Making Up For Long Customer Hold Times

Here’s a statement you’ll never hear. “I was on hold for 20 minutes; it was awesome!”

Hold times have always been a nightmare, and chronic delays have only become more significant throughout the pandemic. I recently called my bank, where I’ve been a customer for nearly two decades, and waited on hold for over forty-five minutes before I was able to speak with a representative. I had a few questions about some charges on my bill. Figuring out what was going on with my account was a bit more complicated than the work a chatbot or automated phone system could handle.

Most of us are accustomed to waiting for a small fraction of time, but when hold times start reaching near the hour mark, we’re like, “Wait, hold up, do I work here now?!” It seems like many companies, across numerous industries, have simply dropped the ball altogether. “‘The pandemic has given many companies license to reduce their focus on the quality of the experience they’re delivering to the customer,’ said Jon Picoult, founder of Watermark Consulting, a customer service advisory firm.” (NY Times)

A few reasons wait times are longer.

There are fewer employees to take call requests. 

“The pandemic has ushered in a new era of ‘The Great Resignation’ (or “The Big Quit”) where employees are reassessing the impact of their jobs on work/life balance, mental health and overall life goal fulfilment [sic].  Nowhere has this phenomenon hit harder than in customer service and contact centres where it threatens to derail the best laid recruitment and retention plans.” (Ross Daniels via thehrdirector.com)

CCW Digital data, in fact, confirms growing agent turnover as the #3 pain point facing today’s contact centers: only disconnected systems and channels rank higher.

Growing online consumption creates more volume, from more demanding customers.

Between the transformed reality of lockdown and the new experience of working from home, people have been radically changing their lifestyles, purchasing new types of items, and shifting their online engagement habits. The ability to save at the beginning of the pandemic, new income from stimulus checks, savings in commuter and travel costs, and gains in stock market and crypto investments, amplified this shift for some consumers, leading to a desire to spend.

With an explosion of online sales comes more product inquiries, questions about order status, and unfortunately, complaints. For instance, where a furniture business may have been able to handle the incoming calls for products pre-pandemic, the surge of customers updating their home office setup with new equipment and decor has created a completely swamped situation for the furniture business. Similar phenomena have been occurring across a plethora of sectors.

“Across industries, ticket volume is spiking as a result of changing customer behavior. Some companies have seen unprecedented demand – like grocery and food delivery, retail/eCommerce, e-learning, streaming, etc.” (Michael Kahn at Netomi.com)

Furthermore, a fair amount of the population has had to adapt to this new, ever-changing and confusing reality of how to live and work at home. This has only exacerbated tensions and increased stress about how to navigate and juggle daily work / life / at home schooling, etc. making people often feel frustrated and tired before they even pick up the phone to call a support center.

With 60% of consumers saying they care more about the experience when making purchasing decisions, it is also important to acknowledge the impact of higher standards. Even a minor increase in wait time could have a major impact on customer relationships.

Technological “solutions” may be adding to the problem.

Prior to the pandemic, many companies could handle the capacity of their call volumes, but now some businesses’ tech operations are not scaled for the sheer amount of volume coming in. Ross Daniels says to “Invest in agent-empowering technologies – that enable and encourage frontline staff to reach their full potential and deliver truly exceptional customer experiences to make your brand stand out from the crowd.” (thehrdirector.com)

We also must remember that just because a company may be capable of scaling some of their technology, this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to support seamless integration with other essential workflow and data tools, such as CRM. Remember that it also requires time to train agents how to operate within updated tech platforms. Given the challenges of this changing environment, agents might not always have the relevant information they need in front of them to adequately provide customers with the sort of fast response for which they are looking. And as they are working from home, they will not have a deskmate or nearby supervisor they can ask for immediate assistance with a confusing system or tricky customer inquiry.

Combined together to create a sort of perfect storm, these factors have made for an absolutely brutal customer service experience on the other end of the call. 

What companies must do to soften the blow to customers.

Let’s delve into a few options companies can implement to satisfy their customers in this challenging environment.

Improve agent acquisition and retention … and then empower employee performance.

Obviously as call volumes increase, the first thing businesses must do is create an environment where they have enough employees, where they are compensated well and given the technology and resources they need to succeed. “Not having the relevant data and/or appropriate technology was cited by 83% of agents as the largest barrier to resolving customer issues.” (Ross Daniels via thehrdirector.com)

Look across the entire operation to identify and eliminate “root causes” of customer issues.

