Arghhhhhh!!!!!!

Seriously, this is what they now expect us to do at work while speaking to customers on the phone, no joke. We are allowed to only keep someone on hold for merely one whole minute at a time before we have to check back in with them. That doesn't sound too bad initially until you actually put more than a single brain cell into thinking about how that will work out in reality. Most calls tend to result in quite a few of those one minute increments of hold time while features are being processed or research into billing issues are being looked into. So instead of being able to fully focus on solving problems in a short time, every single minute requires an interruption just so that we can add an additional 15-20 seconds to pop back on the line and let them know that we are still working on resolving their issue instead of actually working on it. So in theory, it can take about 3 minutes to add a single feature to their account but now with the check in requirement, that has now gotten stretched out to 5 minutes. Still that does not sound too bad in all honesty, until you factor in the fact that it is rare for someone to call only wanting a single feature added to their account. A good portion of calls are about issues with their billing and charges on those said bills, which often require 5-10 minutes of research and reading through several system notes on the account and looking over a couple of different bills. So now what could have been under a 10 minute call is going to be about twice that with the constant interruptions disturbing the focus of what exactly we were looking at and losing our place in the process of hunting down where the initial problem lies. Not to mention that the customer who is generally not all that happy to start with is going to get annoyed that we are spending just as much time letting them know we are working on their problem as we are actually trying to solve it.

In my experience, people do not really enjoy being put on hold but understand that it does take a bit of time to go through the process of fixing their issues or making changes to their accounts. They tend to be fine with spending a couple minutes on hold while we get the job done. I myself am content to have someone who gets the job done as compared to someone who keeps stopping to chat with me and let me know they are working on it. When you call in to get something fixed it is a normal assumption that they are working on and do not need their hand held and constantly reassured that it is being worked on.

I spent a couple minutes swearing about the stupidity of that to my boss today when she told us about that. Of course she was not surprised by my opinion of that policy and expected me to bitch over it. So I have two ways to deal with it:

1) I will just have to explain the policy to the customer and apologize right off the bat and tell them that I understand it will be annoying but we can make it quick and painless if they just say "OK" when I pop on the line and rattle off as quickly as I can speak "that I am just checking in with them while I continue to work on their issue" every freaking minute.

2) I can just take the sacrifice of 5 points (out of a potential 100) for long hold times if I happened to get a quality evaluation on that particular call.

Welcome to the wonderful world of "improvements" the higher up's decide is a great idea when they have no idea what it is actually like to be the one taking the calls or how great of an annoyance it is to the customers either.

(Afterthoughts)
I will flip back and forth between the two options to deal with this depending upon how I happen to feel at the moment and how cool the customer is.