ACD Queue Features useful when the Caller Abandons the Queue.

With today’s busy world callers are in a hurry and want have their call handled promptly.  However when calling during high call volume periods they may not wait in queue until an agent is available.  In a recent post I talked about core ACD Queue features but lets look a few abandoned queue calls features.

Call Back – as described in my previous post gives the caller an option to leave a callback number and have an agent call them once available.  The benefit here is the caller is allowed to disconnect and not feel their time is being used up waiting in queue.  One potential issue is when the agent calls them back their phone could be busy or they are unable to answer it.  In these cases ensure the re-attempt rules are setup so the caller doesn’t get lost and is still called back in a timely manner, while not re-dialing to often.  A message on their voicemail will help to avoid this.  This is not a true abandon call as they used a process to leave the queue.

In the cases where the Call Back feature is not enabled or is but not used by the caller it may still be desirable to follow up if they abandon out of the queue.  When configuring the system for abandon calls there are a few options:

The abandon calls stays in the queue and keep position.  This means their call is handled in the order they called in, so it will follow the ACD parameters setup for that queue.  This allows the agent to attempt a call back with the CID or other information the IVR collected information may collected prior to the queue.

The abandon calls moves to another queue.  This means their call is moved to another queue which allows for different ACD parameters to distribute the call. This can allow abandons to be a lower priority but we want to get back to them in time, so the center is setup to prioritize the live call queue and the abandons get handled during lower periods.  Alternatively a different set or subset of agents based on their skills will only handle the abandons.

In both of these situations you may want to enable deduplication of abandons.  When enabled if a caller calls in and abandons then does this multiple times before their first call record is handled they will only have one position in the queue.  For productivity it makes sense to have this enabled so agents are not wasting time dealing with repeated records or worse two agents calling the same caller back due to two abandons in the queue with their info.