[travelworld2]

Waiting for a call to be answered is much less annoying if you are told you are number “x” in the queue and that your call will be answered within “y” minutes. That means you can assess whether it’s worth staying on hold or calling back when they are less busy. A few operators use this system- if only more did.

Having said that, I agree with all the posters on this thread who’ve said it’s unacceptable to wait for 40 minutes for a phone call to be answered.

[cjb100au]

Generally a call centre will set a target to answer xx% of calls in yy seconds. 80% in 20 seconds is common – but it can vary dramatically.
Such a goal is generally measured over a month, but could be set as daily target. Staffing required is then determined via a complex formula known as Erlang C (or algorithms based on it).
If you are waiting 45 mins then quite simply it would seem something has not gone to plan. Either the call volume is higher than forecast (and not all call drivers are predictable – a massive technical outage or a widespread billing error can drive a lot of calls that it is simply not possible to prepare for), or the average handling time of the agents is higher than planned (this can happen for things such as technical issues within the centre, or a spike in a particular type of long call), or staffing is inadequate (possibly due to excessive absenteeism, unforeseen attrition, or even for budgetary reasons where the required staffing could not be attained).
When any of these things happen, the increase in wait times does not increase linearly, just a small error in the plan can blow out answer times significantly..
A great deal of science and planning goes into contact centre staffing – but it would appear in the cases you mentioned that the result is not what they would be aiming for.

[Author]

Posts