Hi All,

we currently play a message to any callers in our queues saying 'Thank you for calling, your call is in a queue and will be answered shortly'

It seems to me though that we play this message a little too often and the onlypurpose it serves is to irritate the customer and to remind them of just how long we have kept them waiting. Is there an industry standard that suggests how frequently these messages should be played? Does anyone have any comments or suggestions regarding the customers perception of service following changes to the frequency of this kind of message?

Thanks - Tracey

Hi Tracey,

Welcome to CCV the real action forum. Your experience with IVR messages is very true and the customer has called up to hear a human voice but not a pre recorded message.The tradeoff that you are looking for is very difficult to achieve. Either you increase your manpower to handle call volumes or use automation to manage volumes by retaining the current resources.

Response Time is a performance metric critical in our industry. Normally when the customer calls he expects to hear a human voice.When he encounters a message that he is in queue makes him feel unimportant.Safe way to set a standard for response time is to ensure that the agent is answering the call within three rings.

vedula

I guess you have already seen the problem and it is up to you to take the initiative.

Take responsibility - you must be prepared to take responsibility for this area. If you know that it annoys your customers - do something about it as well as taking responsibility for your own actions.

So use your authority, do it with judgement and tact - you know how it frustrates you - don't let it annoy your customers too.

If your customers like dealing with your company - they will come back time and time again and watch those profits take a steady increase and watch your career development take off at the same time.

Hi and welcome to CCV.

Lets look at the message itself. "Thank you for calling, your call is in a queue and will be answered shortly"

Firstly, as a human being (allegedly) this message says to me that the people who wrote it have no idea what it's actually like to be in a queue; the continual "thanks" actually angers me over a period. Secondly, I KNOW my call is in a queue so why keep telling me. Thirdly, telling me it will be answered 'shortly' after holding for 20 minutes makes me want to kill... Apart from those things its great!!!

A more honest and meaningful message might be, "We apologise for the delay in getting to talk to us. We know queuing is frustrating but please be assured that we will answer you just as soon as wecan. Thank you for your patience."

Here are my reasons.
- People are 'wound-up' in queues so recognise it and apologise.After all it is YOUR fault!
- Recognise the point of the call 'to talk to someone', and make the announcer one of you rather than a disjointed 'thing'.
- Let the caller know you understand and sympathise with their plight
- Reassure the caller that you are doing what you can
- Acknowledge that the caller is giving you their most precious commodity - time

Lastly, an absolutely critical part of this message is how the person recording it does it. It MUST be recorded with 'feeling' and 'honesty'. If it is just read out then it will wind people up even more because it has no meaning. Try getting several people to do it and then ask an independant panel, of say 20 people (CSAs because they will 'justify' less), to judge. The question to them being, "Which version makes you feel best." Go with the one that scores highest.

Hope this helps Tracey

David

As I see it (and I know for a fact that I'm not alone), part of the problem with what I'm going to term 'blind queue systems' is that there is little feedback to the caller about when they are likely to be answered.

One of the better approaches is to give some feedback to the caller, for example, to expand upon David's idea, 'We apologise for the delay in getting to talk to us. We know queuing is frustrating but please be assured that we will answer you just as soon as we can. You are currently number four in the queue and we expect to be able to answer your call in around two minutes'

This approach, whilst technically a little more challenging (designers will need to have some idea of call metrics, i.e. how long atypical call takes versus typical average 'throughput' over similar periods, tempered with a degree of 'magic' to give a fair indication of the amount of time a caller will have to wait. Far better to take this approach, as the caller knows how long they may have to wait and can choose to hold on or call back later.

Of course, the Achilles Heel of this method is just that - by giving an indication of the estimated length of time before answering, you run the risk of losing customer during busy periods - after all, a ten minute 'on hold' session is never attractive, feedback or not...

John

A new generation of intelligent telephony systems can offer a very simple and effective way of resolving customers frustration with waiting on-hold. Look for Automated Call Back Systems that give customers the option to avoid the queue and the in-queue messaging systems that have the potential to further aggravate. These work by letting caller’s hang-up and do something else while the technology holds their place in the queue – as if they were still on the line. When their call reaches the front, agents receive the ‘callers name’ by voice message, while the system is simultaneously dialling out to the customer. Customer service is enhanced by enabling the agent to personalise their introduction “Hello Mr Jones, this is ACME Insurance returning your call”. Customers are genuinely surprised and happy to receive a return call. There is something about the dynamic of the agent now being in control of the call and the customer being pleased to have been called back that is shown also to reduce call handling time.

