Do you want to reduce customer hold times while calling your support line?
No one likes a long hold time. In fact, it’s one of the top consumer complaints when calling contact centers for service. The longer a caller waits, the more frustrated they become. The end result? Abandoned calls and consumers taking their business elsewhere.
The challenge for contact centers is balancing agent staffing levels to consistently match call volumes. On occasion, it’s inevitable that customers will have to wait for service, but with modern IVR capabilities, there are better ways to manage these situations. Reducing wait times and letting customers use their wait time more productively can help relieve customer frustrations — and it’s all achievable with a well-designed callback option within a mobile self-service solution.
Speed and Ease of Use
Customers have become dependent on their mobile devices to access service or get information quickly or easily, making mobile self-service the perfect solution for contact centers. When mobile self-service is added to your Interactive Voice Response (IVR) application, it empowers your customers to better help themselves without agent assistance by providing easy-to-use, intuitive self-service tools. The best part of this is it leads to happier customers and prevents customers from zeroing out to reach an agent. Consider this: IBM Retail Research reported 72% of customers prefer self-service over speaking to an agent and 91% would use self-service if it were available. Think of the cost-savings! That would significantly reduce customer hold times because they’d have options.
InQueue Self-Service
Tools such as InQueue self-service give customers the option of receiving a call back and the ability to try to solve their problem or get an answer to their inquiry through self-service via a link to a disposable web application — all without losing their position in the callback queue. If the self-service interaction is successful, the mobile app automatically cancels the callback. If the caller still needs assistance, they’ll receive a callback from a pre-qualified, knowledgeable agent. Additionally, deployment of a solution like this can be on-premises or cloud, which avoids the upfront capital expenditures and the need to overprovision for failover, seasonal bursts or future needs.
Text2IVR
Another tool that can help reduce hold times and increase customer satisfaction is Text2IVR. Applications like this give IVR callers the option to send alpha-numeric text information that can present a challenge for automatic speech recognition (ASR).
Customers have the ability to enter free-form data like name, address and other information that may prove difficult for speech recognition systems to recognize using the familiar, convenient SMS channel, all while interacting with the IVR. Instead of waiting on hold for a live agent, the caller can quickly complete their transaction. Text2IVR enables a faster and more accurate data exchange.
The technology behind this tool can determine if the call originates from a landline or mobile phone. Mobile callers are given the option to send alphanumeric data via SMS text messaging to the same number they just dialed. Data is repeated back in the IVR for confirmation, ultimately reducing call times and customer frustration.
Implementing mobile self-service options, in order to reduce customer hold time, like these help to provide a superior customer experience and reduce the number of calls agents receive, allowing contact center resources to be put to use more efficiently.
More About Me
