Most of you know I used to work in the call center at Sprint PCS after college, circa 2003, so I am very familiar with the practice of placing someone on hold to either 1) get them to go away because you didn’t want to deal with their request that could possibly affect your performance stats OR 2) piss them off because they pissed you off. Less frequently, customers would be placed on hold because you just had to get that last bit of your story out to your colleague beside you.
The unfortunate part was that, no matter what the excuse, the practice of placing a customer on hold invariably pissed them off even more, leading them to call back and complain about you, as well as vowing to never pay another dime for the service.
So, I wonder what the thought process was behind famously placing Ryan Block on hold for 3.5 hours? Did they think he enjoyed their hold music or that he was just calling to pass the time?
The entire ordeal reveals a hiccup in the system; why is there not a cutoff after a customer is holding excessively? Or, an automated message that informs customers of the times a representative is available? These quick fixes could’ve helped to avoid a terrible PR crisis, particularly in the wake of sagging customer service rankings.
Leave a Reply