A recent report suggests that 60% of customers complained that long holds and wait times are the most frustrating part of any customer service – often resulting in terminated calls before they have been answered.
Missing calls is something every business is keen to avoid, as it means losing business opportunities, customer loyalty and valuable interactions.
Types of Lost Calls
Missed Calls
Missed calls get disconnected because of poor agent availability or relevant support. The missed calls could be due to processes and procedures (both manually and automated) e.g. lack of auto attendants or diverts to other departments.
Abandoned Calls
An abandoned call occurs when the customer hangs up before reaching an agent. Sometimes the caller reconsiders, but mostly the caller is frustrated with long waiting times. A useful benchmark for the time taken to answer calls is is 80/20, meaning 80% of calls get answered within 20 seconds.
Dropped calls
Dropped calls are uncommon and mean the call got disconnected due to a technical issue. If the drop call rate is high though, it could be a system fault and needs investigating.
How to minimise Lost Calls
Most of the issues outlined here are due to poor queue and call management. Of course a lost call could mean lost sales, but things get more complicated in health or social services where there is risk of personal safety. Here is how the latest contact centre features can assist in minimising lost calls.
Queue Announcements
Queue announcements let customers know how long it will take to get through to an agent.
Callbacks
A popular option is to offer a callback to waiting customers, allowing the customer to hang up and get on with other things.
Emergency Queries
For emergencies, some of the tools mentioned might not be ideal. It may be worth setting up a knowledge base on the website, offering different communications options other than voice or implementing intelligent routing and VIP queues.
Automation
Respecting the customers’ time and solving their issues as soon as possible is key to delivering a good customer experience. Automation in a phone system can help direct call to where they need to go to faster and more accurately.
Lost calls can also put unnecessary strain on staff. Start to reduce the pressure by using the tools and features available on the phone system. It could be as simple as adding queue announcements while the customers are on hold or providing managers with call data for visibility of their call statistics.
You can see just some of the features of our business telephone systems here. For further information contact us on 01865 367111.