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In the third video of his Dirty Little Call Center Secrets series, Kongusto founder Joel Ciniero explains why customers get put on hold so often, and why the reasons behind it rarely show up in a client’s reports.
“Every call center agent knows their shield, the all-powerful button, is the hold button,” says Joel Ciniero. He describes “strategic hold times” as a routine part of call center life, and he points to three reasons an agent might reach for it.
The first is multitasking. Agents are often asked to take notes while the customer is still on the line, and many call centers allow little wrap-up time afterward, so they try to document as much as they can during the call.
The second is what the industry calls call pacing. Agents can see on their screens how many callers are waiting in line, and when that queue “gets fat,” as Ciniero puts it, the longer waits can cost the agent a bonus and the call center a payout. Placing a caller on hold, in Ciniero’s telling, can help relieve that pressure.
A caller who is put on hold two or three times may simply decide it isn’t worth the time. When that happens, the call shows up as abandoned by the customer, which he says doesn’t reflect poorly on the agent or the call center and frees them to take a fresh call within their targets. The more familiar abandoned call, where the phone rings and rings until the caller hangs up, is the one call centers work hard to avoid.
“This is a great example of how a call center can make the metrics that you see look wonderful, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that your clients are getting treated the way that you would like them to be treated,” Ciniero says, adding that the issue may also go unresolved.
The third reason, he says, is the least flattering and the most human. After eight or nine hours of back-to-back calls, an agent may simply be tired, and a hold gives them a chance to sit back and stare at the ceiling. “It’s a way to breathe,” Ciniero says, though it still frustrates the customer on the other end.
That leads to his closing point. KPIs don’t capture how agents feel, he notes, or whether they work in a fair, supportive environment, yet that environment can directly shape how clients feel about a brand and how often an agent reaches for the hold button.
For telecom providers and other companies that outsource customer support, the message is a prompt to look beyond the dashboard when judging a partner.
The takeaway: Reports can show how quickly a call was answered, but they say little about how long a customer waited in silence or how the person on the line was feeling. The people behind the metrics are part of the customer experience.
Watch Joel Ciniero’s Dirty Little Call Center Secrets video on strategic hold times.
Connect with Joel Ciniero
Joel Ciniero is President and Founder of Kongusto, a nearshore outsourcing company. To learn more about his perspectives on business leadership, workforce strategy, and outsourcing excellence, visit www.kongusto.co or contact him at [email protected].
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