On-hold "we care about you" message frequency - intended to be annoying?

[minor7flat5]

So I'm on hold waiting for my corporate help desk. I don't mind putting the line on speakerphone and getting other work done to the sound of pleasing classical music.

However, they make an announcement "All analysts are currently helping other customers...blah...blah...blah" every THIRTY SECONDS.

This is grating.

Is there a practical need for this (I'm not being sarcastic here)?
Are there industry guidelines about this?

Do they choose an intentionally short interval so that it annoys callers and the less dedicated folks simply give up?

In my mind, as long as I hear music playing, I understand I'm on hold. There is no need to tell me I'm on hold. A discrete announcement every three or four minutes with an estimated hold time might be nice, but otherwise I don't need a message.

Worse still when a company provides a max hold time, where they say "you have been on hold too long. Good bye." after wasting fifteen minutes of your time. What is the intended purpose of this, other than annoying people?

[cstamets]

Do they choose an intentionally short interval so that it annoys callers and the less dedicated folks simply give up?

Most call centers use call abandonment as one of the evaluation criteria, so encouraging you to hang up would not be a good thing.

I agree with you, though, that frequent interruptions just to remind me I'm on hold are annoying. The worst ones are the ones that sound like someone's answering the phone. You hear a click like you're getting transferred out of the on hold queue, only to be told you're still on hold.

[ZenBeam]

Yeah, I hate this too. If they'd just play music, you could do something while you're on hold. Instead it's blah blah blah, often mixed in with some kind of ad.

Worse still when a company provides a max hold time, where they say "you have been on hold too long. Good bye." after wasting fifteen minutes of your time. What is the intended purpose of this, other than annoying people?I'm glad I've never come across this.

[Dead Cat]

Most call centers use call abandonment as one of the evaluation criteria, so encouraging you to hang up would not be a good thing.Agreed - I think it's intended to show that they really care about your call and are getting to it ASAP. Well, I kind of assume this is true of any company that I might want to do business with - if not, why are they in business? Fully agree that it is very annoying, particularly when it is a nice piece of classical music that gets interrupted at an inconvenient moment (i.e. any time other than the end - or at least, a cadence!).

I'm glad I've never come across this.I have come across it once or twice, but only with an answerphone message (i.e. if the phone isn't answered after (say) 4 minutes, it defaults to answerphone). These answering services claim to call you back within (for example) 2 hours, but IME that simply guarantees that they will call at a much less convenient time than when you wanted to speak to them, and often you get the wrong department anyway. The reason behind this tactic, of course, is so that the company can report that all calls are answered within 4 minutes, overlooking the fact that this system is much less efficient and creates a lot more work for the staff.

[KlondikeGeoff]

This is only one of a whole flock of extremely annoying phone practices that drive me right up the wall. To me, the worst are those damned voice-activated things where they ask a huge number of questions, most ov which are irrelevant. At least with them, I have found if I keep yelling "representative" or "agent" I will get a human being far quicker than going through their stupid menus.

And, as to the OP, if they value our business so much, why in hell don't they hire more people so you could get a human to answer the phone at once? Those were the days.

And the other thing that really infuriates me is when they say "press 1 for English." I don't mind it a bit when a recored messages comes on in Spanish giving a number to press, but as English is still the predominate language spoken here, I usually just hang up, unless it is some place I have to reach.

Of course it is no use complaining to the rep you (hopefully) get eventually, as they could care less.

Ah, well, life in the 21st century.

[Canadjun]

And the other thing that really infuriates me is when they say "press 1 for English." I don't mind it a bit when a recored messages comes on in Spanish giving a number to press, but as English is still the predominate language spoken here, I usually just hang up, unless it is some place I have to reach.
That seems rather illogical. You don't mind if there is a message in Spanish saying that the person should press a number for Spanish, but you do mind if there is a message in English saying that the person should press a number for English?? As long as the message is interruptible having a "Press 1 for English" at the start of the recordings will get things going faster than having a "<however you say 'Press 1 for Spanish' in Spanish>" followed by "Press 2 for English" at the start of the recordings.

[BigT]

That seems rather illogical. You don't mind if there is a message in Spanish saying that the person should press a number for Spanish, but you do mind if there is a message in English saying that the person should press a number for English?? As long as the message is interruptible having a "Press 1 for English" at the start of the recordings will get things going faster than having a "<however you say 'Press 1 for Spanish' in Spanish>" followed by "Press 2 for English" at the start of the recordings.

I think the idea is that they should assume you speak English unless you otherwise specify. They should just say <Press 2 for Spanish>, and then just continue on as if you speak English.

