Wait period satisfaction remains a crucial component of the call center customer experience.  Research finds that any dissatisfaction due to on-hold delays can be mitigated by offering well-chosen content within that hold time. Offering users a choice of content and picking an optimal-length automated announcement can serve to reduce the apparent length of wait times and increase customer satisfaction.

In “The Effect of Choice and Announcement Duration on the Estimation of Telephone Hold Time ”, an article from the most recent issue of the International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction (Editor-in-Chief: Bernd Carsten Stahl, De Montfort University, UK), researchers Philip Kortum, Rice University (USA), Randolph G. Bias, The University of Texas at Austin (USA), Benjamin A. Knott, U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (USA), and Robert G. Bushey, AT&T Laboratories (USA) believe that human perception of the length of time segments is not determined solely by the length of that segment.

“There is a considerable interest in the telecommunications industry in identifying methods to reduce caller dissatisfaction due to long hold queues for consumer call centers,” writes Kortum, Bias, Knott, and Bushey. “Our study assessed the influence of the opportunity to make a music choice and the length of pre-music announcement duration on perceived on-hold durations and customer satisfaction. Subjective assessments of on-hold times were significantly shorter with longer announcements, but satisfaction did not change. The chance to choose music improved satisfaction, but did not significantly reduce subjective time estimates.”

The researchers found that participants in their study appeared to be making time estimates using prospective memory for every trial, most likely due to previous experience with on-hold telephone situations.

(Portions of this article were taken from the International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction. )