“Please Hold for the Next Available Agent:” The Effect of Hold Queue Content on Apparent Hold duration

Abstract

This paper describes a study of the effects of four types of content presentation for consumers waiting onhold to speak to a call center agent. Of particular interest was the interactive voice portal (IVP) condition in which callers used a voice portal to retrieve news and other information while they waited on hold in a queue. An experiment explored the effect of four content types (Silence, Music, Advertisements, and Interactive Voice Portal) on callers' estimates of on-hold duration across four hold intervals (60, 120, 240, and 480 seconds) and for three customer tasks. The dependent measures were hold-time estimation error and customer satisfaction ratings. Each participant placed four calls to a simulated call center in which they were presented with one of the four content types and hold durations. Both Content and Hold Time had a significant effect on estimation error and customer satisfaction. The interactive voice portal yielded the best results overall, suggesting an interesting new approach to call center hold queues.

The Effect of Choice and Announcement Duration on the Estimation of Telephone Hold Time

“…Music types are presented and the caller must select one of the available options using the phone keypad. Previous research has shown that the cognitive activity level during a given wait time can effect time estimates (Knott et al, 2003). For the current study, no such influence on time estimates was found to accompany the enhanced customer satisfaction, although the cognitive effort to make the simple initial music choice may be too small to matter here.…”

“…A study of hold queue content demonstrated the positive impact of implementing an Interactive Voice Portal (IVP) within a call center hold queue (Knott, Pasquale, Joseph, Miller, & Mills, 2003). Specifically, the authors found that when callers used an IVP while waiting on hold, their satisfaction with the wait time was high and they made relatively short wait time estimates compared to several other content conditions (i.e., Silence, Music, and Advertisements).…”

“…The study described here attempts to answer the questions raised in Knott et al (2003) by determining if the users' ability to select on-hold music (internal locus of control) and the length of the opening announcement can positively affect both the users' perception of time and their subsequent satisfaction ratings.…”