The call hold time is when the customer is communicating with an agent about his or her issue and the agent puts the customer on hold to find the response. According to a study result shared by The Small Business Chronicle, 34% of customers choose to leave a brand if the call hold time is more than 2 minutes. Regardless of the fact, how professional and empathetic your agents are, and how great music you have as your MoH (Music on Hold) music, you are more likely to lose customers if you have longer call hold time.
If you are using traditional telephony, you can’t even play music on hold. However, if you are using an intelligent call center software solution, you can take some steps to reduce call hold time along with plying a soothing MoH. At the end of this blog, you will have effective ways to reduce call hold time.
Tips to reduce average call hold time in a call center:
1. Use the right call routing rule
The intelligent call center software offers multiple call routing rules. Selecting the right call routing rules rule as per the nature of the customers and the campaign is necessary. For example, skill-based call routing is good when a customer is calling to get technical support. On the other hand, if a prospect is calling again related to his inquiry, then the sticky agent is the right call routing strategy. If you are not sure, which call routing rule would work better, then you can take the help of experienced members in your team or a consultant. You can also run A/ B testing to identify the right call routing rule, but using it is necessary to reduce call hold time.
2. Always keep your knowledgebase updated
Usually, agents look to the knowledgebase to give the required answers to the customers. Therefore, your knowledgebase always has to be updated. Here the knowledgebase can be your database, CRM, or any other software in which you store information and agents need to retrieve the same. Along with keeping it updated, you must also keep it easy to scan. Don’t write long paragraphs or have a messy format. It has to be easy to review and read. Search options should work fast in these tools.
3. Give easy access to CRM within call center software
Call center CRM integration is often considered as an add-on, which is not required by everyone. With this thinking, many call centers ignore using it. However, it is necessary to integrate your CRM and call center solutions if you handle customer calls for support and queries. This integrated solution will show all the required information and customer history within the call center software. This will save the time of agents otherwise get wasted in looking for customer information or irritate customers more by asking the same questions repetitively. To reduce call hold time, you can also integrate other software within the intelligent call center software, so agents don’t need to waste time in managing multiple solutions.
Apply these tips and reduce call hold time. To get the intelligent call center software, please contact us.