Have you ever wondered how contact center administrators try to keep track of how long the waiting times are getting on their queues? Obviously, one way is visual. However, in busy contact centers supervisors may not always be in front of their terminals. And, while apps are coming to market that give contact center floor managers access to information on tablet computers and other handheld devices, the facts are there is no time other than real-time and other types of alerting should be considered as options to improve overall contact center responsiveness when things get hectic.
Cloud-based contact center solutions provider Indosoft—developer of Q-Suite, a feature-rich multi-tenant cloud contact center software— has enriched Q-Suite’s alerting capabilities. The scalable fault tolerant contact center solution geared for the technology stack of Asterisk, Linux, Apache and MySQL can now provide audible notifications based on key queue metrics triggered by real-time conditions and stats. A simple explanation of what is at work here is that these notifications, based on distinct audio files, are played when set real-time queue conditions are fulfilled. They are not meant as a substitute for visual alerts, but as a feature enhancement to the real-time reporting capability of the call center software that monitors call queuing.
The key ACD parameters being monitored in real-time include:
These are the vital service level metrics used and are the lifeblood for assuring floor managers can literally “take care of business” as situations arise.
Indosoft points out that it is a common practice for contact centers to have procedures in place to handle unexpected peak loads. The Q-Suite enhancements enable managers to set conditions based on many of these key queue metrics to trigger audible alerts. These alerts can be associated with specific real-time queue conditions and targeted towards individual customer service employees or groups. The benefits are substantial in that reaction times to unexpected queuing issues can be minimized as the time-lag between when a problem is occurring to when a decision-maker is aware that action needs to be taken is virtually instantaneous.
“Q-Suite for Asterisk is an industry leading contact center solution providing a multi-channel ACD with skills based routing and queue prioritization for phone calls, emails, and web channels. Real-time queue metrics can be used to marshal the staff for carrying out procedures that have been put in place for handling sudden spurt in call volumes,” said Gabe Bourque, CEO at Indosoft. “The requirements for this feature enhancement to the real-time reporting capability of the contact center software suite came out of the ACD user group. Q-Suite is constantly evolving to satisfy its customer requirements."
While it may make the contact center a bit louder, the increase in noise volume in this instance is a good thing. Reality is the volume can be adjusted so that it is just noisy enough to get the attention of the people who need to know. After all, meantime-to resolution is still a tremendously meaningful metric for contact centers. Thus, anything that cuts the time in which supervisors can remediate queuing problems that generate frustrated customers, always at or near the top of the list of why customers have bad experiences, is extremely valuable.