Call Center Times - Issues In the Workplace

Issues In the Workplace

HAPPY CUSTOMERS, HAPPY COMPANY

Virtual Hold™ Helps a Major Wireless Telecom Provider Decrease Costs and Increase Customer Satisfaction

One of the major US wireless telecom providers has 30 contact centers worldwide (18 in the US) and handles over 40 million calls per year from over 17 million customers. This company experiences several peaks in incoming call volume throughout the year due to special promotions. These surges in call traffic are in addition to unanticipated spikes that may occur due to service issues, as well as monthly peaks that correlate to billing cycles. Despite load balancing and workforce management forecasts, it is always difficult to match staffing levels to incoming call volumes. On a typical Monday, hold times in some queues are as long as 48 minutes!

In the highly competitive wireless market where customer satisfaction is a major differentiator, the call center management of this company realized that long hold times were having a negative effect on customer satisfaction, in addition to increasing toll costs and tying up valuable cellular tower resources.

The Effects of Long Hold Times:

Unhappy customers – who may take their business elsewhere
Increased demand on tower and trunk resources – leading to busy signals and more unhappy customers
High toll costs – wasted money from hold time and abandoned calls
High talk times – from customers complaining to agents about their long wait
Decreased agent morale and increased turnover – from listening to customer complaints about wait time and being powerless to help

The Virtual Hold Value Proposition:

Happier customers – empowered with information and choices
Reduced demand on tower and trunk resources – callers aren’t waiting on hold and tying up ports
Reduced toll costs – no more wasted hold time and reduced abandons
Reduced talk times – callers aren’t complaining about hold time, increasing call handling efficiency
Improved agent morale and reduced turnover – happier customers = happier agents!

Designing the Solution:

In order to improve customer satisfaction and operating efficiency of their contact centers, this company worked with Virtual Hold Technology® (VHT) to pilot a 72-port system capable of handling over 1,650 calls per hour. The Virtual Hold system was installed in one of the company’s call centers on 12 key queue groups. Thanks to VHT’s clearly defined implementation plans developed from experience with numerous other installations, the Virtual Hold application was seamlessly integrated with an Aspect ACD, their CTI and Cisco ICM enterprise routing solution – without requiring any third party assistance.

System installation and testing were completed prior to the arrival of VHT personnel at the customer site. During the “go-live” phase, VHT personnel were on-site to conduct training and monitor system performance. Since the application is transparent to agents and requires no agent intervention, the only training necessary was an overview of the Virtual Hold Management and Reporting System for call center management.

Throughout the pilot, VHT and the company’s team members were in constant communication on ways to optimize system performance for their unique environment. As the leader of this company’s project team noted, “In my entire professional career I have never experienced the level of commitment that I’ve experienced with VHT. I have seen some amazing technical accomplishments in my career, and a group of them already belong to VHT. You folks have a very special thing right now, and that is TRUE TEAMWORK.”

Measuring the Benefits:

The four primary areas to be measured in order to determine the success of the pilot were:

Service Level – the percentage of calls answered in 30 seconds or less
Average Handle Time – the time an agent spends on a call (talk time and after-call work)
Toll Expense – the money “lost” on hold time
Accessibility – the percentage of calls handled out of all calls offered

In order to quantify the value added by Virtual Hold, the pilot call center’s performance was measured against the enterprise average. Performance reports were provided for each week of the 8-week pilot.

Proof of Success:

After comparing the data for the 60-day pilot, the call center with Virtual Hold outperformed the enterprise average in every category!

	Call Center with Virtual Hold	Enterprise Average	IMPROVEMENT
Service Level	65.29%	55.83%	17% (30,000 + additional calls handled at service level)
Average Handle Time	5:36	6:26	13% (50 seconds saved)
Accessibility	87.85%	84.74%	4% (11,000 + additional calls handled)

In addition to these benefits, the call center also saved $24,338 in toll charges from reduced hold time, and $140,930 in toll and labor savings from reduced handle time! Based on this ROI, the Virtual Hold system would pay for itself in less than 4 months!

Caller comments show their satisfaction with the Virtual Hold system:

“I really love that callback system.”
“I’m very pleased with the new callback feature. My prior experiences with hold time have been very unpleasant. I hope you decide to keep the new service.”
“I’m very impressed with the automatic callback. It told me I’d get my call in 4 minutes, and I was called back in 4 minutes exactly!”
“I’m very happy with the new dialback service; it’s a great way to alleviate hold time.”

Employees also appreciate Virtual Hold:

“I’m impressed; this will certainly help to improve customer satisfaction, and it was refreshing to hear the excitement and good comments from the customer.”
“THIS SYSTEM ROCKS!”

If you would like to learn more about how Virtual Hold can eliminate traditional hold time from your contact centers, lower your ASA, increase service levels, and reduce your toll expenses, please contact us at info@virtualhold.com.