Do you feel like you’re answering the same questions over and over when your customers call? Or that you’re “always on” — answering calls at all hours of the day? Or both?
On one hand, lots of calls are a sign of a healthy business. But they can take up a lot of time. And solving customer issues can happen without your involvement. For example, directing the customer to a self-service portal or resource.
If you want to reduce your call volume, we have some call reduction strategies for you. We’ve divided them into three phases based on the effort they’ll take to implement and their impact on the total number of calls you receive.
What is call reduction?
Call reduction is the process of minimizing unnecessary or repetitive inbound calls. It’s often implemented by using tools like auto-replies and self-service options.
Call reduction isn’t something you set up once and forget. You need to monitor and adapt your strategies as your workflows and customers evolve.
Why is call reduction important?
Call reduction helps you handle fewer unnecessary calls while improving customer service. It’s about making communication easier for both your team and customers.
Here’s how it helps your business:
- Happier customers. Instead of waiting on hold, people can get answers from auto-replies, online booking links, or a self-service resource center.
- Reduce customer service costs. When your team handles fewer calls, you don’t need to hire as many support reps. That gives you more room to invest in tools, training, or systems that make your customer service even better.
- Keep your team focused on solving complex issues. Reps can spend time handling tougher problems instead of answering repetitive questions. For example, questions about your business address or opening hours.
- Shorter wait times. With fewer calls in the queue, every customer can get help faster.
Call reduction strategies for your growing business
Let’s break down 14 strategies that can reduce your call volume.
1. Introduce online appointment scheduling
Impact: High
Effort: Low
If you’re a service-based business, how many calls are related to appointment scheduling and rescheduling? We’re guessing a lot. Appointment scheduling software can free up your time since customers can book online and reschedule/cancel if needed.
Tools like Calendly are incredibly simple to set up. You connect the tool to your business calendar, add your availability, and then add the scheduling link to your website.
Example: Massage Envy lets customers select the type of massage. Then they show available appointments with each massage therapist on a single screen.
2. Use auto-replies to resolve questions without a call
Impact: High
Effort: Low
A lot of business calls are easy to prevent. Customers just want to know your hours, reschedule an appointment, or find a price. Auto-replies help you handle repetitive customer inquiries without having to pick up the phone. They let you respond right away, set expectations, and share helpful links so customers can take the next step on their own.
Use auto-replies as a call reduction strategy to move the conversation to text or direct people to your booking page, FAQ, or price list. That way, you’re still helping — just without the back-and-forth.
Need some more inspiration? Check out our list of 41 auto-reply text examples.
In Quo, formerly OpenPhone, you can set up an auto-reply that sends a text when you miss a call, get a voicemail, or receive a message during or after business hours. Your message could say something like:
“Sorry we missed your call! We’ll get back to you ASAP. In the meantime, here’s a link to our [booking page/FAQs/price list]. You can also reply here with questions. Talk to you soon!”
3. Deliver proactive customer service
Impact: High
Effort: Low
When you proactively reach out to customers, you’ll naturally decrease the number of incoming calls. For example, you can send appointment confirmation texts and appointment reminders. These will reduce calls from customers who forgot to add the appointment to their calendars.
There are a few ways you can implement proactive customer service:
- Automatically send appointment confirmation when customers book a service. Appointment scheduling tools can do this for you.
- Text customers important information they need before an appointment, like the location, or if there’s a delay.
- Send a follow-up text after a call or appointment with next steps. This can include information like acknowledging that you’ll review their request or providing a payment confirmation.
You can make this process easier by creating templates for common text replies. In Quo, these are called snippets. Rather than typing a reply from scratch each time, you can select a snippet to quickly send to the customer — and edit the snippet if needed. You can even automate your routine texts with SMS workflows.
Impact: Medium
Effort: Low
How many times do customers call with the same questions? If you use a conversational IVR, customers can listen to a greeting and might have their questions answered without talking to anyone.
