Estimated Wait Time Intervals 1

[duh01]

we're implementing estimated wait time announcer and wondering at what intervals should ETW be set. Where should I begin?

 

[djwht]

depends on how often you want to annoy the callers waiting in q.

ours use to provide an update every 7 minutes, now we just have 1 announcement that tells them the approx wait time when they enter the q...our customer like this a whole lot better.

 

[DancingDave]

DJWHT, I like the idea of playing it once only at the beginning. Makes it nice and simple.

If you do want to play the EWT message regularly, however, other things to consider would be:

1) How you trigger the message (based on age of call or call centre intrinsics such as EWT, calls in queue, agents free etc)
2) How many people are likely to hear this (to estimate impact on mail channel usage. I may be wrong, but can't see you being able to do EWT using broadcast)
3) Do you want customers to hear if EWT is actually going up? If not, you will need to script this.

e.g.

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1358678&page=4

4) How accurate will the EWT be (most accurate with high volume call centres with similar call lengths).

See also

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1369413&page=2

5) Based on 4) above, select the EWT ranges. Don't specifically state the EWT as it is unlikely to be accurate. Instead use it to trigger one of a number of messages i.e. 'EWT is less/more than five/ten/fifteen minutes'

6) What do you hope playing the EWT message will achieve? Getting people to hold on or call back later (use lessthan/morethan)

DD

 

[captaingadget]

My view is that EWT should be played once at the start of a call and should be in time bands e.g.

If the EWT is 3 mins, the announcement should say " we expect your call to be answered in under 5 minutes"

This means that you only need perhaps 3 voice segments, one for a short wait, say under 5 minutes, one for under 10 minutes and for under 15 mins. Perhaps another for extended wait times.

You should also queue the call first before executing the EWT intrinsic.

 

[duh01]

thanks to everyone for their input. You've been very helpful. We're going to announce EWT once and in 5, 10 and 15 intervals.

 

[picklemogg]

Whatever you do just make sure you do not use the default EWT calculation that SCCS uses. The default formula is horrible. Use something that at least makes sense. We use:
ASSIGN ((QUEUED CALL COUNT skillset name * aht for that skillset) / LOGGED AGENT COUNT skillset name) /60 +1 TO ewt_cv

/60 converts to minutes and +1 to round up. Then this number is saved as a call variable called ewt_cv. Then play off number stored in ewt_cv. Again, the most accurate ewt calculation is number of calls waiting for skill* aht for that skill/ number of agents logged into that skill. Good luck.

 

[duh01]

Thanks for the tip, pickemogg.