Call centre queue is a virtual container where all the inbound calls are queued up until there is a resource available to answer the call. Generally, call centres use an Automatic Call Distributor to distribute the incoming calls to particular agents in the centre. The ACD feature holds the queued phone calls in first In, First Out order until a resource person becomes available. From a caller’s perspective, without the virtual queuing they only have two options: wait till a resource person becomes available or you could hang up the call and try again later. From a call centre’s perspective, a long call queue can result in a lot of abandoned calls, customer dissatisfaction, and repeat attempts.
With Call Queue System call centres have the choice to create customised call queues. All inbound calls get sorted into call queues according to predefined rules and are directed to the available resources within the right group. It can improve the customer’s experience while on-hold as they wait for the next available resource with call queuing. This feature can do much more than routing the inbound calls to right agents such as.
- Personalised greeting
- Interactive information on the caller’s sequence number (number of people in the queue or current waiting time).
- Customised music whilst the customers are on-hold
All this can enhance customers’ waiting experience until they are connected with a call centre agent.
Call Routing to The Right Call Queue
With call queues call centres can create multiple call queues with the caller’s phone numbers. Such call queues can be used depending on the preferences and needs of the company, the expertise, and skills, knowledge of services and products along with the language skills of the agents. For instance, if your call centre creates a call queue with resource persons who speak fluent Spanish then all the incoming calls from Spain will be routed automatically to those agents in that call queue. Call queuing feature can ensure that all the incoming calls are routed to the most qualified agent depending on your unique business requirements. This means that the caller will quickly and easily be connected to the right resource person, making them more satisfied.
Set Waiting Time Limits in Your Contact Centre
With call queueing feature call centres can create waiting time limits for your call queues. After a particular time, customers will be transferred to voicemail automatically, to a different call queue or can be redirected to a certain phone number. For instance, if a customer calls from an American phone number, and they are waiting on hold. If that call is not answered within thirty seconds, they will be redirected automatically to the general customer support line with the available resource persons. If the general customer support line has no agent available, then the caller will get redirected to the voicemail, etc.
Reasons to Add Call Queuing for Call Centre
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Increased Customer Satisfaction
- Customer services are the key: Let us broaden the discussion beyond some certain complaints in order to see a very significant trend which affects all customers. Nowadays customers demand a more flawless customer service experience. Providing such experience has become essential for all businesses. Businesses have responded to this demand by investing in this area. More and more businesses are increasing their investment in customer management. Once they made a decision to spend more on calling centre, the key question becomes the technologies which will yield more enhancement in customer experiences for the least cost.
- Everybody doesn’t like to wait on hold: The most immediate and obvious benefit of virtual queuing is an enhancement in customer satisfaction. If you ask your customers what can ruin their call centre experience for them, mostly ‘waiting on-hold’ is on the top of their list. By providing your customers with the option to receive a call back rather than waiting on hold, your company can eliminate one of the most dreaded parts of the call centre experience.
- Turn a negative into a positive: Virtual call queuing is much more than just eliminating a negative, also it is adding a positive. Providing an option of a call back shows your callers that you respect their time and it portrays a good image of your brand.
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Decreasing Abandon Rate
- Track abandon rate: a phone call is abandoned when a customer calls a call centre to talk to an agent, however, they hang up before the call is connected. This call abandonment leads to an increased number of repeat phone calls which can strain the system of call centre and dissatisfied customers. Therefore, a lot of call centre managers watch the abandon call rate very closely. Every abandoned call decreases First Call Resolution (FCR) rates and it can leave a bad memory for the customers. Worst of all, it might be the final straw which sends them to your competitor. You can only tell the customers that their calls matter to you and tell them to be patient, so many times before the callers hang up their call.
The impact of call queuing on abandonment rate: the obvious way to reduce abandonment rate is to reduce hold time and the way to do that is to employ more agents. If you have the financial budget, then you can just add agents until the abandonment rate reduces to your target level. But in the real world, finances are always constrained which makes this solution unrealistic. For call centres with occasional volume spikes, the situation becomes trickier. Business VoIP Call queue is the best way to tackle this problem.