You can change the greeting in your IVR system to something like:
“Thank you for calling [business name]! Our hours are 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. You can also book online anytime at [web address].”
Since you don’t want your greeting to be too long, focus on answering the main reasons your customers call. By addressing the top call drivers, you’ll have the biggest impact possible.
5. Set up a community forum for peer-to-peer support
Impact: Medium
Effort: Medium
Sometimes, your customers want to ask a quick question or see how other customers handled a similar situation.
A community forum gives people a place to connect and resolve issues without calling your team. You can start with something like a Facebook group, Discord server, or subreddit. You know your customers best, so pick the platform you think they’d most likely visit.
Communities can feel lonely if no one is participating. Encourage your active customers to jump-start the conversation when you announce the new community. Just assign a team member to moderate conversations to address anything urgent and make sure the information is accurate.
Example: Travel Planning Made Simple created a Facebook group to share tips and tricks for travel planning. Moderators share information. But members also post asking for recommendations from fellow group members.
6. Build a simple knowledge base to tackle repeat questions
Impact: High
Effort: Medium
A well-placed FAQ page can save your team from answering the same questions over and over — and it works 24/7, even when you’re busy or closed. It’s one of the easiest ways to help customers help themselves.
Start with 5-7 of the most common questions customers ask. Keep answers short, clear, and easy to read on a phone so customers can quickly find the information they’re looking for.
Don’t forget to add a link to your FAQ page to your social profiles and booking pages. You can even include a link in your auto-reply text messages, like “Check out our FAQ page for more info.”
Example: Teladoc Health is a telemedicine company that uses its FAQ page to answer practical questions patients often ask. This includes information about whether family members can share an account or who their providers are. It helps new patients get the answers they need without having to reach out to support.
7. Offer multi-channel support
Impact: High
Effort: Medium
If you only offer one support channel — the phone — then the phone will be supporting 100% of your customer queries. If you offer omnichannel support, many customers might try other channels before calling your business.
Some communication channels, like text, chat or chatbot, social media, and email, can offer support a lot faster and more efficiently. One rep might be able to handle multiple text or email conversations with customers simultaneously. But they can only answer one call at a time.
Not sure how to get started? We’ve published an eight-step guide to help you start an SMS support operation. You can use this guide to set goals, create automated workflows, and more.
8. Use an AI agent to answer routine calls 24/7
Impact: High
Effort: High
When you answer calls, you’ll always be limited by your availability. Quo’s Sona is an AI voice agent that can have a conversation with your customers 24/7. Sona uses the business information you provide to answer FAQs, freeing up your customer service reps for more complex issues. Sona will also capture leads and take messages for a customer callback at a fraction of the cost of a virtual receptionist.
You can integrate Sona directly into your call flows within your Quo settings. For example, you might use call routing to have Sona answer calls when your team isn’t able to pick up during or after hours. With a phone menu option, you can connect callers directly to Sona to eliminate wait times.
Sona can also transfer a call to a human rep when a customer needs more help during your team’s working hours.
During live calls, Sona can even send SMS messages. These can include links to your appointment booking page, business address, or an intake form. This can help callers resolve their own issues.
All Sona calls are recorded, logged, and summarized in your Quo workspace, so you can review your customer interactions with Sona.
9. Implement coaching to resolve issues on the first call
Impact: Medium
Effort: High
When customers don’t get their issues handled the first time, they’ll call back — sometimes more than once. Not only does this increase the number of calls you receive, but it can also lead to a poor customer experience.
To avoid this, consider providing call coaching so your reps have the tools they need to offer accurate information. Your goal should be first call resolution, or FCR, addressing customer needs, and providing clear next steps.
To get started, review past phone calls and transcripts where the customer was confused, frustrated, or called back later. Identify the customer’s pain points during the call. For example, setting incorrect expectations, misunderstanding the root cause of an issue, or failing to follow-up.
And don’t forget to also listen to call recordings to hear how your reps communicate with customers — their tone, empathy, and clarity.
