Call centre waiting times: Blame the technology

Call centre dead air - those few silent seconds or minutes while an agent digs around to find your details - could be down to technological bumbling, a survey has found.

According to new research out today, call-centre agents aren't being trained to use their desktop tech properly and are overloaded with applications, leading to mistakes in data entry and customers being kept hanging on unnecessarily.

The average number of applications that an agent will use in the course of a single call isn't small. Around two-thirds find themselves tackling three or more, and 27 per cent deal with more than five. The maximum number that one agent said they had to use was a whopping 15 separate applications.

And they're not happy about it either - 71 per cent reckon that playing application ping-pong wastes time either during the call or after it has finished.

It's not the only bugbear that agents have with switching between multiple applications. More than half believe that it's "easy" for errors to creep in when they have to enter data into apps ranging from CRM systems to credit-check programmes.

It seems that the problem isn't purely the sheer volume of applications - a lot of call centre staff feel they simply aren't being trained to use the technology. Thirty-five per cent of agents complained that the training that they receive on IT systems is below average or worse.

Dr Cherry Taylor, MD of Dynamic Markets, who carried out the research on behalf of software company Corizon, told silicon.com that companies should be looking to tackle the problem - or risk losing business.

"We all know how frustrating it is when an agent's system crashes or they have to re-enter your details. We picked up instances where customers stopped a sale or said 'that's it, I'm not doing business with you' because of it... This is a serious issue for companies. People are losing business."

She added that call centre managers should be getting round a table with their techies about the problem. "Call centre managers should be talking to their IT people about what they can do. They set high standards and they're let down by their systems... If you're the person charged with driving down costs and driving up efficiency, any time wasted on a call is serious."

Call centre agents are all too experienced at being on the receiving end of customers' ire when they're made to wait that crucial few seconds too long. One-third of those surveyed said that customers had hung up or given them a tongue-lashing as a result of slow service.

While it's easy to blame those tricky desktops for stroppy customers, it seems that the Brits are naturally impatient when it comes to dealing with call centres. A recent survey of European call centre users by Dimension Data found that Britons were among the most impatient, second only to the Italians. The research also found that when UK consumers want to vent their frustration, the phone is king, with 90 per cent opting to get on the blower to complain rather than write or email.