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Average wait time message using current queue activity?
Posted Feb 06, 2019
Is the intention of the Average Wait Time messaging to set the expectation for the customer?
We find that it can be misleading, because it uses a 24 hour period. We have a natural lull in the morning and a peak later in the day. The 24 hour average could be 3 minutes during the peak, while the average displayed in the Current queue activity could be 10x or more. The message doesn't set realistic expectations for the customer in that scenario.
Is there any plan to change which metric the messaging reports? Or allow for an administrator to select the metric the message reports? It would be a great tool in setting accurate expectations for our customers.
Thanks!
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19 comments
Official
Rohan Gupta
Hi Everyone,
To check-in on this thread.
We have the problem in our minds to fix. Though we do not have it concretely planned on the timelines yet, we do want to communicate our current thinking around this functionality.
As we are moving towards the omni-channel vision for Zendesk, we are also thinking on improving the average wait time message from an omni-channel point of view where agents answering calls may also be dealing with items from other channels such a messages and emails which can lead to changes in the waiting times.
We will update the thread when we have more details about the plans.
UPDATE (3 Nov, 2022): Unfortunately, we do not yet have any timelines to share for improving average wait time greeting in the omni-channel context. We are still working on to include calls as part of omnichannel routing experience.
Thanks
Rohan
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UPDATE (22 Feb, 2023)
Queues (complex) is something on our roadmap in 2023 so we look forward to providing the community with more information once we have the scope/requirements defined.
Thanks,
Sean
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Richard Leal
This should seriously be something that Zendesk should be actively fixing. We had to turn it off because this feature lowered our satisfaction by 4% due to constantly lying and misleading the customer. This is also a known feedback issue that appears to have been around for a while (over a year) but is actively ignored and it seems they don't want to fix despite it being relatively easy considering it is already built. What I guess would be the new question is why does Zendesk actively want to have our satisfaction lowered instead of building something that would assist with customer satisfaction?
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Manuel Breschi
Hi Gary,
thanks for your feedback - definitely taken into account for the future, but there's no plan at the moment to change this.
As a temporary work-around with the current set-up you could potentially allocate different numbers on different times of the day, if possible, so that a more precise estimation would be offered to your customers. This of course depends on the numbers availability and how your customers get access to them. Happy to discuss further as needed.
Best regards,
Manuel
mbreschi@zendesk.com
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Manuel Breschi
Hi Gary,
you could associate different Schedules to different numbers and use the Routing feature.
This way you can plan your daily routing in advance just once, based on the traffic fluctuations you are experiencing. You can give it a try and see if your customers get a fairer expectation in terms of time to wait.
Manuel
mbreschi@zendesk.com
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TJ S
We had the same issue and had to shut off this option. It was causing more frustration for our customers. Wish Zendesk would fix it!
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Jamie Noell
When we've had a peak in calls, the message might be played during the rest of the day when in reality there's no more serious wait time. Conversely, depending on the time of day, the 24 hour average could be 6 minutes, but the current wait time could be 35 min. We have peak seasons rather than peak times of the day, so reconfiguring Zendesk to accommodate the known peaks as well as the unexpected ones would be challenging. We want to keep the average wait time message - I just wish you could define the time would recalculate more often than every 24 hours.
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Lateesha Clark
I would like to echo Richard's feedback. Currently, due to Coronavirus, we are experiencing an uptick in volume. During this VERY sensitive time, it is practically infuriating for a client to hear "your average wait time is 2 minutes" and then they are on hold for 10 minutes. Now, as a default, I've had to remove the message altogether and our clients are just left there wondering when anyone will pick up.
I do not agree with how this "average" is determined. For our company, we operate 8 am-5 pm PST Monday-Friday but the average wait time calculation is taking into account all the hours we are not open when the wait time is "0". So even though we have been consistently in the 10 minute wait time during business hours, this average is being brought down but wait times that do not even exist in our business.
I'm very hopeful that this will get product eyes on it soon. It is detrimental to client experience and is not transparent enough to help clients make a better decision (i.e. leave a voicemail, get a callback, go to our Help Center, etc).
I would love to have any recommend workarounds in the time being. Thanks!
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Sebastiaan Wijchers
I've had the same feedback a long time ago, but I can't find it. Maybe I didn't share it here, but in a conversation with a Product Manager or so. Anyway, this makes the feature useless for us. We also have very high morning peaks, makes the message kick in for the rest of the day, while wait times could be back at normal levels.
Different numbers also don't really help you out when you make use of IVRs. In the end people don't wait for availability for a certain number or brand, but availability in a certain group.
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Scott Dowd
Our abandoned rate is too high, but looking at the queue times on abandoned calls, we find that most people are dropping in under 5:00. We're wondering if we could keep most of those callers on the phone if they had a reasonable idea of how long they were going to have to wait.
It would be useful if:
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Susan
Any update on the status of adding/updating this feature? It's disappointing that this functionality isn't available yet. We are forced to either offer a problematic (miscommunicating the wait time) user experience for our customers or one without wait times at all. We are definitely feeling the absence in our customer experience.
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