It’s no secret that excessive queue times can severely damage the quality of customer experiences (CX), bringing down loyalty, engagement, and repeat business.
Customers are okay with waiting for anywhere between 20 seconds to 2 minutes, beyond which they are likely to hang up. If they were at the “desire” stage of conversion, a long queue can erode their interest and make them switch to a competing brand. That’s why it is advisable for contact centres to keep queue times to a minimum, and design the queueing experience intelligently to optimise CX even as customers wait.
A Short Queue Tips the CX Scale in Your Favour
Customers will initiate an inbound interaction either to address a problem (which is possibly causing them frustration) or to find out information that will help them on their purchase journey.
In the former scenario, a long waiting period compounds the sense of frustration, placing your agent at a disadvantage when they finally do start to tackle the interaction. The customer might get angry, express their disappointment, or expect a faster resolution, and the agent must work harder to comply. And in the latter scenario, excessive queues will lead to disinterest and eventually disengagement. The customer might change their minds and lose interest in the purchase, unable to get the information they needed on time.
In both cases, the CX suffers, which means that you lose out on a revenue generation opportunity.
Conversely, a short queue tips the scales in your favour. It positions you as a brand that values the customer’s time. It allows agents to convert leads while they are still “hot.” And agents can focus on resolving the issue at hand without having to be apologetic or address pre-existing frustration.
A recent study found that wait times are intrinsically linked to CX and customer satisfaction rates. 92% of interactions that were rated “very poor”, had a wait time of 5+ minutes. On the other hand, 94% of customers who received a response in less than 60 seconds said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the CX.
Simply put, all factors remaining the same (agent training, routing systems, product price/promos, etc.), a shorter queue will lead to a better CX than an interaction that follows a long queue.
4 Ways Excessive Queue Times Could be Costing Your CX
- Long queues imply that there are many more customers waiting on hold than the current capacity. Agents will try to close conversations faster, leading to a worse customer experience
- Excessively long queues could be the result of improperly configured routing systems. This means that the best-fit agent might not be taking the call, and CX suffers
- Repetitive announcements and promos conveyed to the customer while they are on hold can increase the sense of annoyance, impacting the CX negatively
- A long wait time is factored into the customer effort needed to resolve a query. The more efforts needed, the less likely is the customer to bring repeat business or call your contact centre again
