You are caller 100 in the queue...…..

As a call centre business consultant, I'm always intrigued when I call a contact centre to see how the service they are offering stacks up. Last week I had the pleasure of waiting over 30 minutes for Virgin media to answer the phone to add a voicemail to my landline and was left in the upside down world with no communication at all and it got me thinking about a few things they could have done better to help reduce my frustrations and improve my customer experience.

Tell me in advance of how your queue times are - a lot of communication platforms now are able to forecast the queue times for customers to help them decide if their call is worth the wait, being able to tell customers what the average wait time is, is a good way of managing your customers expectation, in addition advertise when your quieter periods are so that they can decide if their call is important enough to wait or call back.

1. Tell me where I am in the queue - we've all seen and heard the jokes about where you are in the queue but it works, knowing how many callers there are in front of you gives you that perspective on whether to hold or whether to call back and there is a certain sense of satisfaction hearing yourself get closer to that number 1 slot!

Help me with music and distractions - I often find when the same repetitive hold music or messaging system plays that this can build additional frustration into a callers experienece as it feels like its never ending and if your hold music isn't great it can add to an already poor experienece, so break it up for me, these days you can preload adverts, different music options etc but what this does is it gives the caller a break from the same drone of bad hold music and can actually make the time pass a little quicker or at least a little bit more bearable.

Help me get on with my life by calling me back - these days sitting there waiting for your turn to be the next caller doesn't need to happen. Technology has evolved to allow call backs such as Queuebusters this is a service where you can register a call back, keep your place in the queue but create a call back so you can go on about your day without the phone being strapped to your ears, the downside this doesn't get you there any faster and doesn't improve the contact centre KPI for service but helps you as the customer get a better experienece.

Give me options - An omni channel experienece these days is essential so if you aren't using, live chat, SMS or email or social media to help service your customers then you are missing a trick, not only does this service your customers faster by their preferred medium it can often help you reduce the more costly option of more bums on seats to handle the demands on your contact centre.

If you need help looking at your end to end process for customer experience then F.A.B Solutions has the experience and expertise to support you. Drop us a line for a free discovery call on how we can help your customer experience.