It’s a smart idea for companies to take an internal look at their operations, identifying exactly where their customers are experiencing the most issues. By improving these areas, the goal should be to eliminate (as much as possible) the notion that a customer will need to call at all.

Improving any other parts of your operations will only aid to a positive view of your organization from the customer perspective. Can other parts of the business be improved to offset the time of having to wait on hold? Can shipments go out faster? Maybe the tech on a company’s website could be updated, thus becoming easier and more intuitive for customers to utilize. Investing in AI tech that simply works better can help stem the flow of calls. Simply put, can you solve their problems before they ever need the option of picking up a phone to call for help?

Provide customers with relevant information informing them about exactly what’s going on.

Things like an automated message explaining why the wait times are so long can be useful. Similarly, letting customers know how long their expected hold may be or how many other calls exist ahead of them in the queue is helpful. Data like this gives customers a choice of whether or not they want to invest their time waiting or if they’d prefer to call back at a later time. Implementing these small changes makes customers feel like they aren’t just completely at the whim of the hold time nightmare debacle.

Furthermore, improving digital communication access and technology may also help to solve a customer’s needs before they ever reach for that dial. If chatbots and automated online systems are updated, robust and able to handle more advanced customer interactions and solve more problems, this can pair down some of the phone traffic, decreasing overall wait times. More routes for customer service contact spreads out the demand to any one particular means of communication.

Incentives companies can use to make it up to the customer.

Ways to make customers happy in the face of unavoidably long wait times in exchange for their patience.

What happens when the customer must ultimately endure an excruciatingly long hold time? How can we improve this experience for them?

• Offer customers the option to request a callback, either based on their “place in line” or at a specified time. By freeing customers from the call queue, they can go on about their day and not feel their time has been wasted. It’s much appreciated. Not simply a reactive exercise, companies can also allow customers to “book” a phone call appointment using an option on the website or within a chatbot.
  
  
• To send the message that waiting is worthwhile, those whose wait time exceeds a certain threshold can receive an automatic escalation to a supervisor or otherwise-empowered employee. In a similar vein, if the customer is given the option to input more of their personal information into the IVR, and this information is readily available to the agent before they take the call, customers will not have to waste time repeating information. The agent can quickly get straight to the issue at hand, increasing speed on both ends of the call.
  
  
• To ensure customers know that the lengthy delay was an unfortunate occurrence, and not standard practice, companies can offer small compensations for wait times. Offers like coupons or free shipping will not simply delight customers, but also encourage them to spend more, thus turning the negative of waiting into the positive of more business.
  
  
• Elevate existing and loyal customers into premium memberships and statuses. This often doesn’t cost the business much at all, if anything, and it makes customers feel important to the brand. Many customers, once enrolled into new tiers, may not even take advantage of the upgraded benefits, but the company comes out ahead by just offering the option.
  
  
• Conduct a follow-up call from a supervisor later down the road to ensure that a customer’s issue has been resolved. This adds a nice personal touch and can regain customer confidence in the brand. Supervisors can also hear what went wrong and what went right, helping the company learn how they can improve going forward.
  
  
• Add a survey after the call. People feel empowered when they are able to voice their opinions, both negative and positive. We all want to be heard, and being able to speak our minds makes us feel like the company cares about us. The key, of course, is to assure customers that the survey is actually brief and that the company truly values the feedback (closing the loop via a follow-up email or call is essential).
  
  
• Providing company updates via newsletters, emails or texts about how the business is addressing the long wait times can improve customers’ views of the organization as well. People just don’t want to be left in the dark, but if they know the company is trying and that improvements are coming down the road, they are more apt to have a favorable view of the organization.
  
  

Putting it all together.

Even in the event a company loses a little revenue due to offering up incentives to its customers, in the long run they will be better off for having done so. They will retain customers who will be even more impressed with their treatments and stay loyal to the brand for years to come. Companies need to start looking at these obstacles not just as hindrances, but rather as excellent opportunities to turn a so-so, indifferent customer into a dedicated, loyal one. Executed thoughtfully and correctly, companies can win customers over for life. It’s in tough times that true valuable companies really shine through and come out on top.