Reducing Call Hold Time for Your Call Centre – Improve Customer Service with our tips.

Do you know that 95% of the callers calling in a call centre will abandon the call if they will wait for more than 95 seconds?

For every business, offering time-bound, quick, and responsive customer assistance is a must. With this, businesses can easily retain customers, gain an edge over others, and show professionalism in their operation. The more quickly and diligently call centre software can answer the call the more satisfied will be the customers.

On the other hand, high call hold time can agitate even the most polite and humble customer and this is indeed a matter of concern for every business. However, despite all the efforts, some hold time always exists in any of the call centre ecosystems.

So, how much hold time is acceptable in any call centre setup?

The standard call waiting time in any of the call centre setup is 20 seconds. Anything beyond that increases the odds of call disconnect or agitated customers. That is why 80% of businesses try to keep their call hold time 20 seconds. However, achieving this is not as easy as it seems, especially when you run a business where the direct customer is dealing such as e-commerce and healthcare.

This is what you should do to reduce high call hold time in your call centre and please every caller.

  • Offer self-assistance

No every concern of the callers needs to be answered by a customer care executive. Some can be handled on their own. All you need to do is to offer the right self-assistance. In that case, the IVR or Interactive Voice Response feature of your call centre software brings great relief. By using this feature, a business can easily allow an incoming call to route on its final destination without any human interaction using the AI or voice recognition.

  • Route the calls properly

If you want to reduce the call hold time then you must pay attention to route the calls properly and diligently. Your call centre software offers a whole new way to route the calls professionally without much of grueling. Some of the key strategies to ensure this are:

Set up Ring All – ‘Ring All’ is one feature that will ring all the connected devices together when a call comes. So, whosoever is available then will pick the calls ensuring no caller has to wait for long.

Use ACD or Auto Call Distribution – Auto Call Distribution is one facility that allows calls to distribute the calls evenly ensuring that no one agent is handling more calls and others are sitting idle.

  • Set up a live chatbot

The call hold time will reduce on its own if there are fewer calls to handle. You can reduce the call burden on agents by setting a live chatbot on your business website. By using AI, this live chatbot helps a customer to get real-time assistance and reduce the chance of making a call to the business.

In the wake of technology, these live chatbots are becoming more and more competent and like to offer human-like interaction with the customers. So, why to let your customers make a call when things are being sorted out over a chat.

  • Pay attention to the on-hold music

No matter how hard to try, there will be some call hold time. Though you can’t bring call hole time to zero, you can make it pleasant for your callers by using the right on-hold music. If you are using the smoothing and pleasant on-hold music then even the 90 second long call wait time seems short. So, make sure that you are setting up the right on-hold music on your VoIP phone number.

Now, the question comes which is the right on-hold music. Cheerful and upbeat music can be called an apt option. You can also choose the instrumentals. Using the customized scripts of your latest product/services/on-going offers has helped businesses to increase sales by 16-20%.

Reducing call hold time is more than imperative if you want to have streamlined operations and satisfied customers. By using all these facilities offered by cloud telephony, you can easily achieve this. Not only it is helpful to reduce the call hold time, but it is also highly beneficial to distribute workload evenly and offer time-bound assistance to the agents. So, don’t lose more customers just because of the long call hold time. Start using cloud telephony and please your customers and agents by all means.

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Libby Austin

Libby Austin, the creative force behind alltheragefaces.com, is a dynamic and versatile writer known for her engaging and informative articles across various genres. With a flair for captivating storytelling, Libby's work resonates with a diverse audience, blending expertise with a relatable voice.
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