Unless you've talked to these people before, it's not going to be any faster to list English first, as you didn't know you had to press 1 in the first place.

[Hari Seldon]

Usually, it's the music that makes we want to hang up, but I guess these interruptions are worse. It reminds me of the "new"CBC that has a guy with a used-car-salesman voice breaking in every 15 or 20 minutes interrupting the music to announce some other program that I probably don't want to listen to.

[groman]

I think the idea is that they should assume you speak English unless you otherwise specify. They should just say <Press 2 for Spanish>, and then just continue on as if you speak English.


Often Spanish isn't the only language offered, so the choice is not between "Press 2 for Spanish and stay on the line for English" (which still would take longer than "Press 1 for English" since the sentence is longer and the system has to give you an opportunity to press it). The choice is between "Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish, Press 3 for Vietnamese, etc." and ... well, a long list of languages and "Stay on the line for English" at the end.

[snowmaster]

" You call is very important to us; please hold for the next avilable representative."

Wouldn't that be best evidenced by someone answering it?!?!?

[PoorYorick]

Way back before Travelocity and Expedia, I called American Airlines to make a flight reservation and was immediately placed on hold. What was interesting were the incrementally higher level of announcements that I would get while I was waiting. For instance, after the third or fourth "we are currently serving other customers" accouncement, I heard something like, "We are very concerned about the amount of time you've been waiting. Please rest assured that you will be served as soon as possible." Eventually, I got what was probably the ultimate announcement, something like, "This is [whoever it was], president of American Airlines. I just want you to know that your wait time is completely unacceptable to me. I wish to personally extend my apologies and promise that I will get to the bottom of this as soon as possible."

It still took me about 30 minutes to reach someone.

On an unrelated note, what I hate are the "Please pay attention as we have recently changed our options." Bullshit.

[Paintcharge]

What's really irritating is when that interruption has the telltale click that sounds like a real person coming on the line.

Music music music <click> Oh good, done with hold. I need to get ready to talk to someone-take a breath.

"We value your business. Please continue to hold. In the meantime, why don't you listen to some crappy music." repeat every minute....

Die in a fire.

[postcards]

I look up the company that I'm calling on this list (http://gethuman.com/), and press the appropriate button.

[DWMarch]

" You call is very important to us; please hold for the next avilable representative."

Wouldn't that be best evidenced by someone answering it?!?!?

As someone who works on phones let me inform you that people have this really shitty habit of all calling at the same time. At my workplace for example, prime time tends to be 5pm. There are 900 offices forwarding their phones to us, 400 workers checking in, 2500 real estate agents trying to set up showings and hundreds of other callers just checking to see if the office is still open... And this little circus is managed by a dozen people at the most.

I know what you're going to say- hire more people. But this rush of calls lasts an hour at most, at which point the calls drop off sharply. People don't like coming to work for an hour and then being told to go home. At the wages my workplace pays it's kind of impossible to make a living that way.

[pseudotriton ruber ruber]

As someone who works on phones let me inform you that people have this really shitty habit of all calling at the same time. At my workplace for example, prime time tends to be 5pm. There are 900 offices forwarding their phones to us, 400 workers checking in, 2500 real estate agents trying to set up showings and hundreds of other callers just checking to see if the office is still open... And this little circus is managed by a dozen people at the most.

I know what you're going to say- hire more people. But this rush of calls lasts an hour at most, at which point the calls drop off sharply. People don't like coming to work for an hour and then being told to go home. At the wages my workplace pays it's kind of impossible to make a living that way.

Man, that's one tough titty you're sucking on at your company. You've got a logistical nightmare--calls coming in a predictable non-uniform manner-- and you've got to figure out a solution to this vexing problem--so you come up with "Fuck the customer"? Good one!!

The part that pisses me off? When you're asked to enter some number to verify your identity, as when VISA begins their automated call by asking you to punch you entire 16-digit credit card number--when you get a live person on the line, what's the first bit of information they ask of you?

You got it. That self-same 16-digit number.

Lately, I've taken to not understanding why they're asking for for that number again, and I've gotten real good at pretending not to understand how they don't already have it.

"What's your credit card number, sir?"

"Oh, I just gave that to you."

"Yes, well, we need it again, sir."

"Why don't you look at your record of this call? I just punched all sixteen digits into the phone, about five minutes ago."

"Yes, I understand, sir, but I can't see that number."

"You can't?"

"No, sir."

"That doesn't make much sense. I mean, I gave that information to your company, didn't I? And they siupposed to use cutting edge technology. Wouldn't you think that it would be easy for that to make that data, that I just provided, available to you? I mean, they must know that you're going to be needing it, don't they?"

