Every year, British adults waste an astonishing combined 403,000 years (or 5,000 lifetimes) in queues

New queue-busting software sets out to slash waiting times, improve service and cut administration

The British, famous for their disciplined approach to queuing, waste a combined 403,000 years every year waiting for things according to Populus research for KANA, developers of new queue-busting software.The research finds every British adult wastes more than 10 hours a year waiting for phone service as part of a combined three days per year wasted waiting in queues.

Kenny Bain, senior vice president and general manager for  KANA, said: “The British are famously stoical about queuing, but the question we need to ask in an age of sophisticated technology is ‘why wait?’.”

KANA software is in use by more than 900 organisations in the private and public sectors worldwide and a new version launched this week sets out to reduce waiting times, cut administration and avoid duplication at call centres, on the Internet, on mobile devices and across social media.

For the first time ever, the new software, KANA Enterprise, enables customer details to be passed across several communications channels rather than being restricted to one.

The growing antipathy to queuing in the real world – and the increasing importance of telephone-based and Web-based service – is confirmed by the research. Queues at banks, post offices, etc, waste an average of seven hours of our lives every year. Telephone waiting accounts for 10 hours.

James Norwood, chief marketing officer for KANA, said: “In a way, all of us can think of waiting for service at banks and utilities as a lost weekend every year – or to put it another way, two public horrordays. KANA’s mission is to solve this for our customers and our customers’ customers.”

Forrester Research has found that 66 percent of customers say valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good service. Forrester calculates that a10-percentage-point improvement in a company’s customer experience score can translate into more than £500 million in revenue. (1)

KANA Enterprise software unifies what is described by IT professionals as customer experience management, meaning that customers are assisted in getting the fastest possible service from their service provider by finding, suggesting and offering easy alternative routes.

KANA Enterprise offers the widest variety of service channels, including phone, Web, email, mobile device, social media and more. It can work with existing software, organizing service delivery and ensuring that customers receive consistent service levels. Tweet a problem to an organisation using KANA Enterprise and it will tweet a solution back.

The software also acts as the eyes and ears of the organisation, identifying problems on mobile chat, monitoring social networks, providing real-time analysis and managing proactive communications to audiences as big or as small as the provider wishes to target.

The software further ensures that customer service agents know everything they can possibly know when a customer calls by aggregating all information. This can be a huge asset when dealing with issues and complaints, allowing the person on the customer service side to see the whole picture, reducing time being wasted and unnecessary call transfers to other departments. By continually monitoring activity across various channels, KANA Enterprise allows businesses to rapidly re-model customer support processes, making decisions in time to deliver a better than expected service.

“In an industry that has traditionally approached customer service channels separately, KANA has for the first time taken a completely holistic approach,” Norwood said. “Until the introduction of KANA Enterprise, customer service had suffered from a lack of integration and misunderstanding across service channels, often leading to overwhelmed agents, lost productivity and sometimes poor experiences for customers.”

Forrester data, for example, shows that “75% of consumers move to another channel when online service fails, which can incur a cost of many millions of dollars.”(1)

About KANA Software
KANA understands the value of great Customer Service experiences. We know every channel through which a customer communicates with—and about—your brand. We provide on-premises and cloud solutions for large enterprises and mid-market organizations , and by unifying and maintaining context for customer journeys across agent, Web, social and mobile experiences, KANA solutions have reduced handling time, increased resolution rates and improved net promoter scores (NPS) at more than 900 enterprises – including many of the Fortune 500 and more than 250 government agencies. At KANA, we help create differentiated and personalized customer experiences that count.

KANA is based in Silicon Valley, California and has offices worldwide. For more information visit www.kana.com, phone +1 800-737-8738, and follow KANA on Twitter @KANAsoftware.

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KANA is a registered trademark of KANA Software, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact: Hamish Thompson
Twelve Thirty Eight PR for KANA Software, Inc.
07702 684290
[email protected]

Ryan Zuk
KANA Software, Inc.
+1 626 275 7625
[email protected]

Forrester Research, Inc. blog, “Four Steps for Optimizing Customer Service Operations,” February 28, 2013. Calculation into pounds was made by KANA.