Have you ever waited, on hold, for what seemed like hours, only to get hung up on? What kind of ACD system does that? What were those people thinking? Did you like it? Do you think your clients will? Let’s assume the answer is no. What can you do to prevent it?
It turns out that there are two numbers you can control which can help prevent this tragic waste of time:
- Maximum Queue Wait – the longest amount of time that can pass before the caller is kicked out of the queue.
- Maximum Number of Callers Waiting – the largest number of callers that can sit in the queue before additional callers get kicked out of the queue.
Obviously, different call center software suites will give these numbers different names, but they should be present. How can these numbers help?
First thing is first. When setting up your IVR, make sure that callers who get bounced out of your queue get directed somewhere helpful. Having the call end with no further input does not help. Transferring to a different queue, offering to take a voicemail, or even just playing an audio file explaining that the call center is overloaded at the moment are all better options. Your dialplan builder should have some choices for you.
If you’re planning on using the Maximum Queue Wait, think about what a reasonable value is. If you expect that most calls should reach an agent in 5 minutes under normal circumstances, it’s not reasonable to set a timeout of 3 hours. If you set it to 3 hours, then there is almost certainly somebody who will wait the full 3 hours at some point. Save them the aggravation, and save yourself the angry letter or upset former customer. Think about what the maximum should be in the worst case.
If you’re looking to reduce aggravation, setting the Maximum Number of Callers may be the better way to go. If this number is exceeded, something happens right away. No waiting for some maximum timeout to be reached. If you allow 30 concurrent callers waiting, when #31 shows up, he or she is redirected elsewhere. This method can make more sense if you know there are only a dozen agents working, for instance, calls typically take 30 minutes, and you don’t want people to have to wait that long. You could set it to 5-10 maximum concurrent waiters, and let the rest drop through.
Sometimes finding the best method requires a little experimentation. Do experiment before you go live, and don’t be afraid to tweak these values a bit. After all, they are trying to contact you. Do your best to let them do so.