"That's a good point, sir, and I'll have to pass that along to them, but in the meantime, if I could just..."

"Wait, do you mean to tell me that this is the first time anyone has ever suggested that you can use the 16-digit number provided by a customer to tell what that same customer's 16-digit number is? I find that very hard to believe."

And on and on. Hey, if they can waste my time, I can waste theirs, can't I?

[Philster]

You cannot staff to 100% of the call volume 100% of the time. So, you queue people.

Go somewhere and find a way to not wait in line... ever.

It's not queuing people that is inherently bad, but there are ways to place people on hold and make it less painful. When running a call center, there is a fine balance between hold times and abandon rates. Sometimes, you have to take it on the chin and have a few minutes of hold time and some abandons, just like you have to have people get in line at WalMart, the bank, a ball park or an emergency room (and they KNOW the busy hour in an ER.. and the busy day of the year. Still you wait.).

So, waiting for a rep on the phone? It makes business sense.

[Philster]

Missed edit time:

Also... Why ask for the 16-digit card number again? Well, some systems are setup to check that you are an actual customer, by doing a d-base dip and confirming your card number and which call group (or even agent) should assist you. Then you are routed to center X because you are customer type Y, but the card number is not sent to the desktop and delivered simultaneously with the call because that involves CTI development, and some companies do not see that as a worthy investment.

Most people choose credit cards for reasons that go far beyond call center experiences. Believe me, if securing customers meant boosting call center experiences and investing more in agents and CTI, it'd happen. But many banks would be pissing away money and making their products more expensive if they over invested in technology that had no impact on the business.

The common consumer is zombified by fancy ads and gimmicks. This gets customers. If there were some serious connections to the strength of the customer service center and overall customer retention and sign-up rates, that's where the money would be spent. So, thank the mindless drones of consumers who get zombified by ads and gimmicks they'll never use, because that is where the money will be invested.

[minor7flat5]

Missed edit time:

Also... Why ask for the 16-digit card number again? Well, some systems are setup to check that you are an actual customer, by doing a d-base dip and confirming your card number and which call group (or even agent) should assist you. Then you are routed to center X because you are customer type Y, but the card number is not sent to the desktop and delivered simultaneously with the call because that involves CTI development, and some companies do not see that as a worthy investment.This has always been my assumption, and I don't let the redundant question get under my skin.

However...

Couldn't they hire some human interface whiz to come up with a very concise polite sentence that tells people something like "Please enter your 16 digit account number so we may route your call to the correct center. For your security, this information is not passed through to the phone worker"

My example is a bit wordy and doesn't explain it very well, but there are geniuses out there that could, with a little effort, write a spiffy phrase that would make pseudo's experience nicer.

Or they could just pass the darned number along.

[Philster]

They should say something like that, and they CAN. I did not argue about any of the dumb things, like bad use of in-queue messages, or clicking sounds that confuse the caller.

My approach is to keep people informed.

I learned from travel how to keep people happy when waiting... Like waiting for take off. Man, it gets soooo much easier when the pilot comes on and says, "There are four planes ahead of us, and we expect to be off the ground in 12 minutes". Then, "We're next. Be off the ground in a few minutes..." That is a short 12-minute wait to me.

You give me nothing for 12 minutes and it is painful.

A caller on hold for two minutes just needs info. I agree with a bunch of the complaints. And yes, if you tell people you will re-verify the account number for quality assurance or for security, they don't even blink.

[minor7flat5]

My approach is to keep people informed.

I learned from travel how to keep people happy when waiting... Like waiting for take off. Man, it gets soooo much easier when the pilot comes on and says, "There are four planes ahead of us, and we expect to be off the ground in 12 minutes". Then, "We're next. Be off the ground in a few minutes..." That is a short 12-minute wait to me.

You give me nothing for 12 minutes and it is painful.Word.

Your example reminds me of a flight from Newark to Atlanta some years back that was weather delayed for two hours. We sat on the tarmac listening to the periodic updates from the cabin, getting antsy, but not too annoyed.

Then the captain came on and said "Folks, I have bad news for you. In about eight minutes the crew is going to pass the FAA deadline for mandatory rest. If we aren't off the ground by then we aren't going."

About six minutes later he came on and said "Folks, fasten your seatbelts. We just got approval from the tower and we're going to go for it!"

We then gazed out the windows in amazement as we taxied past fifteen or twenty parked planes, cutting to the head of the line and then took off as quickly as I have ever experienced. I think the wheels left the ground with five seconds to spare.

