Abstract
An experiment explored the effect of Music Choice and Announcement Duration on the subjective wait time for a call center hold queue. Participants placed calls to a simulated call center and were placed “on hold.” When participants were allowed to choose the type of music they listened to while on hold, they reported higher satisfaction with the wait time compared to a condition in which the callers had no control over the music type. There was also a significant effect for the hold queue announcement duration. The hold queue announcement is a brief message that informs caller that they are being placed on hold. The ‘long‘ announcement resulted in more accurate estimations of on-hold wait time compared to the ‘short’ announcement which resulted in significant overestimation. These findings demonstrate potentially useful design methods for call centers to manage customer dissatisfaction due to hold queue delays.
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