Then, provide customer service coaching. This will help your reps better handle difficult conversations and troubleshoot issues.
Finally, collect customer feedback to confirm that gaps in customer service quality assurance have been addressed.
10. Analyze your call data before you act
Impact: High
Effort: Medium
Before you roll out your call reduction strategy, you should understand why people are calling in the first place.
One of the easiest ways to do this is by using call tags. A business phone system like Quo labels calls by topic, like “pricing” or “rescheduling,” so you can see what customers talk about the most.
💡Top tip: Let call tags run for at least a week or two before reviewing results. You’ll get more accurate insights into what’s driving call volume.
You can also track how long each call lasts. If certain topics consistently take longer, it may signal an area that needs improvement. For example, you may need to iterate on your product, service, or the information on your website.
11. Use call holding to prevent multiple callbacks
Impact: Medium
Effort: Low
When customers are left waiting in silence, they often think the call has dropped or become impatient and hang up. Let them know you’re putting them on hold while you find the information you need to quickly solve their issue. Then play hold music so they know the call is still active. If it’s taking longer than expected, check back in after a few minutes to let them know you’re still working on it.
This small step keeps them engaged and helps you resolve their issue in a single call instead of multiple callbacks.
12. Create videos and interactive tutorials to reduce repetitive “how-to” calls
Impact: High
Effort: High
Most “how-to” calls happen when customers need to see a process, not just read about it. Showing them what to do makes it easier to follow along.
Step-by-step videos or image walkthroughs let people follow along with each stage, whether that’s resetting a password, updating their profile, or tracking an order. For example, you can record your screen while completing the task and add short captions explaining what to do next.
Plus, once your guides are live, they’re available on your website or YouTube channel.
13. Personalize customer interactions to reduce repeat calls
Impact: High
Effort: High
Connecting your CRM to your business phone system helps your team personalize every call. With the HubSpot and Quo integration, you can see who’s calling, review texts, and check call summaries from previous conversations before even saying hello. This lets your team tailor their responses to make each interaction more personal, often resolving the issue in one call instead of several.
14. Review your support info regularly to make sure it’s up to date
Impact: High
Effort: Medium
Outdated information can quickly drive up call volume. This also makes it easy for your team to give inconsistent answers.
To prevent this, review your support content every month to make sure it’s up to date.
How to build a call reduction plan for your business
Here are three simple steps to build your call reduction plan:
- Assess your current customer calls. Use analytics to review trends and find the most common reasons people reach out. This helps you understand what’s creating extra work for your team.
- Set goals and take action. Decide which types of calls you want to reduce and outline steps to make that happen. This can include updating FAQs, setting up auto-replies, or improving other types of online resources.
- Review and refine regularly. Check your analytics to see what’s working and where customers still need help. Make small improvements over time so you keep reducing calls and increasing customer service efficiency.
Reduce your call volume without sacrificing service
While your business will always have inbound calls, these call reduction strategies can help you reduce repetitive calls or issues that can be handled through self-service options. Anything you can do to reduce your high call volume frees your team up for more complex calls or escalations.
That’s where Sona comes in. It’s the perfect fallback option for when no one can answer, handling routine calls so your team can focus on the ones that really need them.
You can try Sona during a free seven-day trial with Quo. Run some test calls to understand how Sona works and how it facilitates call reduction in real time.
FAQs
Reducing call volume increases operational efficiency and frees up your team to focus on more complex or urgent issues. This leads to faster response times, less burnout, and a better overall customer experience.
Learn more about creating a customer experience program to give your business an edge.
Contact centers use various advanced tools and processes to manage high call volume. These can include scripted workflows, detailed reporting, or dedicated agents for every issue.
But small and growing businesses benefit more from simplified tools. Think auto-replies to reduce repeat calls and call tagging to understand what’s driving volume. You should also use tools like an AI voice agent to handle routine calls and free up time without adding operational costs.
