Waiting In Queue Messages

[Carrigman]

Our call center currently has long wait times due to a multiplicity of reasons that I won't go into. In an effort to reduce abandonment and to keep callers sweet when they get through to an agent I want to keep them "entertained" while waiting. I want to let them know something other than the usual "we regret this delay" message repeated ad nauseam. I don't want to bombard them with a marketing spiel as that could make things worse. My idea is an interruptible message that would not be repeated. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has done this and what works best. Many thanks.

[pmorton]

Without the details of what your call center supports it is difficult to answer this question with accuracy. However, you may try giving the consumer pertinent program information that may hel p to reduce the number of calls waiting. It will not reduce your abandoned rate overall, but it will reduce customer unsatisfactioin. Example..., perform an analysis of the call types, then find out the top 5 call types. If appropriate, incorporate the answers to the top 5 call types into the "hold script". This will eliminate the number of calls holding fo long lenths of time. I suppose the next step would be to determine the length of time of the script. You may want to restructure your "abandoned" definition to take into account the informational script. It would be a safe bet that any hang ups after the completion of the "informational " script would be actual abandons

[Martijn]

We also check if we can place a message on the menu before routing to an agent. It's got to be a short message which is very clear. We sometimes place it behind a menu choice so that not all the clients here the text because most of the time it will be a text to explain a fault we made and stating that we'll solve the problem within x days.

We see abandonmentrate going up from 3% to 10% if the text is good. This way in the menu you will already reduce your call vloume to your agents and you'll be sure that the text is obvious because otherwise people won't hang up but you'll only create extra noise.

So stating you have a few reasons i would try to pick the biggest for which you can make a simple text and then put it on your menu.