Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

August 20, 2009

Customers Wait Times Max out at 20 Minutes: Study

By David Sims


Customer self-service appointment scheduling vendor TimeTrade Systems has released a consumer survey conducted by Beagle Research Group, finding that consumers typically have a maximum 10 to 20 minute tolerance when waiting for services -- depending on the service offered.

The study also found customers value services that are set by appointments more highly and consider them "more professional." The complete findings are available in the Beagle white paper "Improving Service Businesses with Appointment Scheduling." 
 
According to the results, more than 30 percent of the people who visit a business for service expect instant attention -- in some cases even if they do not have an appointment. More than 80 percent said they would be willing to set up an online account to make subsequent appointment scheduling easier. Walk-in services were generally found to be "impersonal, crowded and rushed." 

Denis Pombriant, managing principal, Beagle Research Group, correctly observed that "consumers do not like to wait. Service organizations should be more aware than ever that keeping consumers waiting can have a negative impact on their business."

Pombriant said the survey showed that people are generally more patient waiting for professional services than consumer services, and that "shorter wait times improve their impression of the quality of the service. Even so, long waits are not tolerated for any service other than medical." 

The TimeTrade personal appointment scheduling tool, TimeDriver, lets users add a self-service scheduling link to Web pages and e-mails so their customers and colleagues can schedule time with them, company officials say, putting appointments into a user's Outlook or Google (News - Alert) calendar in times that fall inside user-defined availability windows and do not conflict with other commitments on the calendar.

This reporter has always appreciated Pombriant's straight-ahead style -- commenting on call center quality for TMC last year, Pombriant remarked on a study finding low levels of customer satisfaction with call centers, "I'd bet that the survey is skewed toward low wage countries. That's important because I expect a lot of bad management habits are causing the problems the survey surfaces."

Such as? "Rigid time management. Rather than working on providing customer solutions call centers are focusing on and measuring time -- time in queue, time on the call. Nothing wrong with that, but in addition you have to solve a problem. No solution and all your metrics turn to sand".

There's also the factor that people are inexpensive in those markets -- "which is why call centers located there," he said. "Unfortunately, low costs breed bad habits in call center operators, like 'my way or the highway' management -- do it exactly as you are directed or we'll get someone else who is more compliant. That's not CRM, that's an indicator that management is trying to keep costs down by using largely finance-oriented metrics."
 
 

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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.

Edited by Jessica Kostek


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