Virtual Hold Technology
Improving the Customer Experience with Innovative Call Back Solutions

Contact centers are sometimes overwhelmed with high volumes of unanticipated customer service requests, causing long wait times for callers, and a stressful work environment for agents. Wes Hayden, CEO of Virtual Hold Technology, explains, “It’s nearly impossible to staff the contact center for handling these unpredictable conditions. Having too many agents on standby is inefficient, and but having too few agents during periods of high call volume results in customers hearing incomprehensible ‘hold times’ followed by periodic announcements about ‘how important your call is to us’.” Virtual Hold Technology addresses these core issues through omni-channel callback solutions, aligning available agents with customer context (information about who the customer is and why they are calling) to solve consumer issues. Regardless of the channel the consumer is on, they can request a callback if they run into an issue or simply prefer to speak to a real person. An available agent will call them back–armed and ready with information about the consumer and the issue they are having, before they ever say “hello”.
Companies know that improving customer service is crucial, and Virtual Hold is playing a key role in improving core contact center metrics that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. “We’re driving measurable impact on clients’ key loyalty measures like Net Promoter Score, and we’re dramatically improving their key metrics like first contact resolution. We’re also impacting our customers’ operational efficiency - eliminating millions of abandoned calls and billions of minutes of customer hold time every year,” asserts Hayden.

VHT’s omni-channel callback solutions are designed to facilitate a callback from an agent, regardless of what channel(s) the customer might be on at the time. These solutions enable the customers to hangup, go about their day, and receive a callback when a live agent is available to talk. Customers can either schedule the call back as soon as an agent is available, or at a time in the future that is convenient.

“VHT’s Conversation Bridge provides multi-channel support for voice callback. With Conversation Bridge embedded within an existing self-service application, VHT has access to relevant information the customer has already entered, so when the customer requests a callback from within that self service application, the live agent is provided this information, giving the agent context, saving them time, and giving the customer unexpected delight in their service experience,” extols Hayden.

VHT recently announced a new option to VHT Callback called Agent Assist. The patented add-on feature comes in handy when the customer needs to be transferred to another department. “Agent Assist determines the ‘estimated wait time’ to speak to a live agent following an agent-to-agent transfer, allowing a customer to request a callback, rather than wait on hold for a long period of time after their call is transferred to another agent,” says Hayden.

With its ground-breaking solutions, Virtual Hold Technology has assisted many clients across industries drive tremendous growth in their key efficiency and loyalty measures. “Many of our clients have realized that initiating help requests via phone, web, and mobile apps reduces toll charges and provides a better, quicker customer experience. It’s really a panacea—higher customer loyalty scores and lower costs!” expounds Hayden.
Going forward, Virtual Hold will continue its mission of optimizing the customer experience by deploying its ‘next generation software solutions’, solutions that provide the ability to analyze and gain insights into consumer behavior, and then influence the appropriate action from the agent. “We have rolled out a beta version of these new solutions to one of our largest customers, and we have seen promising results so far. While many companies in our space are also attempting to address this problem, we believe our approach is innovative and more readily consumable by the market,” concludes Hayden.