Historically, great customer service depended on one thing: people. Call center agents acted as the main liaison for delivering a positive or negative customer experience. But in our world of multi-channel communications, the need for speed has changed the game. According to Forrester, 73% of people say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service, which is why hold times present a major challenge for the customer service industry. If your business offers support, then you know how demanding customers can be, and how important reducing wait times are to overall satisfaction levels.
To understand how companies are handling hold times, Fonolo launched the website onholdwith.com, which tracks complaints on Twitter from people waiting on hold. We found that these companies had the highest mention of hold time complaints on Twitter. Recently, Fonolo’s CEO, Shai Berger had the chance to speak with ABC News: 7on Your Side with Michael Finney to discuss how this social media uprising can lend a hand to eliminating hold time for good. See the full clip below:
One industry report that we always anticipate at this time of year is the annual “Contact Center Decision Maker’s Guide” from ContactBabel. The 9th edition of the report weighs in at a massive 300-pages with tables and graphs examining every aspect of the contact center world. Topics include WFM, headsets, agent recruiting, voice biometrics, and more.
Most companies realize they need a strategy to avoid leaving callers on hold. In fact, we have ![[Whitepaper] The New Customer Service Lexicon](https://fonolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Whitepaper-The-New-Customer-Service-Lexicon.png "[Whitepaper] The New Customer Service Lexicon")
This blog series explores terminology related to customer service that is either new, evolving or uncertain. In 
Bloggers conversing about the call center space will often write about how to make an agent’s work-life more enjoyable. They do this because call center agents get the short end of the stick when dealing with difficult individuals – we get that. But what about call center managers? We’re forgetting about the people who are managing those agents and are faced with making difficult decisions every day.
Is your contact center still forcing callers to wait on hold? If so, you are missing out on a great opportunity to increase customer satisfaction and reduce call center costs. Not surprisingly, 75% have said the option of a call-back highly appeals to them. If that’s not reason enough, how about some peer pressure?
To win customers for your business, you have to differentiate from your competitors. What can you do better than they can? Is it lower prices? More features? Better marketing? Better customer service? These are all battlefronts in modern business warfare. But that last one – customer service – has become more dominant in recent years.
If you’re involved with call centers in any way, you’re no doubt aware of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or 
