What do you think if a rocket flies past your head at the Contact Center Demo and Conference? You should realize that you are near the Fonolo booth. As a parent, it’s my duty to bring home something for the kids and Fonolo sling shot rockets are always a favorite. One even flew past me when I interviewed Chris McLean; but it did not make the cut for our video.
Chris mentioned that everybody hates to wait on hold. In addition to the customer experience, virtual queuing (call-back solutions) offer a way to handle a very common problem in contact centers – leveling out the peaks and valleys of customer interactions.
Call-backs are not a staffing solution
One of the most challenging areas for a contact center is the forecasting, scheduling, and staffing of agents. For most contact centers, the phone is only one of many customer contact channels. And the downside for many is that non-phone interactions typically do not receive the same level of tracking and reporting as phone interactions.
With most contact centers experiencing increases in customer requests across all channels, with no plans for a new platform to unify these interactions, a call-back solution can be a great tool to leverage. It’s also important to realize that a call-back solution should not be used to fix your under-staffing problem. If your customers are presented with a request for call-back every time they try to contact you, it’s very possible that your brand experience will take a negative hit. It’s important for everyone to realize that those call-backs are more than phone calls (or whatever else you queue). They are people.
Watch Chris Mclean of Fonolo talk contact center call-back solutions at Contact Center Demo and Conference with Jim Rembach Click to Tweet
Find your balance
As a former call center supervisor, and Advisory Board Chair of Call Center Coach, I know that your frontline would see benefits of a call-back solution beyond leveling out call volumes (learn more about use and satisfaction call-back statistics). It has the potential to minimizes quite a few of the negative emotional outcomes of waiting, such as flaring tempers, stressed-out agents, and frustrating customer experiences.
But it’s only a potential when you strike the right balance between no-use and over-use of call-backs. And the only way to understand the right balance is to build an effective customer evaluation (surveys, VoC, etc.) solution.
What Fonolo does
Fonolo is the leading provider of cloud-based call-back solutions. The company’s innovative products improve the way call centers interact with their customers by seamlessly replacing hold time with a call-back. Regardless of where the conversation begins – on the web, mobile or by phone – Fonolo quickly and conveniently routes customers through the call center, connecting them to the right agent and eliminating hold time. Source: https://fonolo.com/
Are you building trust?
Dr. Jodie Monger of Customer Relationship Metrics talks about the importance of brand trust in your call-back solution success. In her article, Can I trust that you’ll callback? Your integrity is on the line, she proposes that success is predicated on the health of the relationship between your customer and your company.
If you think about the importance of trust to a relationship as being emotional and logical, success of virtual queue acceptance can be better predicted. The emotion of trust is believing that your openness in the relationship will not be abused. Logically you calculate that the other party’s behavior is predictable with an outcome that does not cause harm to you.
As it relates to virtual queuing, your customers are placing trust in your company that you will in fact do as you say and call them back. Not calling a customer back (or doing it late) would be extremely damaging not only to the customer experience but to the foundation of trust and the overall relationship they have with your company.
So you can see that the quality of your call-back solution is very important to more than just the costs of today and leveling out of your call (queue) volumes. It must be reliable to you and your customer. Your integrity is on the line as well.
So does Fonolo have what you need? Shoot them a rocket to find out. Better than that contact Chris McLean to learn more: chris [at] fonolo.com.
Join me on the Fast Leader Show Podcast
The Fast Leader Show is a docuedutainment (don’t look it up I made it up) podcast released each Wednesday and hosted by Jim Rembach. Each week, Jim introduces you to real folks (from the call center industry and beyond) with real stories of how they were able to get over the hump and lead themselves or others better…faster. You’ll learn how to become a better leader (faster) through their stories by improving your employee and customer engagement through the power of improving your emotional intelligence. Get more human-centric and move onward and upward…faster.
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