Is Call-Back Technology the Cure to Call Center Problems?

Call back services can eliminate hold time for customer service meaning less frustration for your customers and greater customer satisfaction.

A recent study by the team at Virtual Hold Technology, a startup that provides multi-channel callback solutions for call centers, showed that 64% of customers will hang up the phone if having to wait more than 5 minutes on hold.

91% hang up if forced to wait over 10 minutes on the phone. In short, hold time or making customers wait on you is a customer service killer.

What is your average customer service hold time?

But for all intents and purposes, not every call center can perfectly staff its call center and keep wait times for customers down to 0. So what can organizations do to mitigate those volume spikes? How about the unusual hiccups in services which cause a higher than normal volume of inbound calls from customers? What can you do when you don’t have the staff available to deliver exceptional phone customer service?

Technology can fix customer service over the phone

More and more studies are showing that using technology to change the way phone support takes place is being welcomed by customers today. Customer service can use call back services as a viable alternative to the traditional phone contact channel. And customers have, so far, responded well to organizations that have implemented call backs as a way to deliver service over the phone.

What are call backs?

Call back services, offer customers the option to receive a call back from the next available customer service agent instead of waiting on phone. Not only is the experience improved for customers who no longer need to waste time over the phone or have to be re-routed to appropriate departments, but call backs allow the most appropriate customer service agent to handle the customer’s inquiry.

Call backs also benefit the service provider as they can often see reduced customer abandon rates, reduced idle or handle time by customer service agents, and save on telecommunication services cost, just keep in mind that in order for this to properly function a wireless telecommunications system is recommended.

Time will tell what happens to customer service over the phone. Although phone remains the juggernaut of how customer service takes place, there has been a real increase to service interaction across other service channels, specially social media. Personally, I’m a big fan of social media engagement between customers and service providers.

I love the way social media eliminates the barrier to reach real people in organizations. But for all of its virtues, service requests that require more than one or two line responses can be difficult to take place on social media. But that doesn’t mean that it still can’t be used as a contact channel.

At the moment, it looks like call backs in the call center are a win-win situation for everyone. The initial results have shown that call backs are a viable solution to solving much of the frustration customers experience while using the phone and the traditional barriers to customer service are greatly eliminated.

Customers are getting more efficient and effective customer service with call back services, making the most of their time. Service providers are getting more efficient use of their staffs and effective results of each individual customer interactions with the benefits of call back services.