If you’ve ever been mindlessly stuck on hold listening to “Your call is important to us,” then you know the significance of call queues. Waiting on hold is tedious for customers and for small businesses, waiting on hold might mean that customers lose interest and call your competition.
AI virtual assistants have been a game changer for small scale business for good reason. Among many other benefits, they are designed to solve the issue of call queues. Yet, how do they do it? Is it worth the money or just another trendy piece of technology?
What Is a Call Queue?
A call queue occurs when a business received more calls than available employees to answer the calls. Rather than hearing an engaged tone, the callers are placed in a virtual hold and are automatically joined when an employee becomes available. Modern VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone systems changed that by moving calls onto the internet, which makes queuing, rerouting and automation far easier to manage. And that’s exactly the environment AI virtual receptionists were built to work in.
AI Virtual Receptionists and Queue Management
Here’s where it gets genuinely useful. An AI virtual receptionist doesn’t just sit at the front of the queue playing music, it actively manages it- and here’s how.
Automatic Greeting
An AI virtual receptionist can greet every caller instantly with a simultaneous call answering system. This is a huge advantage over traditional queue systems since an AI virtual receptionist can field multiple calls at once, unlike a human who can only take one call at a time. With queue times drastically reduced, calls are in fact answered before they even start to pile up.
Answer Common Questions
An AI virtual receptionist can also answer common queries about business hours, directions and appointment availability. Since sizeable portions of daily calls are of this nature, AI virtual receptionists can help those callers and even fill their request so they never enter the queue to wait for a staff member.
Call Routing to Correct Department
AI receptionists can ask a few questions to determine the caller’s need and route the call instantaneously. Sales calls can be routed to the sales team, support tickets to the support team and calls of an urgent nature can be routed to a queue that bypasses all other calls. Smart call routing means callers do not have to wait behind calls that are unrelated to their need.
Real-time Status Updates
AI receptionists can provide callers with status updates including their position in the queue, an estimated wait time, or the opportunity to leave a message instead of being forced to hold. This level of status update callers a query leaves the queue significantly faster.
Callback Can Be Offered (Instead of Holding)
Many AI receptionist systems can offer to call the customer back the moment a team member is free, rather than making them sit on hold at all. From the customer’s side, this feels far more considerate and it means your queue becomes a list of scheduled callbacks rather than people burning phone credit on hold music.
VoIP Can Take Bookings/ Schedule Appointments
It adds messages and schedules appointments when no one is available. If all team members are completely booked, the AI receptionist will not just apologise and disconnect the call. It is able to capture detailed messages, contact details, or schedule callers on your calendar directly, therefore ensuring that nothing is lost during your peak operational hours.
Switching VoIP Providers
Will switching to AI and VoIP disrupt my current service? If you work with a good VoIP provider, you will not experience any downtime. Most reputable providers are trained to work with non-technical clients to ready their systems for artificial intelligence and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
Try a VoIP phone system with bOnline for free today or speak to one of our experts to get you set up and answer any questions you might have.