
1. Consider the cost for employing and training additional staff to cope with calls at peak times, by deploying call queuing will cut down on the need for this.
2. Think of your brand reputation from the caller, without you having call queuing deployed when all agents are unavailable, are you returning a busy tone to the agent?
3. What is the average value of an abandoned call to your business? If the caller receives a busy tone or a message asking to call back later are they likely to try again or ring a rival company? By deploying call queuing you can give the caller the option to wait rather than hope they call back later.
4. Give a more professional image to your callers by playing professional on hold music and on hold messages to the caller. These can be used to clearly inform the caller of their queue position and estimated wait times while also playing on hold messages including FAQ's to the caller and also up-selling additional products and promoting your website etc.
5. Financial savings – by deploying a network call queuing functionality reduces the high setup costs of onsite hardware and ongoing maintenance .
6. What are your DR plans in the event of bad weather, for example causing staffing levels to be lower than expected which in effect, causes high call volumes and additional abandoned calls? By deploying a network call queuing solution, you gain full control of call routing via a web interface which will allow you to route calls between your call centre and also to agents working from home using the existing network call queue.
7. Reducing existing telephony costs – by deploying a network call queue, it reduces the need for the number of lines / channels on your existing ISDN30 circuits as the call will queue in the network cloud rather than on the PBX.
8. Have you thought about which type of 08 NGN is required for your business? By utilising call recording, you can earn a revenue share on calls that are queuing while at the same time being compliant with Phone Pay Plus regulations on the higher revenue share 0871 NGN's.
9. Live queue stats will allow the call centre manager to view in real-time what is happening in terms of calls queuing and connected calls, allowing them to be more proactive in getting staff to answer calls at peak times, thus eliminating additional lost calls.
10. How do you currently manage staffing levels? Using the comprehensive historical management reports allows you to build up a year on year call terms analysis allowing you to manage your staffing levels based on peak call volumes.
Orderly queuing is a new and exciting approach to call queues. This new software works alongside your existing hardware and software and starts automatically when there are more callers than there are agents. It then gives each of the callers an estimated waiting time and asks them to hang up and call back after their given time. When they call back the system recognises them and puts them in the right place in the queue.
Complaints about call queues have grown in recent years – people are simply less patient now than they have ever been before. Anyone who has worked in any proximity to a call centre before knows that a customer who is kept in a queue is an angry customer – and an angry customer can become a nightmare. With orderly queuing though, your customers can get on with their lives rather than wait by the phone.
Everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon it seems. After years of order and British restraint, we’re finally telling queues to take a flying one – Elite are doing it, even supermarkets are doing it!
Elite have this great solution for phone systems, called the OrderlyQ. Basically, Elite's OrderlyQ waits in your place in a call queue and then automatically rings you back when an agent has been reached – all you have to do is speak your name!
Supermarkets have jumped aboard as well. Instead of deciding which you need more – bread or milk, beer or food – so you can discard something to get into the ten or less line, a smart handheld device starts processing your products before you reach the till – about time if you ask me.