Announcements During Waiting Times for Customer Convenience

Sometimes company operators simply cannot answer a new customer, as the operator is still busy with another person who called earlier. The customer who is waiting for his or her turn should be busy with something. This is a rather interesting nuance, and to address it in some way or another, you can:

• tell the recipient something interesting about your company. For instance, about the product or your recent achievements. If you don’t have any ideas concerning this, then just list all the company numbers that may in theory be useful to the customer at some point;
• play a soft tune and say at regular intervals that this call is very important for the company and the customer will soon be connected with the operator. Usually, two types of different announcements are created for this, that will be played to the recipient: – the primary (a person hears it immediately after joining the queue) and secondary (which is played several times until the customer gets an answer);
• play a pleasant tune for the recipient and offer to use an automatic voice broadcasting system at regular intervals. In other words, you can offer the recipient to solve the issue without contacting the operator;
• inform the recipient of the approximate time until the connection with the company consultant may be established, and then (of course, if the person is still on the line) play a pleasant tune. If the set waiting time exceeds 1 or 2 minutes, you can announce how much waiting time is left at regular intervals.

If you were a recipient, what approach would you choose? Be honest with yourself. Let’s review these approaches one at a time. There is no use talking about the first method; earlier, we have reviewed the impact of promotional messages on customers. The second option is hardly better. What concerns the third method, you must admit that very few customers would like to wait while listening to music without even knowing how long the wait will last. This last method that involves specifying the wait time is the best option in this situation.

In early 1993, the international company conducted research, which showed that people

Who knew how much time was left before they were connected with the operator, were more prone to the conversation? The same study showed that most of such recipients were ready to wait for the call on average for 2 minutes and longer,

than those who did not know the exact time.

In your opinion, are these couple of minutes too long or too little in modern reality? We believe this time is more than enough. Quite recently, a couple of years ago, a person could get through to some bureau or company in about 30 minutes, and this was considered a norm. Today, however, with strong competition on the market, the recipient will not waste time just waiting for your services. Most likely, he or she will go to another company that is ready to answer all the questions quickly and professionally. This is why if you can retain your customer in this way for 2 minutes – it is remarkable. Don’t get too carried away with this, yet in the time of heavy workload, this is a perfect way to keep the customer on the line without losing them.

In this case, much depends on the type of call, however, as practice shows, the customer always wants to know about their sequence in the queue, i.e., how much time is left to wait. But if the wait is too long, the customer may call back later and will be sure to do so if you tell them about it honestly. Otherwise, after waiting for 5 or 6 minutes to no avail, the customer will never contact you again. In addition, a person may tell their friends and relatives about your unprofessional approach which may considerably affect your reputation.