Reducing Hold Times for Better Customer Engagement

If you were to ask the average consumer what his or her biggest gripe was, you’d probably hear, “Waiting on hold. In fact, the average person will spend 1.2 years of his or life on hold waiting for a contact center agent. It’s an appalling statistic, particularly when technology now offers so many alternatives to it. The more time customers spend on hold, the more frustrated they become, and the less likely to endorse the company to others. In fact, waiting on hold gives a customer a negative perception of a company before she’s even spoken to a representative

Consumers’ thresholds for waiting on hold are a lot lower than most companies think. According to at least one study, most callers choose to hang up after less than two minutes on hold, and more than one third of these customers will never call back. By reducing callers’ hold times, companies are gaining business and customer goodwill, both of which add to the bottom line.

Some ways companies can ensure customers are spending the least possible amount of time on hold include:  

Expanding agents' authority to make decisions. Many customers are put on hold because agents are waiting for the approval of a manager, a supervisor or another department to finish the call. If you give agents more power to make decisions on behalf of the customer experience, hold times will shorten.

Building a comprehensive and easily accessible knowledge base. An extensive and easily searchable central knowledgebase will ensure that agents always know where to go to find the answers to questions…even obscure questions.

Use analytics to track and listen to calls that involve long hold times. This way, you can better understand what’s causing the long waits, and take steps to eliminate the problems.

Expand your contact options and self-service. When customers can resolve their own problems, they don’t need to call. If there’s an alternative, such as email or chat, they may elect to use that and not call. It’s critical, however, that these channels are properly staffed, and the answers are prompt. Don’t create new contact channels just to ignore them.

Optimize call routing. Part of the problem might be inefficient call routing. If it’s been a while since you evaluated your call routing setup, take some time to see if you can’t improve it so calls are going to the right place every time.

Offer a callback option. When hold times are stretching out, have agents offer to set up a time to call customers back, and ensure these follow-up calls are being made promptly.

Edited by Maurice Nagle