Interestingly, whilst few of us would take the voicemail option in distrust that we would really have our call returned - evidence is, that around 80% of customers take the call back option. This is likely to be the way the call back is offered “we will call you back as soon as your call reaches the front of the queue”.

When these systems are in place, those customers who decide to wait on-hold and endure the in-queue messaging, actually don’t get their call answered any quicker than the customer who opted for a call back. Another key issue to bear in mind is that agents still receive an inbound call. Unlike some other queue management options such as ACD voicemail and MIS queue stat modules that require careful managementand often dedicated resource to handle – automated call back systems require no change to inbound agent process.

These systems also have the advantage of connecting to any existing switch or telephony system via standard PSTN connections.

Why put the word "Frustrated" at all? What do you think the calls that are in a good mood would think when they hear that. I would think that a call centre that adds the word "Frustrated" in the recording is aware that there is a problem and to the customer, I would wonder why aren't they looking into fixing the problem. Be as positive as you can in your recordings. such as.....

First RAN " Thank you for call ......, All of our agents are currently busy servicing other customers, your call is important to us, please hold and we will be with you shortly.

Second RAN "We are sorry for the delay, please continue to hold, we will be with you shortly"

Telling someone they are 2nd or 3rd in line doesn't tell them how long the will beon the line and what I've found is if you hear the amount of time before you are answered " the current hold time is 2 minutes" it's never 2 minutes, it's always longer so why frustrate the caller by lying to them on top of being put on hold.

Sorry. I meant "callers" and not "calls"

Why put the word "Frustrated" at all? What do you think the calls that are in a good mood would think when they hear that. I would think that a call centre that adds the word "Frustrated" in the recordingis aware that there is a problem and to the customer, I would wonder why aren't they looking into fixing the problem. Be as positive as you can in your recordings. such as.....

Lawrence wrote:

"Why put the word "Frustrated" at all? What do you think the calls that are in a good mood would think when they hear that."

I hear what you're suggesting and can see your point of view, but remember that when you hit a queue, you are effectively being denied direct contact to an operator, and therefore you aren't able to complete your objective.

Therefore, queues are always viewed negatively; one normally expects some kind of a delay, but it would be nice if the odd call centre apologised once in a while. On the other hand, you're perfectly right to say that it can be viewed as a negative and perhaps slightly unnecessary thing to include.

"Telling someone they are 2nd or 3rd in line doesn't tell them how long the will beon the line and what I've found is if you hear the amount of time before you are answered " the current hold time is 2 minutes" it's never 2 minutes, it's always longer so why frustrate the caller by lying to them on top of being put on hold.".

Your suggestions are pretty much the norm here in the UK, but you have to view things from the perspective of the caller. Listening to the same message again and again is frustrating. At least the 'feedback' version gives some reflection of how 'close' one is to being answered, or attaining ones objective of speaking to an operator. The beauty of interaction isthat it's a two way thing. A well designed queue can't be two way, but at least it can impart some positional information so that the caller isn't left in the dark.

I liked Dee's approach; it's progressive and proactive, but the drawback there is that the caller may feel a bit 'fobbed off' with a promise to be called back - bearing in mind how many companies promise such things and don't deliver...

John

First time on the site so here's hoping this works...

Other possible options to add to those above, if you do use an ACD voicemail system, is to give as much information as possible to the customer which should hopefully reduce the average handling time as well as direct them to other service channels.

For example "Our opening hours are 9am to 9pm and you can also reach us at ACME.com where you can place an order etc."

In addition you can also dispense with any "Must mention" phrases like Data protection, Lending codes etc. etc.

Hope this helps...
Kirk

Hi. Can someone let me know what kind of influence these official bodies have over what has to be said in ACD systems?

W.

I realise the discussion has moved on a bit - however as automated call back technology is a new way of managing the call queue, which some may be unfamiliar with, I would like to add a comment to John's response which may be of interest.

"the caller may feel a bit 'fobbed off' with a promise to be called back - bearing in mind how many companies promise such things and don't deliver..."

You've touched on the key value of 'automated call back systems'here, in that they do infact enable call centres to promise ... and deliver. They do this by managing the call-back within the parameters of the current live queue, crucially maintaining the callers position - this and the fact the process is fully automated ensures not only that customersget their call back but that they get their call back within an acceptable service level.

