Mind your call center queues

Call centers are critical to the success of many businesses today. While it's critical to monitor call center performance [1], it can be just as important to actively manage key aspects of that performance--and there are few aspects as important as the call queue. There is a direct relationship for most call centers between the length of time a customer is on hold, and the number of callers who abandon their calls.

Customers who call companies have never been particularly patient, and the trend today is toward less patience rather than more. Understanding the dynamic of the calling customer is the first step in managing the length of the calling queue. The next step is to bring technology to bear on the issues of call length, with skills-based routing and customer callback two technologies that can keep on-hold times reasonable.

The callback technology, especially, has to be carefully used so that customers feel they're given superior service rather than being ignored. And none of the technology can, of itself, do what many managers want -- keep customer satisfaction high while driving employee head count down.

For more:
VoIP-News has the entire article here [2] 

Related articles:
A Skype-based call center Report [3]
VoIP could let call centers go green Report [4]