Kept on hold...
An article I wrote earlier on my recent experience of having been kept ‘on-hold’ for a total 39 minutes during 3 call attempts to speak to someone at an airline when seeking information made me wonder whether this was just a ‘one off’ bad episode or not. Digging into the matter, I discovered that a lot of companies including well-known ones, do have problems with ‘hold times’ and it seemed as if the majority of them don’t understand or don’t care how much they are hurting the customer experience by leaving them on hold. Since of late, even hotels including the 5-star ones, seem to have abandoned that ‘answer the call within a specified number of rings’ standard of operation, as I have had many calls picked up long after 8-9 rings.
Companies need to understand that problems with the products or services they sell can arise. Customers too know that, and accept it as ‘It can happen’. And when they call customer service for help… despite the frustration of ‘why does this happen to me?’ they expect to talk to someone right away. In such a frame of mind, when stuck on hold for too long, people then turn to social media to ‘air and share’ both their anger and frustration.
In 2016, a study by Fonolo - a Canadian company that sells equipment and services to call centres tracked every tweet on Twitter that complained about long hold times and those which included the phrase “on hold with…” Based on an analysis of 600,000 such tweets, the company created a list of the Top 25 Worst Hold Time Offenders of that year in the US. In the top 10 were three major US airlines, two telecommunications companies, a bank, and the Internal Revenue Service and who you think topped the list? Apple! Incidentally, coming in at number 25 was Amazon. The study’s findings revealed the worst industries for hold times: Telecommunications (32%), airlines/travel (20%), retail (16%), financial (12%), and government (1%).
For most companies it’s a question of balancing the cost of adding more customer service agents versus the risk of angering customers. COVID-19 has compounded the issue further and the available evidence of call handing nowadays, appears to tilt the scales towards anger mode.
In this background, how can companies overcome the current call handling challenges? The most effective and obvious answer to how to reduce hold time is to staff appropriately. Taking budget into consideration, this doesn’t necessarily mean you need to hire more agents; staff according to call volume. Analyze your call center data to identify your high volume periods and adjust agent schedules accordingly.
Really, I wonder how many organisations analyze their ‘average hold time’ regularly. Apple for instance responded to the study by Fonolo saying that their average hold time at that time of the year was less than eight minutes, if there’s a wait at all.
Checking call reports – especially ones that capture ‘abandoned calls’ (i.e. when they called and how long they waited before hanging up) will tell you not only how your agents are performing, but also enable you to take steps to understand your callers ‘patience threshold’ and to reduce on hold times, etc.
With the available technology in the marketplace, there are several options including Informing the caller their place in the queue. For e.g. “There are six other callers ahead of you” and the expected wait time. This information can be texted on a mobile phone as well. Some systems go a step further where the automated system offers to ‘call back’ when it’s the caller’s queued turn. Now, that’s a psychological shift. Although the ‘wait time’ has really not changed, it erases the uncertainty of being captive on hold and enables the caller to go about attending to other tasks until the callback occurs.
Think about it.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier
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