How long are you prepared to wait in a phone queue?

hollydolly

hollydolly

SF VIP
Location
London England
How many times do we call a company and are put on hold, with eternal music being played...? and wait for ages, sometimes being cut off before it's answered..

I'm currently calling a government department.. I've been told there's a likely wait of 60 minutes before my call is answered.. I've been waiting 20 minutes now... and the music continues to drone on..interspersed every few seconds with a recorded voice professing to be sorry to keeping me waiting.. and that I can find useful info online...

If they had the info I needed online, I wouldn't be waiting in line on the phone... and equally if I hang up, the likelihood is if I call tomorrow, it'll be the same scenario... so I just have the phone placed on the desk and let it continue... annoying the heck outta me...


Would you have the patience to wait...?..
 

CallMeKate said:
I guess for something important, I'd wait as long as it would take... but for other "ordinary" calls... I can only wait about 5 minutes before starting to get antsy, I'm afraid.
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I'm the same ...so it's very hard for me to be waiting this long.. but it's a very important call... so I can't hang up...
 

right... your call is important to us, we're currently experiencing a high volume of calls, we'll answer your call as soon as we can ..more Mendelssohne same tune over and over... you can find the info you need if you go to our website..www dot.. and search...blah blah... your call is important to us.. our lines are extremely busy and a member of staff will be with you as soon as possible... more Mendelssohn...


46 minutes now..*sigh*
 
hollydolly said:
How many times do we call a company and are put on hold, with eternal music being played...? and wait for ages, sometimes being cut off before it's answered..

I'm currently calling a government department.. I've been told there's a likely wait of 60 minutes before my call is answered.. I've been waiting 20 minutes now... and the music continues to drone on..interspersed every few seconds with a recorded voice professing to be sorry to keeping me waiting.. and that I can find useful info online...

If they had the info I needed online, I wouldn't be waiting in line on the phone... and equally if I hang up, the likelihood is if I call tomorrow, it'll be the same scenario... so I just have the phone placed on the desk and let it continue... annoying the heck outta me...


Would you have the patience to wait...?..
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What also irritates me is the recorded blurbs- no matter when you call, you hear "Due to an unexpected increase in calls, your wait will be...." How can they get an "unexpected increase" for 365 days of the year?
And if my call was so damn "important" to them, why don't they answer the phone.

Bah, humbug.
 
I recall when we had to call a department of the U.S. Government, we had to wait for at least an hour. Sounds like it's the same for you in the U.K.
 
Right so I got through at 1 hour 50 minutes..and guess what ?.. I just started to talk, and because I'd been on hold for so long the battery in my cordless landline phone started running out and the bluddy bleeping in my ear was blocking out half of everything the advisor was telling me... :eek:..so in effect I got some of the info I had called for ..but much of it I didn't hear clearly...:( I did manage to ask her to send all the info to me by email..so hopefully she'll do that in a few minutes...
 
The last 8 years before my retirement, I worked for a major VOIP business phone systems maker doing electronic test and repair work. Phone banks use such system that have evolved over the last couple decades, especially after the rise of the Internet and then smartphones. In the early era they were often used to guide a person through a list of common issues, financial and payment issues, or to open accounts.

If that didn't work, they almost always used it in frustrating ways to cause callers to drop their calls. They might put a person on hold endlessly. If someone actually answered but didn't have an answer, would send one to another department they knew would not answer and one would be back to waiting on hold. They might also just set it up after making a choice to loop around back to the start.

A prime reason corporations did this was due to many persons calling wasting resources of companies for information that was already online or in product paper documentation if they only looked. Or many that refused to ever read product setup and user information would call on how to do the simplest things. That was in part due to many often lazy people ignorant of computer use that had been thrust into this new tech era without experience or training. And there are of course large numbers of ordinary people that read and comprehend at comic book levels.

In this era, features are more mature, quite different than 20 years ago with many businesses for the sake of customer satisfaction ratings being more considerate. However those setting up the systems are the same management people that tend to discourage callers lest their budget for phone support balloon. One thing all phone bank systems have today is a way for callers to leave an email or phone number message allowing a business to call or email back later when they have time as your issue comes up in sequential queues.

Others use AI chat assistants where they can ask questions, further filtering out reasonable callers from the rest. But again, some businesses don't want even that and government bureaucracies are often among the worst because they are insulated from criticism even though many are not the least bit busy with employees in office cubes playing video games or reading about what some celebrity said. So in @hollydolly case, I'd bet even if they finally answer, if her question that can't be answered by the first person, that she will be gamed again. If they were serious, they would have her leave an email or phone number.
 
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Very interesting David , and much of it as I suspected ...In this particular call to a government Body, they , unlike so many others don't ask for you to leave a number for them to return the call... which in any case when other companies do this I refuse to leave a number because in actual fact they rarely return the call... so I'm like a dog with a bone, if I need to speak to a real person, I continue until I do...

Today after almost 2 hours on hold.. I got through to a real person who was very informed about the topic to which I needed answers... Another thing which is very frustrating with other companies if that very often, when we do finally get to talk to someone they are not as informed about the subject as they need to be which is extremely frustrating especially if the call has taken many hoops to jump through in the first place..
 
Thankfully, we do not have that kind of thing happen very often, where we have to wait forever, and they offer no option of calling you back.
What I usually do is make sure my phone is on speakerphone, and plugged in, so I don’t lose the battery when someone finally does answer, and then just do something else online and near the phone until they finally answer.
 
Happyflowerlady said:
Thankfully, we do not have that kind of thing happen very often, where we have to wait forever, and they offer no option of calling you back.
What I usually do is make sure my phone is on speakerphone, and plugged in, so I don’t lose the battery when someone finally does answer, and then just do something else online and near the phone until they finally answer.
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I would have kept my phone plugged in if it had been my mobile, Yvonne.. but it was my cordless landline phone
 
That's a good question. My landline phone doesn't have speaker capabilities. I'd have to use my cell. At least I have unlimited minutes on that flip phone thing.

But that's frustrating and if it's really important and has to be done, it has to be done.

I guess I'd wait as long as it took. And if I couldn't take it anymore, try again. I've heard Monday's are bad days for anything like that after the weekend.
 

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