Contact centres are being offered a free app which promises to end forever the thorny issue of call queues, which will reduce customer wait times and improve answer rates without them having to resort to hiring more staff or calling customers back.
It is claimed the average UK consumer spends 45 hours a year waiting on the phone, while 60% of customers say they find it difficult to get through to call centres.
Matt King, the entrepreneur behind the recently launch phone app which saves people being held in annoying call centre queues, has now set up the free service for businesses to eliminate queues and help them reduce caller abandonment by up to 90%.
Dubbed WeQ4U 4 Business, the system gives callers an estimated wait time and encourages them to call back after that time. When they do, their number is recognised and they are automatically sent to the front of the queue to be answered by an agent straight away.
King claims the service takes just minutes to activate. He said: “Traditional on hold queue technology creates and sustains a conflict of interest between the caller who wants to speak to someone without waiting and the business that needs to avoid the expense of staffing for peaks.
“The on-hold system is a poor compromise that forces callers to wait on hold and call centre managers to adopt complex staffing patterns to resource peaks in caller demand. We’ve been stuck with this half solution for more than half a century – in fact it’s hard to think of any business technology that has changed less in 60 years.
“It’s actually a very simple solution that allows callers to get through without tedious and expensive waiting on hold, even when things are really busy at the call centre, and keeps the agents fully utilised during troughs too. Now that the service is free, it’s time to fix your broken queues, everyone.”
Jon Saward, head of customer service at Bensons For Beds – an early adopter of the technology – commented: “We saw a huge improvement in our answer rate right from day one, making us more efficient and leaner as a consequence. What’s more we get regular feedback from our callers telling us how happy they are with the system. We couldn’t be more pleased, and would recommend the solution to any business taking incoming calls.”
The consumer version of the system, WeQ4U, offers users free 08 calls whether they are held in a queue or not. The iPhone and Android app and accompanying telephone service now has over 20,000 users, saving each one, on average, £76 pounds a year.
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