Image: DailyMail.Co.UK

Have you ever been put on hold? Wait, that’s a rhetorical question, isn’t it? How about, “How does it make you feel when you’re put on hold?”

Well, I’m not a fan, to say the least.

Maybe because I work in customer service that I’m more sensitive than most, but I don’t understand how anyone can feel that time spent on hold is anything other than wasted. With all the modern distractions and the ease of accessibility, your time is an invaluable commodity. It’s no different for your clients. 

Becky Carroll writes on the blog Customers Rock, “The best wait experience is no wait experience at all.” Stay on the phone with your clients and let them know exactly what you are doing. If you have to transfer them, mention that you will need to do so, as well as explain where they are going and why. Ideally, you would give an explanation for your activity and provide an estimated time of how long it’s going to take.  

Carroll says that an estimate of wait time, “…helps set the customer’s expectations so they know whether they have time right now to wait or whether they should call back later.” Carroll goes on to conclude that “the best experience for your customer would be to provide this estimate and give them a choice to either wait or, if it’s more convenient for them, have you call them back.”

This may seem like a common courtesy, but I can think of several recent examples of my own (cable company, insurance company, cell phone company) where I was put on hold without warning, without asking if it’s ok, and with no guarantee that I’d speak to a human at any time in the near future.

In consideration of your own customers, I suggest the following perspective: Every second that your clients are on hold, they’re using that time to consider your competitors and wonder if they’d ever do this with their clients.