We still missed our connection to Rio :(.

[Balance]

I did a bit of googling around about the OP's question. It seems that there are studies--or at least a study--with results suggesting that the periodic insertion of these annoying messages increases the amount of time people are willing to remain on hold slightly. Quotes I've seen from the study (or studies) indicate that

1) Callers hang up fastest on silent holds. (Duh.)
2) Callers will remain on hold an average of 30 seconds longer with hold music playing.
3) Callers will remain on hold up to 3 minutes longer with hold music plus occasional announcements.

You may notice a lack of links to this study (or studies). That is because I have not found the actual studies in my casual search; it is possible that the studies have been driven too many pages deep into the search results by the vast number of sites quoting them, which all seem to belong to companies that sell hold messages...however that works.

Make of that what you will.

[LurkMeister]

I have come across it once or twice, but only with an answerphone message (i.e. if the phone isn't answered after (say) 4 minutes, it defaults to answerphone). These answering services claim to call you back within (for example) 2 hours, but IME that simply guarantees that they will call at a much less convenient time than when you wanted to speak to them, and often you get the wrong department anyway. The reason behind this tactic, of course, is so that the company can report that all calls are answered within 4 minutes, overlooking the fact that this system is much less efficient and creates a lot more work for the staff.

I've got one that was even more annoying: instead of being automatically transferred to the answering service, I got a recorded message apologizing for the delay and asking me to press 1 if I wanted to leave a message, or 2 if I wanted to continue holding. This message repeated about every two minutes, requiring me to pull the phone from my ear and press 2 each time. I think that eventually I was either cut off completely, or told to call back at another time if I did not wish to leave a message.

[minor7flat5]

I did a bit of googling around about the OP's question. ...
You may notice a lack of links to this study (or studies). That is because I have not found the actual studies in my casual search; it is possible that the studies have been driven too many pages deep into the search results by the vast number of sites quoting them, which all seem to belong to companies that sell hold messages...however that works.Thanks for an honest effort in trying to get an answer, though.

I also had googled this a bit before posting and found the same non-answers or self-serving answers, so I was hoping someone from the industry with a definitive answer would step in—and a few folks gave oblique hints at why this is done but no firm answer.

But it's still fun to grumble about a universally disliked topic so I don't mind :)

I guess there are two very broad categories of ungoogleable subjects: those that are unknown or nobody cares about (i.e. the answer does not exist), and those that are simply overloaded in noise from spam and folks trying to sell you something (i.e. the answer is there but you'll never find it).

[Philster]

I am 'from the industry'.

Some older phone systems don't let you play more than one type of hold message.

Some companies do outstanding jobs with their phone systems. If the OP could name the companies, I could use my industry experience to get some answers.

So... being specific works both ways!

[Anachronism]

As someone who works on phones let me inform you that people have this really shitty habit of all calling at the same time. At my workplace for example, prime time tends to be 5pm. There are 900 offices forwarding their phones to us, 400 workers checking in, 2500 real estate agents trying to set up showings and hundreds of other callers just checking to see if the office is still open... And this little circus is managed by a dozen people at the most.

I know what you're going to say- hire more people. But this rush of calls lasts an hour at most, at which point the calls drop off sharply. People don't like coming to work for an hour and then being told to go home. At the wages my workplace pays it's kind of impossible to make a living that way.

A message that says 'we are busy right now, please hold, but if you want to get right through try calling between XX and XX' or something to that effect would be great and help everyone. In my experience I get extremely long hold times no matter when I call.

When I know I am going to be on hold for an extended period (just about anytime I call anywhere :rolleyes: ) I just throw my headphones on and go about my business. The click like someone is about to answer, then the 'please continue holding message' is incredibly frustrating.

[minor7flat5]

I am 'from the industry'.

Some older phone systems don't let you play more than one type of hold message.

Some companies do outstanding jobs with their phone systems. If the OP could name the companies, I could use my industry experience to get some answers.

So... being specific works both ways!I can't give a specific example that is useful right now because the one that spurred my post was our company's internal IS help desk. I have no idea what software they use and what system they use, and it doesn't do a lick of good here to say it is "the help desk" if it is internal only.

I'm not really asking about the technology limitations; more the philosophy behind this 30 second cycle. Occom's Razor would say that they use this short cycle because it benefits them in some way. (or because it came out of the box that way).

I'm interested in why it would benefit them. What are their motives?

Some people have already posted about the disadvantage of a high abandonment rate, something I had not considered. This makes me wonder more still why this is done.

