Providing quality customer service is one of the biggest targets for a call center team. And call queues can have a big impact on call centre resources and customer satisfaction levels. That’s why reducing queue times is consistently the number one priority for call centers year-round. In fact, nine out of ten businesses we spoke to see this a significant priority. So, if you want your customers to be satisfied, you need to reduce call queues in your call centres. Simple!
Long queue times increase pressure on your contact center teams and cause dissatisfaction for your customers. So, taking control of your call queues is a huge factor in helping to boost your overall customer satisfaction.
Our in-depth research has uncovered some interesting insights into the impact of call volumes on businesses. For example, 46% of customers said they had decided to purchase from another company or cancelled an existing contract because they struggled to get in contact with a business.
Customers like to speak to a person, and the quicker they can do that, the better.
To help you reduce call queues, we’ve put together a list of top tips for you:
Use IVR
IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response. It’s an automated menu system that you’ve probably come into contact with before in a call that says ‘For our opening ours, press 1, for customer service, please press 2’ and so on…
IVR allows businesses to automatically direct a caller to the appropriate person or department, improving the customer experience without them having to go through multiple people to get to the correct place.
You can give customers updates and important messages, such as wait times, so they can get an idea of how long they’re going to have to wait before their call is answered. And you can offer self-service options, such as requesting a call back or leaving a voicemail. If used, these options can help to reduce call queues even further.
Invest in integration
Small changes, like reducing call queue times will be paramount to the success of your business this year and help you with keeping your customers happy.
By integrating your CRM with your phone system, past challenges such as taking control of your call queues, are solved. And lucky for you, we at CloudCall happen to be experts in that kind of thing!
Technology
Technology for virtual queuing lowers tempers and results in more productive conversations, as well as reducing lost business. It doesn’t need to break the bank either!
The tech is there to reduce the burden on your call center. At the most basic level, automated messages for simple questions your callers may have, such as opening times or addresses are a quick win.
69% of customer-facing businesses employ the technology to do this in some form already? Are you one of them? If not, it may be time for you to invest in a CRM integration.
Harnessing automation
Automated messages and routing mean that routine calls can be dealt with quickly, efficiently and often without the input of a live agent.
If you can free up resources by handling call queues well, then this saves time and money, allowing you to route your team’s time to other practices.
Queues are always going to be inevitable.
But 51% of businesses have technology in place which allows callers to opt for an agent to call them back.
Businesses are gaining and retaining customers they might otherwise have lost, by implementing call backs.
After all; happy customers lead to a happy business.
We recently commissioned some research into the way both customers and businesses behave when communicating with each other. Our eGuide, titled ‘Keep your customers happy’, is available for download now. Go on, take a look!
And if you’d like to find out how CloudCall can help reduce call queues in your business with features such as queue callback, calling groups and IVR (interactive voice response), request a call to speak with one of our team. We bet we can help to reduce the pressure on call centre resources and improve customer satisfaction levels in no time.
