Question: I realize that sometimes my callers will need to wait a few seconds “for the next available agent.”  Although this is inevitable, I want to make sure they only wait a minimal time.  What are standards for this?

Answer: Several years ago, AT&T did a study analyzing a caller’s propensity to hold.  They discovered that on average, callers hung-up after forty-five seconds.  Subsequent studies found that if there was music-on-hold for callers to listen to, they were more patient and actually judged the “hold” time to be shorter.  The latest development is the realization that by fine-tuning musical styles and other on-hold programs can serve to further increase callers’ willingness to hold.

 Having said all of this, answering services aim is to answer as many calls as possible without the callers needing to be on hold at all.  When they do need to be placed on hold, the goal is to keep hold time as short as possible, often under this minimal forty-five second threshold.  Although some isolated callers will unfortunately be on hold for longer than forty-five seconds, the majority of our callers do not experience any hold time and of those who do, the majority are on hold for only a few seconds.

 

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