The Science of Hold Music

I just read a great Newsweek.com article about how customers are affected by the music they hear, while on hold, waiting for a customer service rep.

This article is timely, since I've just moved to a new house. As a result, I've spent quite a bit of time on hold, calling my local utility companies. I agree with the Newsweek article's statement that customers are more likely to remain on hold, rather than abandoning the call, if they think they are making progress towards speaking with a live CSR.

To give the impression of making progress, some companies interrupt their hold music every 30 seconds, to give an estimated hold time, i.e. "Our average waiting time to speak to a CSR today is three minutes." The potential drawback of that is the caller may hang up if the announced hold time is too long. For instance, I hung up when my insurance company said their average wait time was 15 minutes.

Of course, the ultimate solution to reducing abandon rates and hold times is to ensure your call center has enough CSRs scheduled for the projected call volumes. But that's an discussion for another day.

In the meantime, here is the link to the Newsweek article on hold music: http://www.newsweek.com/id/211862

© 2009 Reflective Keynotes Inc., Mississauga, Canada

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