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

[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]

@Dead_Cat

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]

@Balance

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]

@DWMarch

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]

@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!

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]

@pseudotriton_ruber_ruber

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]

@pseudotriton_ruber_ruber

you come up with “Fuck the customer”? Good one!!

Having to wait in line means “fuck the customer” to you?

[cstamets]

@Irishman

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]

@Irishman

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.