SQUT – The industry magazine for call centers interviewed the founding team of virtualQ about their inception story, product solution and assessment of service excellence for call centers in German-speaking countries. Read a summary of the conversation and learn how personal anger over a hopeless hold helped solve an age-old industry problem.
Because 40 minutes on hold is just too long
virtualQ’s founders never get tired of narrating the beginning of their corporate history. Annoying experiences with holding lines have often been discussed among friends and acquaintances. But when Ulf Kühnapfel spent 40 minutes on hold with his Internet provider, only to be disconnected from the system, anger turned into irrepressible motivation to prevent such service experiences for others in the future. virtualQ’s idea concept – intelligent queue management– was born.
Success factor: the end customer’s perspective
The problem of overwhelmed call centers, long waiting times and dissatisfied customers is not new. In most cases, the optimization of large service organizations is not neglected either, but represents a complex undertaking that is managed by a system of key performance indicators. Companies can tweak a number of things: Personnel costs, training, digital knowledge management, introduction and expansion of self-services,… But the impact of the investments and implemented measures on the targets for better service usually only becomes apparent in the medium term. In the meantime, however, other challenges arise that compromise the service level once again. Either way, ensuring excellent service is a demanding management task with strict cost targets. As a result, all call center projects are driven from an internal perspective that leaves little room for innovative approaches to solutions.
virtualQ’s founders didn’t have cost and performance optimization in mind when they tried to solve the queuing problem digitally. Therefore, the developed product is as simple as it is efficient. Callers can be notified via SMS, Whatsapp or push notification within the app as to when they can contact the service center without any further waiting time. If they call during the specified time slot, their call will be given priority by the agents.
No more waiting!
The introduction of virtualQ means a significant drop in waiting times within the call center. The call volume is not reduced in the process, but rather distributed more evenly. Among other things, this also reduces the workload and improves the operational planning of the agents.
virtualQ proves once again that especially complex problems ultimately have simple solutions. Annoying waiting queues are a thing of the past with virtualQ.
READ THE ORIGINAL INTERVIEW
(published in SQUT 03/2015)