Hi

New to this website but

"the caller may feel a bit 'fobbed off' with a promise to be called back - bearing in mind how many companies promise such things and don't deliver..." "

I completely agree.... I have been doing some research on this in the last few weeks over some different vertical markets with call back response and email response and to be honest the results were really bad.

Annabelle wrote:

"I have been doing some research on this in the last few weeks over some different vertical markets with call back response and email response and to be honest the results were really bad."

That's interesting. In what way were the results bad - it looks like it's certainly an area which could do with improvement.

Perhaps you'd like to summarise your findings and put a link on the site, assuming of course that your work is intended for publication.

John

Hi

Everyone can have access to the results although they are still ongoing.....

in a nutshell this is what we found

Analysis of websites email response customer requesting info:

56% succesfully emailed
12% errors occurred on submission
15% no contact
6% no data encryption
11% unable to logon

Analysis of response so far from the 56% of sites that we were able to email:

Reponse within 24hours

62% no response
24% standardresponse
14% personal response

Response between 24 and 48 Hours (of those so far no response)

59% no response
27% standard response
14% personal response

and it goes on.... the % of 24 hour response was only 38% - personally I think that is certainly a poor reflection and image that these people are projecting to potential new clients. Although this cannot be used for every single vertical market that exists it certainly is an indication of what is going on. More and more people are using the internet for communication to call centres moving away from the traditional call in one central number and if we cannot geat it right from the begining then the mindset of human nature will be against using it. So many people Ihave spoken to distrust whether email response works and end up calling or writing for the information you require.

Companies should either revise the way in which they manage email or put in some form of automated response. There are so many products available on the market nowadays which range from incredibly simple to massively complicated full internet call centre which could improve these figures and restore the general publics face!!!!!.

apologies for going on, I tend to get on asoap box after a while

also apologies for my english .... I am a tech person therefore that is my excuse for my apauling grasp of the english language especially grammar such a commas.!!!!

Meant restore PUBLICS FAITH not face

I heard a great "queue announcement" recently whilst calling a company who shall remain nameless;

"It has taken longer than we would have liked to answer your call. We apologise for this, we know you are waiting and if you are able to continue waiting we will be happy to help you as soon as an operator is free."

I thought this was one of the less irritating messages I have heard.

Rhona, why can't all ACD announcements be as concise and 'acceptable' as this? After all, it both acknowledges and apologises for the delay that the caller is experiencing, and retains a positive tone for the remainder of the message indicating that they'd be happy to help once an agent becomes free.

It's a small step in words but a big step in customer-friendliness from 'You are currently in a queue. Please hold.'

John

Hi, my first time on this site, so hopefully this reply makes it to the list. I've looked through all the messages here, and there are some excellent comments and suggestions. I'd just like to go back to Tracey's initial question:

(It seems tome though that we play this message a little too often and the onlypurpose it serves is to irritate the customer and to remind them of just how long we have kept them waiting. Is there an industry standard that suggests how frequently these messages should be played? Does anyone have any comments or suggestions regarding the customers perception of service following changes to the frequency of this kind of message? ), which in itself has not really been answered.

Tracey, a few questions:

1. How often do you replay the message?
2. Do you have one initial message, followed by a 'comfort' message, or do you only use one message repeatedly?
3. What is your average Time to Answer?
4. What is your average Time to Abandon?

I've called numbers in the past where the message comes back in almost as soon as it had finished playing the first time, in other words, the programmer had not left a large enough gap from the end of the message to the start of the next one. Guaranteed to raise the blood pressure. Conversely, I've heard others where the gap is so long, the caller's phone bill is through the roof before they even hear the message. We usually have the initial message at about 20 seconds, with comfort messages at about 25 seconds.

But a point to stress, you should not be relying on these messages as a replacement for having enough agents. This is where the timing measurements come in. If you have an average Time to Answer approaching 30 seconds or more (note I say average, there will be peaks and troughs), then you are stretching your resources, and callers will be unhappy. If your average Time to Abandon is spookily about the same time as one of your announcements is kicking in, then you can assume the callers have got fed up hearing it.

Obviously it's very difficult to give full advice without knowing the overall setup of your operation. For example the technology you are using may not have all the latest features, etc. But if you'd like to compare notes, by all means drop me an e-mail to pete_handley@uk.ibm.com.