Einstein grasped the law of relativity better than anyone. "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute," he observed, "and it feels like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it feels like a minute. That’s relativity." In the same way, when contact center customers wait too long, they quickly become frustrated, which has a negative impact on both customers and the contact center.

"We must learn to influence how the customer feels about a given length of waiting time," cautions David H. Maister, a leading authority in the field of managing professional service firms. Maister, in The Psychology of Waiting Lines, says contact centers must pay attention to "three things: what was actually done to or for the client, what was perceived by the client, and what the client expected. Fortunately, all three can be managed."

Never forget that the customer contact center is the frontline of a business. There, the risks are real, substantive and possibly long lasting. Consider this: 63 percent of consumers stop using a company’s products because of a negative call center experience, according to a study sponsored by Kelly Services and Purdue University’s Center for Customer-Driven Quality.

Effective contact center management is proactive at its core. Effective contact center management personnel are not afraid to address the challenge of customer satisfaction with every tool available, from workforce management strategies to employee training to virtual queuing software (virtual queuing is a technology that – during peak times – allows callers to hang up while it maintains their place in line and calls them back when it’s their turn). Use these tools to build synergy by leveraging the experience of staffing for peak times with a proven queuing and routing system. Ensure that customers avoid the relative "burning sensation" of Einstein’s stove analogy and you’re effectively managing expectations and perceptions. Most important, set the following key goals for your contact center and judge your success by how well you reach them.

Reduce abandons:
Callers often get frustrated by waiting on hold. One behavior is to hang up and call again. This artificially inflates the number of incoming calls, confuses workforce management software and reduces first call resolution metrics. For sales organizations, callers who abandon and don’t call back are lost sales. Adequate staffing, special call routing and technologies that let callers receive a callback are all good ways to reduce abandons and increase call center efficiency.

Cut toll time:
When it comes to phone trunk utilization and toll charges, the age-old expression of “silence is golden” is a truism. If a caller isn’t tying up the toll-free line while waiting for a representative, phone company charges aren’t accruing.

Shorten talk time:
An international survey conducted by Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories of more than 4,300 consumers found that 67 percent of consumers are frustrated by long hold times and 88 percent would prefer to receive a callback in 10 minutes than to be on hold for that long. When customers are forced to hold for lengthy times, too much precious contact center time is consumed listening to callers vent their frustrations. Virtual queuing or other technologies that reduce hold time can, on average, reduce call time by 15 seconds per call by eliminating customer venting. That adds valuable productive time to the contact center day.

Improve service levels:
The benchmark of a service level agreement is a laudable measurement — but it takes true firepower to hit the target. For example, if the estimated wait time exceeds a certain threshold, offer callers a chance to hang up and receive a callback when it is their turn. This removes callers from the queue and allows callers to be productive while they wait for their callback. This also provides a dramatic improvement in service level and average-speed-to-answer statistics because these statistics are based on queue time.

Improve first call resolution:
Callers want not only quick resolution, but also the appropriate resolution. When the number of incoming calls exceeds the number of available skilled agents, many contact centers will route calls to less-skilled agents in order to meet their service level. This, unfortunately, has a detrimental effect on first call resolution because these agents often do not have the skills to handle the requests. Instead, give callers the option of receiving or scheduling a callback when the appropriate service agent is available. This prevents tying up agents with caller issues they cannot resolve.

Reduce staffing requirements:
To cope with the natural peaks and valleys of traffic at the contact center, use workforce management software to plan for peaks. Of course, some conditions cannot be anticipated (severe weather, product recalls, etc.), but using a technology such as virtual queuing during spikes in call volume allows call centers to handle unpredictable peaks without scrambling to bring in additional staff.

You don’t have to be an Einstein to improve the efficiency of your contact center. By staying focused on the customer experience and by implementing new technologies, operational efficiencies are the natural result. Every improvement is a victory shared by the caller, the contact center and the business behind it.

By Eric Ryan, product marketing manager, Virtual Hold Technology