Travelsphere cuts call centre queues

Travel agent Travelsphere has contracted Affiniti, the communications integrator, to prevent customers from waiting in call centre queues.

The OpenQueue call back solution helped solve a 75 per cent increase in demand for staff to cope with the New Year holiday sales rush by offering every customer waiting longer than around 30 seconds the option to request a call back.

If they accept, callers simply leave their name and are automatically contacted later in the day, usually within 15 minutes.

Alex Mead, customer services director of Travelsphere said: 'One of the biggest frustrations for customers wanting to talk to a company on the phone is being stuck in a call centre queue. OpenQueue has helped us to deal with this problem – nearly everyone who requests a call back gets one within 15 minutes, and all within at most an hour.'

So far over 90 of customers that have chosen the OpenQueue option, have opted to receive a call back, rather than continuing to wait on the phone for a response.

In addition to OpenQueue, Affiniti has also installed intelligent call routing technology to direct some overflow calls to a third party.

'OpenQueue is just the start for us - we are already looking into allowing customers to arrange a call back through a simple internet click and being able to request a call back at a specific time with a specific brand representative,' said Mead.

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