiries such as order statuses and FAQs. Even basic administrative tasks like scheduling appointments

Ready to reduce inbound call volumes by 30% overnight? Experience the transformative power of AI voice agents in your contact center – try Synthflow’s free demo today.

Call Reduction Strategies for Contact Centers in 2025 (2025)

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