Best Practices for Messages in IVR?

  • 19 February 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 193 views

Does anyone have suggestions for how to improve our IVR messages? In particular, the wait queue and call back messages? Here’s my situation:

  1. Call goes into the queue
  2. Play wait queue for caller that says something like, “All agents are busy, please hold or press * to leave a voicemail.”
  3. Append queue position
  4. I’d like to enable callback so immediately after the queue position the Callback says something like, “Press 1 to remain in queue or press 2 to leave a voicemail.”
  5. If callers presses 1, it repeats the wait queue message above (#2) and the queue position.. over and over and over.

This means the customer experience goes something like this: “All agents are busy, please hold or press * to leave a voicemail… You are number 1 in line…Press 1 to remain in queue or press 2 to leave a voicemail...All agents are busy, please hold or press * to leave a voicemail… You are number 1 in line…All agents are busy, please hold or press * to leave a voicemail… You are number 1 in line…All agents are busy, please hold or press * to leave a voicemail… You are number 1 in line…” for the max time of the wait queue, which is 5 minutes. That’s pretty annoying!

I’ve played around with adding music at various lengths but then the customer doesn’t hear the queue position or the callback message for several minutes.

How do you all handle this? 


2 replies

Userlevel 2
Badge +7

Hi Stevens,

Hope you are doing well!

I wanted to quickly check if the issue with wait queue message repetition has been resolved. If not, feel free to send a message, and we will look into it :)

Badge +6

Hello Stevens, 

Thanks for posting this. 

We are working on enhancing the wait queue settings. The development work for it is underway, and it’s expected to go out in Q2 of 2021. Once it is out, you will be able to work around the scenario you mentioned above. You can set it up so that the following will be played in order: 

Primary message:

  • Welcome message can be played once
  • User can append the wait position message or the wait queue time in seconds to be played post the welcome message
  • It can be set up so that this will play once at the beginning and will only play whenever there is a change in wait queue position

Secondary message:

  • Users can upload hold music or any message and this will play in a loop.
  • If there is any change in the wait position, the wait position message is played and the music/secondary selected message will continue to play in a loop until they get connected to an agent.

Hope this answers your question.

 

Thanks,

Subhikshaa

Reply