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Comment by rolfvandekrol | Hacker News Reader

The article is quite opinionated towards this system, while I think the main beneficiary of this, is the call center. And not because they actually operate more efficiently, but because the can fake more efficiency. When I pick up the phone, to call a company, it is usually because they already did something wrong, and I need help with that immediately. In all other cases I wouldn't contact them or would have send an e-mail. The article claims that "the best bet for improving both customer satisfaction and contact center operations" is some queue management stuff and so on, but I think the "best bet" would be getting someone on the phone asap. And asap is not after 20 minutes of waiting time (whether on the phone, or off the phone).

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> asap is not after 20 minutes of waiting time (whether on the phone, or off the phone).

Sure, but if the prevailing queue conditions mean I'm forced to wait 20 minutes regardless, I'd much rather do that without a phone to my ear. I'd even prefer a 40 minute virtual queue to a 20 minute physical queue, so it seems appropriate for there to be some discounting of virtual queue times when compared to physical ones.

Yes. Being in a queue means you have to constantly keep an ear out for being transferred to an actual human being. Which can be quite hard when the hold music is regularly interrupted with voice announcements. Yes I realise my call is important to you, but if you didn't tell me that every 10 seconds I could stop listening so hard and (maybe?) enjoy the music.

As an aside, their comparison of voluntary queuing with and without virtual queues is suspect as they seem to inform the customer about the length of the queue only when they also have the callback system. These are two separate things and should be measured separately.

The stats piece is close to nonsense as well, if you measure ASA from your phone system's call duration when you have a virtual queue you are lying to yourself at best.

The math of say 10 sec max queueing vs say 5min wait time is pretty straight forward but maybe not intuitive. You pay significant (30%+ sometimes, depends on volume) overhead for those last minutes (queueing theory, Erlang C formula). For that reason, it's nice to do something like this. Low customer effort cost but high savings.

Virtual queueing through the phone is a bit meh, you still have to pick up the phone in the first place. Doing it through the web though gives imo a less annoying experience - wait time less visible and only have to pick up the phone once.

> I pick up the phone, to call a company, it is usually because they already did something wrong, and I need help with that immediately.

That is a very narrow case. Others I've personally used

  - place order
  - schedule appt, make reservation
  - check status
  - make change to order/appt/etc
  - cancel order/appt/etc
  - talk about suspicious activity

> When I pick up the phone, to call a company, it is usually because they already did something wrong, and I need help with that immediately.

That might be true in even most cases (I doubt even this based on only my experiences), but certainly not all!

Think: IT support. Did they do something wrong? No. Your PC broke. No fault here.

Think: you have a question about your bill. Just a question, but it's nagging you. No fault here.

Think: maybe you left your lights on and need AAA! You need immediate assistance, but you'll have to wait in queue anyway. This is your fault, but it isn't like listening to Aerosmith is going to make you feel better! Let them call you back.

> I think the "best bet" would be getting someone on the phone asap.

Well, it is impossible to know who needs immediate assistance VS who doesn't. Maybe two pronged: 1) to be called back ASAP 2) to be called back when we're more available? First is the queue how it is. Second is a low-pri queue for people who are honest?

Queueing exists for a reason...the variability of arrivals makes it extremely expensive to provision for high levels of availability. If you are like most people, you aren't willing to pay the true costs of what you're asking for.

Or, you know, a lot of companies are offering alternative choices besides calling them, but it seems few people avail of them

So yeah, I understand why they might want to increase attrition for things like frequently asked questions that are on the website and other simple operations.

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