Propose alternatives to callers on hold.

There are some products in the market that leverage all comunication mediums into a single platform, thus affording the caller to leave and timely receive, another type of message ( e-mail, chat, etc ).

They also include reporting for timely response in all mediums.

I represent a vendor for that sort of app, in case you might be interested.

A recent Future Foundation report gives the results of a satisfaction survey of Thames Water and Yorkshire Electricity customers and agents who use 'QueueBuster' as an alternative to waiting on hold. A pdf version of this is available on the welcome page of netcall.com. It's very interesting - and a 'must read' for anyone responsible for balancing agent resources and keeping customers happy.

Tracey,

There are times and services when you have to accept that you will have a long queue time, indeed you may have some services where you literally don't care how long the caller has to wait (I can hear the Gasps already! - but trust me).

I have a client who sold tickets for a service where there was a finite amount available and these tickets would always sell. The small callcentre was staffed to be able to sell the tickets and not to handle all of the calls - if one caller dropped out, 'there'll be another along in a minute'. It wasn't unusual for average queue times upward of 45mins.


In this situation as all I could try to do was provide the customer with as pleasant an experience as possible whilst queuing (ifthat's not a paradox).

- Ensure that the music on-hold is of a generally acceptable nature. Popular songs worked well here - the feel good type that people sing along to (tailor to the typical caller)
- MOH didn't repeat/loop (too often).
- Give the caller the option of listening to informational announcements about the service whilst still maintaining a queue position (this also reduced agent talk time).
- Greeting announcements explained that queue times would generally be long because of the nature of the service.
- The first follow-up comfort announcement after 30secs, then every 45secs, and eventually every 90secs. - This can affect the caller's perception about the time that they have queued (and also reduces those annoying interruptions into their sing along)


Ultimately, where no hard data/survey is available for reference, don't be afraid to go with your instinct based on what works for you 'as a customer', look for feedback and change it if necessary.


Finally, this type off approach must be a last resort though. Where customer service is important, I would echo all that has already been said above re. genuine announcements (with feeling and an apology where appropriate), correct staffing levels etc.


As for automated call back - I'll let you know, as a current client is soon to implement it . . .

The real problem is that most callers hate call centres. My research shows that 81% of callers have frustrations to talk about. An equal percentage are prepared to terminate their call. They want to speak to a human - the purpose of their call. If automatic call back systems are used they should operate within aminute, or centres should have more staff.

Donald, I agree with you on the point of speed. Unfortunately many call centres can't realistically afford to employ more staff to answer all calls within a few seconds at peak time - without having agents under-optimised as peaks tail off.

Automated call back systems guarantee a quick call back because they take the callers place in queue as if they were still on the line - callers only have to press 1 and say their name to take this option. When their place reaches an agent, agents hear the customers voice recording while the system is automatically ringing the customer - agent armed with the callers name can greet them personally.

These are the findings of independent research of users of the QueueBuster automated call back system: Future Foundation 2001 - Thames Water, npower Yorkshire

Customers
97% it would be good if more companies offered a call back system
85% it improved my opinion of the company
88% Companies offering QueueBuster care more about their customers than those that don't

Agents
94% QueueBuster customers are easier to deal with than those who have waited on-hold
93% QueueBuster is reducing the levels of angry and frustrated customers I have to deal with
89% QueueBuster is making my job easier

Hello everybody,

We had working on this particular problem for a quite a time now.We have been researching on this particular problem to see as which parameters hypotheses the customers irritation level in case of time lost in queqe.Though lot of parameters have been found relevant a definte answers is still to be found.
Once the parameters are found we will use AI and Other Linguistic Techniques to alter responses at different levels of time intervals.This would indeed increase the level of customer comfortability in such situations.

I would like to put forward a simple example for the above mentioned.
suppose there are 5 people in the ACD and all of them are being played the same message.Assumption is we have a FIFO systems in place ,it is most likely that the person who has been in the queqe for the most time may hear a repeat message.Now its here wherein we can use AI as a solution.Intelligent computing helps us to deal with a customer in a more Human interactive way.
But for that we need to know more as what parameters are correlated with this problem.According to time spent in the queqe we can have diffrent voice messages.

We would like to estimate (w,Tw, q,Tq), waiting items, waiting time, queued items, and queuing time, mean and standard deviation of each.
Assumptions made about queuing model is summarized using a notation:
G – general distribution, M – exponential distribution, D – deterministic fixed rate
Accordingly models are named: M/M/1 refers to Poisson arrival , exponential service .
If anybody of you have done any further research on the above mentioned please tell me.

Thanx
sudip

Dee, I appreciate your comments. It would appear that I never call a centre that uses latest technology, as it is not uncommon to wait on hold for anything from three to twenty minutes. As regards "peak times" it would appear that this any time of the day for many centres. Again I say that the opportunity to be called back should be available after a maximum of two minutes or more call handlers should be employed. After all, companies claim that the reason for the centres is an efficiency in customer service. Really they mean costs. Why else, when they freely admit that centres opening in the sub-continents gives access to a wel-educated, low cost English speaking work-force?

Hi Tracey,

I think an option would be to offer a callback whilst staying in the queue.

If you gave the customer a chance to put the phone down and know they are still in the queue, they can get on with what they want to do and get called whne they get to the front of that queue.

Another option is to have many messages given at different times using a solution that only charges for one message function and allows unlimited messages

If you want any more advice please call me on 01923 264142

Regards

Shaun Sen
Director
XRL

Waiting in queue can be made more frustrating by hearing the same things over and over.

Why not give your caller some information whilst they are on line and at your disposal.

Advertise your website or special offers, tell them how they could save money or let them know how much you value their feedback and could they mail you at ..........

regs

Becky

I agree with Becky. We propmt our customers to ask about special deals ect.

Its better than saying you will be in a never ending q....




Charlie

In reference to the original post

"It seems to me though that we play this message a little too often and the onlypurpose it serves is to irritate the customer and to remind them of just how long we have kept them waiting. Is there an industry standard that suggests how frequently these messages should be played?"

It has been some time since I last had a chance to share pearls of wisdom with the fantastic body of minds now drawn to this forum. After reading many of the posts prompted by the original request I thought it may be appropriate to get back to some good old fashion CC managment I MIS assessment. Sometimes I think we have let technology take all the fun out of Call Centre managment.

In my early days as a CC manager, this was a regular issue raised by many customer satisfaction surveys. Often messages were left to repeat based on ACD factory settings, which resulted in an almost drum beat like repetion of the "soory" message.

I found that the best way to address this was to monitor my average speed of answer and set my repeats to activate after this time frame (providing This did not exceed 30 seconds). In this way a majority of queued calls would only receive the welcome message and possibly one repeat prior to being answered. I would then focus on productivity, rostering and good old fashion managment to ensure I could contain the average speed of answer within acceptable standards.

I hope this flashback may be of help to those whose budgets have yet to stretch out to meet the costs of todays great technology improvements.