Return Calls to customers

[cavagnaro]

Hi guys,
I have a enquiry, not necesarilly Genesys related but on Call Centers in general.
Customers tell me that when a customer can't be reached they want to ask them to leave a message in a voice mail so then later they will hear it and call back. I know we have Virtual Hold and other solutions, but what do you think of leaving a message in a voice mail? Is it good? bad? From a best practices perspective of course.
For me shouldn't be, because agent has no reason to expend his time hearing messages, transcripting, calling and doing following to that call, but what are your ideas?
Thanks

[victor]

Here are my two cents:

it depends on what sort of call center it is. If this is AMEX Black Card concierge service, I expect them to spend time listening to any message that I might leave, since sometimes, it is much easier for me just to leave a message and have it handled then actually have a two-way conversation. We are talking about those 30 second things: "please schedule a dinner at XXXX for BBBBB. Thank you."

But, in most cases, leaving messages will be a disaster, because it will force a new media to be considered, especially, if some of the people are not patient enough and call again after leaving a message but before Agent has to hear it. From client point of view, it woudl be a big plus, but when seen with pragmatism, I doubt that it would bring any new "value" to the company that implements it. Unless of course they are AMEX

Vic

[Gulden_NL]

I can provide experiences from international air express and pharmaceutical benefits management/mail order pharmacy.

In the air express business we only allowed voicemails and call backs for opened tickets - in otherwords, you needed to speak with one of our CSRs first.  Then you could call back and leave updated information as necessary.  No commitments were provided in regard to call backs because even in business, the churn with "phone tag" is too high.  If we needed a bit more info, we would email you and you could answer or call and hope to catch a CSR that would update the ticket.

On the consumer side in pharma, we never allowed VM from consumers, but did from pharmacies.  They were well trained over the years to give us exactly what we needed and succinctly, so action could be taken on their part and we could return their call when we made progress.

We have many customers asking for the call back option and I find it extremely dangerous.  IMHO, it's much better to "get it right the first time" by properly staffing to your inbound call volume.  Adding callbacks into the mix just creates more problems in managing that inbound volume.

[cavagnaro]

Hi guys,
Thanks a lot for the input. Seems I'll have to evaluate if it is good or not for the customer depending on his business and capacity.
Thanks a lot