With market analysis indicating continual growth and a bright outlook for the call center industry, it shouldn’t be surprising that call center software is booming, as well. With a host of features to make agents more productive and increase customer satisfaction, call center software has become a key component of many company’s success in delivering high-quality customer service in a consistent manner. One technology that has really played a role in how call centers improve their service is the concept of virtual queuing. Here’s what you need to know about virtual queues, and how an automatic call distributor (ACD) helps facilitate the queue.

The philosophy behind queuing

Long lines and queues are usually associated with movie theaters and museums, but the same idea applies to call centers, as well. In traditional call center models, callers have two choices when no agents are available. The first option is to wait to be routed to an agent, which can take a while and doesn’t always leave your customers happy. Your callers’ second choice is to hang up and try again later, which doesn’t solve their problem and can also negatively affect their impression of your business. Queuing is a helpful way to address these concerns, as it helps distribute callers to the available agents based on a variety of priorities that you can set.

As a routing tool, virtual queues can improve your agents’ productivity by making sure that an agent who is appropriately skilled gets to the call in a timely manner. Many virtual queues even offer call-back features, helping keep customers happy and off the phone or web chat, so that they aren’t wasting any time waiting to speak to an agent. From a business perspective, this also allows you to ensure that you are meeting each customers’ needs while avoiding any hostility that comes from long waits. That’s a win-win when it comes to customer service, since their needs are more likely to be met by the correct agent and their time will have been respected, too.

The technology behind virtual queuing

The secret to how virtual queuing works all boils down to a feature that’s often included with call center software: the automatic call distributor. An omnichannel ACD goes beyond traditional call routing by extending past the limitations of voice to include SMS texts, email, live video, and web chats. An automatic call distributor uses advanced algorithms to handle who receives specific types of support requests, carefully matching agent and caller to increase the likelihood that you solve a customer’s problem on the very first interaction.

Another benefit of virtual queuing is that you can program your queue to field calls in a variety of ways, based on what makes the most sense to your company. For example, you can have the ACD route a returning customer to the previous agent they spoke with, or you can use skills-based routing to put your top agents on more complex tasks. You can even assign priorities based on how valuable each customer or a specific segment of customers is to your business. This kind of flexibility and responsiveness can greatly increase your customer satisfaction.

The implications of virtual queuing are huge and seem to scale even bigger the larger your enterprise is. Powered by automatic call distribution, virtual queuing can benefit both your employees and your customers by helping agents solve problems more efficiently and in a more productive manner. With the ability to route calls based on priorities that you choose, you have the flexibility to do business in a way that best suits your needs. For call centers of all sizes and industries looking to boost performance, virtual queuing is a powerful solution for improving your call center’s operations.