November, 9 2010
The next time you're on interminable phone hold, consider this: If you're hearing music--and you like the tune--the wait probably won't seem so bad.
According to an experiment conducted by two Georgia professors of a private company's call center where customers seek technical help show that customers' satisfaction increased if they liked the music on hold they heard. The music made the wait seem to go faster (results published in an article in "The Journal of Service Research").
Naveen Donthu, a Georgia State marketing professor, and Anita Whiting of Clayton State College say an important piece of customer satisfaction is the perception of how long a customer thinks a wait is, whether it's in line at a store or on hold on the phone. They pointed to several earlier studies that showed the longer customers believe they waited, the more negatively those customers evaluated a company's service.
Donthu and Whiting set out to study how to improve that wait--or more accurately the perception of the wait--while on phone hold. In their experiment, half the customers heard music on hold; the other half heard nothing. After transactions were finished, the customers were surveyed in e-mails about their wait-time experiences.
The experiment found that people who liked the music on hold they heard while waiting thought they had a smaller wait time. Some of the respondents said they liked to hear the music because they knew they were still connected to the company; no music made them wonder if they were still on hold or had been disconnected. So what does this mean? The professors say companies should try and play music on hold that fits their target audiences. And firms should try to periodically change their music on hold because customers get tired of listening to same, old music every time they call in.