Don’t Put Your Customers and Business On Hold

Research shows that remote clienteling technology helps brands improve customer relationships. And technology helps since conversational AI can handle more than 80% of typical inquiries. However, brands continue to negatively impact revenue and customer lifetime value by putting customers on hold or forcing them to navigate unfriendly IVRs. Starting a conversation with a negative wait time message like the one below creates a poor customer mindset. To make matters worse, chatbots are also increasingly using this unfriendly approach.

Let’s face it: no one likes being put on hold. It should be a red flag when using hold becomes part of the natural rhythm of a companies agents…– callers don’t like it and they tend to hang up.” 3 Studies Showing Why You Shouldn’t Put Customers on Hold, PlumVoice Blog, By Bartleby Monster

Humans Alone Are Not Enough

The pandemic has highlighted the fragility of relying solely on human resources, especially critical, repetitive customer-facing tasks. Long service and hold times with varying quality levels plague traditional customer service approaches, driving up costs. At the same time, ongoing personnel issues make matters worse. Within some industries, turnover rates are approaching 35 to 40%, and replacements costs along with long ramp-up times (6+ months) and poor training retention (50% or less) are creating major budgetary crises. Concurrently, some companies have to raise compensation – further eating into profitability.

High agent turnover comes part and parcel with contact centers. While contact centers have historically had 30 – 45% average annual agent attrition, our data shows that attrition has jumped to as high as ~80% since the pandemic. Reducing Ramp Time & Agent Attrition In Contact Centers, Cresta 2022 Report

Waiting Challenges Happen In Stores Too

Long check-out lines, or worse, when nobody is around to answer customer questions, negatively impact in-store experiences. The inability for high-value brands to cost-effectively cover stores and retailers’ inability to find and retain quality staff means customers will leave empty-handed with their questions unanswered.

A customer wait time analysis has conclusively shown that people won’t wait very long before leaving your store for good. In fact, customers are willing to wait only 14 minutes before being served….In one survey, businesses reported that they lost 75% of customers due to waiting times. And when a customer leaves the door with nothing in their hands but frustration, they’re unlikely to ever come back. Long Waiting Times Cost You Sales, Qminder Blog, By Kirill Tšernov.

Omnichannel Remote Clienteling

With Vocinity, brands and their retail and commerce partners address the cost, coverage, and consistency challenges of finding and retaining quality staff in stores, offices, and online. Our Video Engagement Platform enables powerful brand and product experiences — when, where, and how your customers want them.

The Vocinity Video Engagement platform launches a personalized, interactive video experience featuring multilingual brand assistants who can transfer to live agent video or phone calls as needed. And, you can add broadcasts to create virtual shopping channels. You can even use interactive smart digital signs to alleviate customer wait time concerns in stores.

Users easily engage on phones (inbound and outbound calls) and PCs, tablets, smartphones, or digital signs. And with no software to download, brands quickly and easily establish a new and deeper level of engagements across channels and relationship lifecycles.

Make Your Sales and Service Engagements A Competitive Differentiator

Don’t let your human capital challenges put your business and customers on hold. Remote clienteling helps brands improve customer relationships today – with Vocinity.