For Immediate Release: 01-May-2001
FARNBOROUGH, UKPoor 'hold music', or even worse none at all, has the potential
to cause over half of callers to abandon calls to customer contact
centres, according to Avaya (NYSE:AV), a global leader in corporate
networking solutions and services. Faced with such a situation, 15
percent of all callers will not call back. However, there are
strategies companies can take to help avoid this problem. The findings of research by Avaya identified that length of
waiting time is the greatest frustration for contact centre
customers. Some 20 percent of callers will hang up after queuing
for 20 seconds. This increases to half of all callers hanging up at
45 seconds. Silence during the waiting time leads to the greatest
number of people hanging up and never calling back. Most
surprisingly, the research concluded that, in certain cases,
playing the wrong music may have a worse effect than playing none
at all. Real-life examples of inappropriate hold music uncovered by
Avaya include: - A hospital casualty unit found to be playing the 'Funeral
March' by Chopin
- A clothing firm specialising in larger sizes for women playing
Queen's 'Fat-Bottomed Girls'
- A mail order company playing 'Hanging on the Telephone' by
Blondie
- One company advised its callers that their call would be
answered shortly and then were played the chorus of 'Rocket Man' by
Elton John, "I think it™s going to be a long, long time¦"
Carey Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology, University
of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST),
commented: "People are living frenetic, often frustrating lives and
don't have much spare time on their hands. Waiting on the end of
the line to make a simple enquiry will make them feel even more
undervalued and annoyed. Hold music won't pacify them, but bad or
inappropriate music will certainly make their experience even
worse. "People don™t mind going through the decision tree rigmarole,
wading through a set of numbered options, if they are requesting
high value items. They appreciate that this is often the most
efficient way for companies to deal with customers." John Winchester, Vice President & General Manager of Avaya
in UK and Ireland, said, "There is a serious side to this issue.
Namely, companies can impact their bottom line by playing
inappropriate music. It™s tantamount to saying 'you mean nothing to
us as a customer " go away.' The damage this can do to the brand is
enormous. "It is important to take a holistic approach to customer
service. When you consider that organisations in the public and
private sector are spending tens of millions of pounds each year on
contact centre technology, it is vital that they cover all the
bases. This means using technology to minimise hold time and
ensuring that when music is played, it meets the expectations of
the customer." Spending on call centre systems in the UK was estimated to be
£110 million in 2000, according to Gartner. Avaya recommends that hold music should be appropriate to the
brand and wherever possible appeal to the profile/age group of the
customer calling. It also recommends that technology is used to
advise callers where they are in the queue and or how long they can
expect to hold on for. It is also recommended that hold time is kept to a minimum. In
part, this can be achieved by using rules-based software to
prioritise callers who have been waiting the longest. The research was prepared by Avaya's UK Business Consulting
Team. It is based on data from a thousand telephone calls made to
companies in the financial services, retail and utilities sectors,
proprietary survey information and by extrapolating data from a
range of publicly available research. Avaya " the leader in Contact Centres
Avaya is the world's leading provider of technologies to Automatic
Call Distribution/Call Centres. The company's technology ranges
from intelligent call routing systems and interactive voice
response and recognition systems through to the latest Internet
Contact Centre technologies, offering text chat, click to talk,
escorted web browsing, etc. Avaya is an innovator in the use of Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) software in customer contact centres. Such
software is used by businesses and customer care agents to manage
all aspects of the customer relationship from initial contact
through to processing transactions " in short, providing seamless
connectivity and workflow management between people and
information. About Avaya
Avaya, headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., is a leading global
provider of communications solutions and services that help
businesses, government agencies and other institutions " including
more than 75 percent of the Fortune 500 " excel in the customer
economy. Avaya offers Customer Relationship Management Solutions,
Unified Communications Solutions, Hosted Solutions, Multiservice
Infrastructure, and Converged Voice and Data Networks " including
the company's no-compromise Enterprise-Class IP Solutions (ECLIPS)
" all supported by Avaya Services and Avaya Labs. Avaya is the
worldwide leader in unified messaging, messaging systems, call
centers and structured cabling systems. It is the U.S. leader in
voice communications systems. For more information about Avaya,
visit its Web site at http://www.avaya.com. | 
