When it comes to a contact center queue, the reality is that wait times need to be brought to a minimum to truly satisfy customer expectations. By maximizing self-serve in the customer journey, reducing customer effort with IVR optimization, and using analytics and Quality Management in the contact center, it is possible to find out where wait times are causing negative sentiment and the call reasons causing higher volumes and thus longer wait times. Additionally, using predictive behavioral routing can make conversations more productive when they do get through the queue, to hopefully mollify heightened emotions. But moreover, the goal should be to create personalized customer experiences that delight customers, so that queue times are left far behind in the customer's mind.
Use IVR Optimization and Journey Analytics to increase self-service and reduce customer effort.
Customers want the option to handle routine matters themselves. Whether through IVR, mobile or web, customers prefer quick and easy self-service. When customers fail to complete a designated task due to long and confusing IVR menu options or hard-to-find content on digital channels, any wait time in the queue will only magnify the frustration of needing customer agent assistance due to a poor experience.
Customer Journey Analytics helps to visualize where and why customers struggle to self-serve in the IVR and digital channels. Armed with a clear view of the customer journey, organizations can reduce customer effort by identifying the gaps and bottlenecks that lead to undesirable experiences. When self-service channels are effectively optimized to enhance self-service, customers benefit by avoiding being placed in queue and organizations profit with faster call resolution and diminished call volumes. The more personalized customer experience leads to greater brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.
Use interaction analytics to find where wait times are causing complaints and call reasons causing higher volumes and wait times.
No customer is happy to wait in a queue. No wait time is truly acceptable. Customers expect fast and efficient service, a personalized customer experience, and they expect their issues to be resolved the first time around. Building an interaction analytics program enables businesses to dive into contact center call recordings and text interaction data to surface the conversations where customers complain about the queue or the wait time, and to identify trends in the reasons why those wait times occur. Likewise, using discovery analytics to surface trending conversations by sentiment score and volume can greatly shorten the time to insight and ability to address those issues before they become critical or affect customer loyalty.
Use intelligent routing so that when customers to make contact, they have a high likelihood of a positive and product conversation that will mitigate any initial irritation from waiting.
Ineffective communication creates longer calls. Longer calls lead to call queues. Call queues lead to increasingly frustrated customers. For positive and personalized customer experience, start by connecting customers for effective interactions with Predictive Behavioral Routing. Instead of routing a call to the first available agent, the customer's personality informs which agent will provide the best experience to the customer. The intelligent routing connection decreases interaction length, which reduces the likelihood of a caller queue by creating agent availability.
Predictive Behavioral Routing understands customers through the industry's largest personality and behavior database, then predicts the best caller and agent match. When a customer calls, in milliseconds, they are intelligently routed with an agent to deliver the best experience. The results? Better connections, improved customer experience, and meaningful impact to business KPIs. Predictive Behavioral Routing is the first step in connecting customers with a positive experience.
Use Quality Management to identify behaviors that turn negative calls about wait times to positive outcomes, and coach lower performers to use the same behaviors.
Skilled contact center advisors can help alleviate negative emotions that customers express when speaking to them as a result of long queues. Next generation quality management solutions that leverage analytics to drive business objectives can identify negative words or sentiment regarding queues at the beginning of calls, with the calls that turn positive by the end segmented out for further analysis. These negative to positive calls can be evaluated for specific behaviors that advisors possess to turn dissatisfied callers around, and other advisors can be coached to use these same behaviors as best practice examples. Likewise, the system can also detect when calls start and end poorly and automate these interactions for evaluation and remediation.
In today's economy, it is all about the customer. Personalized customer experience is no longer the exception – it is the expectation. Customers expect to be heard and helped, not put on hold or in a queue. The only way to deliver on expectations is to start with analytics, in any form. Whether it starts with quality monitoring, interaction analytics, intelligent routing, or customer journey analytics, there is no other way to truly know the customer. Get started with Customer Engagement Analytics today.