There is this toll-free, totally free call that I call to get lottery results for the week (it is sponsored by the state lottery commission). When you call this number, you are given a number of options, to better get the specific information you want. The last option is to press 9 to “end this call”. When you press it, the recorded voice simply says “Good bye”.
My question is simple: why would you have to press a number to end this free call? Why can’t you just hang up? I assume most people probably just hang up at that point anyways. I for one, though, always press 9 since I fear whatever the repercussions be for not “officially” signing off. But what would happen if I didn’t do this? And why are you asked to do this to begin with?
I can’t respond for this specific system, but in general, what happens if you don’t sign off is that the system then waits for a specified number of seconds of no response, and then hangs up the line. By having you explicitly ‘end’ the call, the system can hang up immediately, and thus be available to answer another caller. So it allows for less waiting on hold for customers, and a generally faster response time. At the cost of asking users to ‘press 9 to end’, which isn’t much, and many customers find the system response of ‘goodbye’ to be a polite way to end the call.
I’ve sometimes run in to problems disconnecting a call that I’ve initiated. Possibly that feature would allow you to tell the system on the other end to hang up (which always fixes it for me).
