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).
When we took our kid to get a picture with Santa this year they used a virtual Queue. It allowed them to backup a queue of customers up to 8 hours! Customers registered at the top of the line and then were sent away. They texted 30 mins before and then 5 mins before. It was quite effective. When we finally arrived we were in front of Santa in 5 mins.
Another nice system is for you to 'queue jump' when you call back after a certain time. E.g. if you call before 10am at a busy time, you have the option to call back after 12pm and you will be guaranteed a direct connection to an operator.
The wikipedia article is about incoming call queueing which I find good even from end-user (caller) perspective.<p>What I found more interesting is that at least some telemarketing call centers actually use outgoing call queues. The reason for this is:<p>1) They anticipate some percentage of unreachable numbers;
2) To maximize efficiency- operators don't spend time waiting on somebody picking up the phone, they are only engaged when there is someone on the line.
I tried to use this feature while on hold ... once.<p>They returned my call using a poorly tuned predictive dialer, I listened to 20-30 seconds of silence before the call dropped.<p>There was no second attempt.
We used this callback system when I worked at a call center selling products from TV infomercials, although it wasn't anywhere near as advanced as the example in this article. The dialing was automated but we had to manually initiate each call, and make sure we were speaking to the right person.<p>I don't even know how many times I've said the phrase "We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls". Hopefully never again.
Does anyone provide this as a third party service? It'd be pretty cool to be able to drop a number I know I am going to need to call, and wait over to someone else who will do a ringback for me.
There are systems in at least the UK that will queue for you on a callcenter. You call them first, they queue for you and when the call picks up you get the call joined by them calling back to you. Never used it though.