[fluiddruid]

And on and on. Hey, if they can waste my time, I can waste theirs, can't I?Except you're just punishing the representative, who I guarantee you has as little feedback into this process as you do. Did you know that average handle time typically factors directly into a performance review? Would it make you feel satisfied to have a poor grunt working dutifully miss out on a (paltry) raise because of missing this metric because of you, and people like you, or to receive a written warning because they fall a second or two above the maximum allowed time during one week (or month)? Sorry, but there's no reason to punish people at the bottom. If you hate Domino's commercials, don't stiff the delivery driver.

Chances are, the employee you hurt may not even be an employee of the company you dislike. Many call centers are outsourced, even domestically; when I worked as a CSR, I was taking calls for a company that basically marketed its products, and outsourced everything else (production, distribution, customer service, etc). In the case of a credit card company, it's very possible that the person you gave a hard time to works for an outsourcing house, which in turn has no say as to how calls are routed by the company (that's what the number is used for, call routing).

And believe me, as irritating as it is, it makes a lot more sense than having a system where you enter no numbers at all, and then being transferred by hand over and over until you reach the person who has the proper access to your account and the training to use it -- or having to select lots and lots of extra numerical prompts to indicate who you are and why you're calling.

Anyway, to answer the original question: I doubt it's intended to be annoying. But the people who are developing the scripts don't call the number, nor are the people who are telling them what to do, so what they think of in their mind as appropriate may not work in actuality. If the right person knew about it, they'd change it. Call centers don't want to annoy you. After all, you'll either hang up (hurting their abandon rate) or you'll be all peevy when you talk to someone (increasing handle time and employee stress, decreasing retention or upsell rates).

It can just be, too, that their phone techs are working with limited systems. If you have a 30 second .wav file of hold music and that's all you've got, then the natural flow is 30 seconds, message, rather than 30 seconds, 30 seconds, message, which would likely be just as annoying.

It's also possible that the system was designed during happier times, when the average hold time was under a minute.

[Irishman]

Yeah, it's one thing to waste the time of telemarketers that call you and interrupt your dinner/TVshows/nap/life. They're seeking you out and intruding into your time. But the call center tech is not trying to be an annoyance.

Did you know that average handle time typically factors directly into a performance review? Would it make you feel satisfied to have a poor grunt working dutifully miss out on a (paltry) raise because of missing this metric because of you, and people like you, or to receive a written warning because they fall a second or two above the maximum allowed time during one week (or month)?

But what if your problem takes extra time? Are they getting penalized for taking the amount of time to properly address your problem rather than blowing you off with a "TRY REBOOTING and call back"?

[DWMarch]

you come up with "Fuck the customer"? Good one!!

Having to wait in line means "fuck the customer" to you?

[cstamets]

But what if your problem takes extra time? Are they getting penalized for taking the amount of time to properly address your problem rather than blowing you off with a "TRY REBOOTING and call back"?

In a way, yes, possibly.

In a help desk situation, the Level 1 tech that answers the phone needs to either resolve the issue quickly or escalate the problem to the next level. The second level tech will usually have a higher allotment of time per call to spend.

Using totally made up numbers for an imaginary company, the level 1 tech might have 2 minutes to resolve the issue, where the level 2 guy might have 10 minutes, and level 3 might have all day.

But the time allotment is usually set based on average call time over a certain period, so it's not like they expect every call to go no more than 2 minutes. As long as the average call time is acceptable, there won't usually be any problems for the tech.

[fluiddruid]

But what if your problem takes extra time? Are they getting penalized for taking the amount of time to properly address your problem rather than blowing you off with a "TRY REBOOTING and call back"?The theory is that, over time, the percentage of abnormal calls should be distributed fairly to different agents, and that good agents will still be able to handle abnormal calls more quickly (e.g. by looking in documentation to find an answer while trying some easy steps likely to fix the problem, rather than putting the caller on hold and trying to find someone to handhold them).

In actuality, yes, it can create blow-offs, but that's why you don't use it as the sole metric. To prevent abuse, you also do random call monitorings, perhaps customer satisfaction surveys, logging hangups and transfers, etc. Believe me, a cunning supervisor with sufficient time can find all manner of chicanery. Practically everything in a call center can be measured, logged, and evaluated.

Now that's assuming you have proper staffing and measurements. In reality, I've seen lots of problems that prevent such controls from working. In one case, I was supervising 37 people, the majority of them with 3 months of tenure or less, some of whom worked schedules such that I would never see them during my shift. In another, I was doing full-time training classes and supervising 20 people in my "spare time" (read: unpaid overtime). In still others, the technology to properly log things isn't fully in place, so agents learn that you can't do X, but you can do Y without being punished.