It’s the automated voice call message everyone dreads: ‘You are number 20 in the queue…the waiting time is approximately 10 minutes.’

Thankfully, there can be a different ending: ‘Alternatively, hang up now and one of our team will call you back.’

For smart organisations, providing those with whom they interact with an opportunity to avoid lengthy phone delays whilst simultaneously maintaining their place in a queue is an effective way of enhancing the communication experience.

After all, no-one wants to sit at the end of a line listening to music for what feels like an age. Everyone is busy with things to do. A wasted 10 minutes can be a huge frustration and, when that waiting time is, say, half an hour or more, many attempts at getting in touch are actually abandoned.

For organisations running Cisco Broadsoft, solving the issue simply requires the seamless integration of a third-party application.

“In today’s modern world, people are often time-poor and don’t want to be on hold – it’s a feature organisations have just got to have,” says Steve Tutt, Commercial Director at leading Broadsoft application innovator Kakapo, whose ‘Keep My Place in Queue’ add-on is the perfect example.

“It’s such a great service because obviously everyone gets sick of the frustration of trying to get through to an organisation that is either engaged or has a long wait time to connection. Getting a call back when they reach the front of the queue means they can get on with other things. Having to wait just a few minutes is frustrating enough; when the wait is half an hour or more, it is virtually intolerable.

“The perception people have of organisations is often based on the quality of the communication experience. Keeping folks hanging is just not an option.”

It’s no surprise that, in the UK, Kakapo and its service provider partners are deploying the solution at pace into NHS GP surgeries, where the issue of long voice call waits is perhaps most acute.

In a constant bid to meet patient experience targets, surgeries are being incentivised by central government to invest in enhanced call handling technology capable of improving interactions for employees and the public alike.

“It helps even out the peaks and troughs of daily call activity which, in turn, helps surgeries be more efficient when it comes to the deployment of call handlers,” says Tutt. “Patients are a lot happier because they avoid the stress of holding for long periods, and receptionists are less stressed because they get fewer angry complaints from patients who have waited too long. The same applies to all organisations, regardless of the sector.”

Of course, call back functionality is not new. However, in the early days, callers could be forgiven for cynically suspecting that a call back may not happen in the way it was promised. In that case, withdrawing from a queue and hanging up felt like too much of a risk, so queues would grow even longer. Today, the technology is more widespread, and callers have more trust.

Indeed, the Kakapo solution delivers added value in the form of baked-in data analysis functionality enabling users to accurately measure and report on all the relevant statistics. Dashboards show how many calls have been received, how many callers requested a call back, and how quickly those calls backs occurred.

Moreover, in the past, call back features have come with unappealing commercials, such as charges based on the number of call backs, as opposed to Kakapo’s flat fee for unlimited provision.

“Organisations that only buy a licence for five call back slots can only offer the service to five people,” says Tutt. “When a sixth person joins a queue, they are not offered the same service, so organisations are forced to pay for more slots.

“With the Kakapo solution, there are no slots, just an unlimited service; whether it’s offered to 100 callers or just two.”

For the organisations that run Broadsoft platforms – and the MSPs who provide and support them – it’s a solution that delivers on multiple fronts.

To learn more about how Kakapo can help your and your customers’ businesses leverage the Cisco communication stack, visit the website.



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