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Why businesses need Call queues?

Why businesses need Call queues?

What is a call queue?

There are times when employees are unable to answer an incoming call because they are all busy. When such situations arise, the incoming goes to a queue. Rather than listening to a busy tone continuously, the caller gets informed that the agent cannot answer the call currently and music is played while the caller waits for an agent to answer their call.

Many people don’t think positively about call queues since a lot of companies misuse them to frustrate customers intentionally, so they hang up. However, when a call queue system is used properly it complements customer services. Call queue feature has a distinct business value.

How does a call queue system work?

A VoIP business telephone system can divide all incoming calls into groups based on different parameters which include:

  • The business phone number the caller dialled (helpful if you have multiple numbers in your telephone system).

  • The calling option they chose through an auto-attendant.

  • The time of the phone call: working hours or after hours.

  • The group which the caller belongs to, regular VIP or blacklist.

All of these call groups can have their own call queue. For instance, a queue of prospect phone calls to the sales teams, a queue of VIP customer phone calls to the support team, a call queue of regular customer calls to the customer support team and so on.

In every queue, there is a sequence in which the phone calls are managed known as FIFO (First In, First out) way. Simultaneously, every call queue has an assigned team. The Automated Call Distribution (ACD) system distributes phone calls from the queue among the team members based on a ‘freest first’ algorithm to make the wait time is low.

Benefits of Call queuing

  • Manage customer queues

Every caller hates to wait but call queues are inevitable. Almost every business has queues system. A queue management system can help callers wait comfortably rather than standing long queues.

Usually, when people take a ticket they have to wait for their turn. This not just helps in comforting the customers, but it also decreases any sense of insecurity between customers that their turn may be taken by somebody else. A happy customer is always the best ambassador. Not to mention the rise in revenue because of the customers being happy and relaxed.

  • Enhance service quality

With call queue you have more relaxed employees, hence you can expect better service quality. The call queue feature provides statistics to help businesses keep track of employee performance. This way any level of service issues is immediately highlighted. Supervisors can follow live statistics and assign even more staff to a specific service. This can help in bringing down the wait time. Additionally, the statistics also point out any employee who may be slower compared to others and might need training or help.

  • Customer feedback

It is a known fact that ‘the customer is king’ and businesses definitely need to know what customers think about their services. With customer feedback devices which are attached to the Queue management system, businesses can get customer feedback instantly. This data is further used to enhance services and products.

  • Employee satisfaction

With no customers jumping over one another to get to the counter, the employees are relatively at ease. This can help the employees serve customers in a relaxed environment. According to research when the workforce is happy there is a spike in productivity, whilst unhappy employees are less productive.

  • Optimise expenses

With an intelligent customer management system, you know your customer flow always. This system can help a business predict customer queues on the basis of historic data. This allows the supervisors to plan in advance and get more out of their staff resources. For example, if the statistical report shows that customer queue doesn’t start building up before 11 am them some counter staff can be used for back-office tasks till then.

  • Internet and Mobile queuing

People use the internet on their desktops or phones to get the most out of their products and services. Companies are competing to get the attention of customers. The mobile queue management system is no exception. With mobile queue apps, customers can get queued up before they leave their home. They even can get appointments for health care or public services over the internet. Once they arrive, they don’t have to wait for a long time before it’s their turn. A queue management system is much more than just ticket systems.

When you should use call queuing feature?

Usually, call queue feature is used when a business receives more phone calls than it can handle instantly. Rather than employing more employees to handle peak hours or holidays, you can effectively manage incoming calls using improved resource management. Paying more staff than you usually need can be a bad investment and with call queue performance report, you are able to set up your phone system in a practical way with reduced waiting time. This leverages the best of both world: you do not overextend your company and your customer support services does not suffer.

In such a competitive business world, every business is trying to employ methods to attract more customers. If as a business owner, you wish to grow your business in the competitive market and keep your customers satisfied then you need to employ call queue system.