A major fraction of customers get frustrated even before talking to the agent. What can be the reason for this? Customer frustration is inevitable when your business makes them wait long in call queues. When your business does not have an appropriate call center queue management strategy, the result is long call queues leading to poor customer experience.
The call center queue management is a key driver for the efficiency of the call center system your business invests in. Let’s delve into the discussion of what, why and how of a call queue management.
What is call center queue management?
When the call volume exceeds the number of agents, call queue management handles the call queue to connect the call sequentially as the agents become available. Call queue management is all about managing the virtual queue of callers when the agents are busy attending to other calls.
Call queue management affects the following aspects of the call center system.
- Volume of calls
- Abandonment rate
- Average waiting time/ Call center queue time
- Customer satisfaction.
Why is call center queue management important for your business?
The call queue management feature of the call center software enables businesses to handle a large volume of calls without call drops. It also helps in improving the level of customer engagement and satisfaction and reduces average call center queue time.
Call center queue management provides the following benefits for businesses:
- Improves first call resolution rates
- Boosts agent performance
- Minimizes waiting time leading to greater customer satisfaction
- Prevents missed opportunities due to calls sent to voicemail
- Decreases call drops
10 tips to master call center queue management
Customer expectations have heightened over the last few years and it is crucial for businesses to ensure that their contact center software meets the standards. Adapting these best practices for call center queue management ensures better customer service quality and helps to meet the call rush during seasonal spikes.
1.Implement a call routing strategy
Call routing strategy plays a major role in call queue management. Implementing the right call routing strategy effectively reduces call center queue time. While automatic call distribution (ACD) can be implemented to reduce call queues, it does not serve the purpose of faster resolution. Here are some of the call routing strategies that your business may implement to take your call queue management to the next level.
- Least idle routing
- Skill-based routing
- Service level routing
- Intelligent call routing
- Data-directed routing
- Value-based routing
- Multi-modal routing
Research these routing strategies and find a match that suits your business needs.
2.Integrate IVR system
The Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system is a component that helps in call center queue management. It keeps the customer engaged while they wait to be connected with the representative. Traditional IVR usually keeps the customer engaged with on-hold music or greeting. However, the IVR technology has evolved to resolve simple customer issues and/or redirect them to the right department.
AI-powered IVR and conversation IVR systems can be integrated into your call center software for reducing call queues and thereby scaling up your call center queue management.
3.Provide option for self-service
73% of modern customers are willing to self-serve rather than waiting to be connected with an agent. The best way to improve self-service capabilities is by enlisting FAQs, blogs, and other content forms around common customer issues and queries on your website. You may also integrate chatbots to enhance your self-service options. Chatbots can guide the customers step-by-step to resolve their own issues.
4.Offer call back facility
Your customers feel valued when your business understands the value of their time. Instead of keeping the customers on hold, your business can offer a call-back option. It provides the customer psychological relief and thus they appreciate your interest to get back to them. Collect customer details to create a virtual queue without making the customers wait. Your agents can call them back once they become available.
5.Cross-train your agents
When you train your agents for multiple departments, they can respond to calls that may not be exactly for their department. Therefore, when agents of one department are fully occupied, a cross-trained agent may attend the call. With cross-functional agent teams, the call queue is minimized.
6.Reevaluate your workforce management
When you have very few agents and a large volume of calls, the call queue grows. Workforce management is essential to handle the increased number of calls. You may consider forming ring groups or adjusting staff in shifts to manage the call queue.
7.Set an upper limit for customer queue time
Keeping the customers on hold for a long time raises customer frustration. Set a maximum limit to waiting time to avoid this challenge. You may inform the customer about the long queue and offer alternatives to solve their problem when they reach the maximum limit of the waiting period.
8.Adapt omnichannel communication
Opening up new channels for communication is one of the best tips for call center queue management. However, the contact center software must have omnichannel communication so that the issues registered on other channels are also addressed in time. Social media, email, and live chat are some of the channels that your business may explore.
9.Provide access to queue metrics
If agents can view metrics such as service level, average answering speed, etc., they can understand their team performance. Visibility to call queue metrics enables agents to step up their game when needed. Agents can monitor their KPIs and exhibit self-regulatory behavioral changes in their interaction to improve their performance as well as customer experience.
10.Monitor analytics to take required action
Call center systems usually gather a lot of data that can be analyzed to drive actionable insights. Rely on the analytics to understand hurdles and fix them for better call center queue management.
Protect your business reputation with the best call queue management
Proper call center queue management results in hassle-free and smooth customer resolution. It is an integral aspect of building a better customer experience. These 10 tips can be implemented to level up your call queue management. Hodusoft has been delivering a stellar customer service experience through its various UC products. To explore their product offerings, get in touch with the team at sales@hodusoft.com or call on +1-707-708-4638.