What's your time worth?

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nobbie48

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"We are experiencing a high volume of calls but your call is important to us....blah, blah, blah." Now listen to the crappy music or worse, ads you can't escape from without losing your place in line.

They aren't experiencing a high volume of calls. They are understaffed and it's more profitable for them to waste your time than have the correct number of people there to serve you.

So you wait 20 minutes. What productive use do you have for that time?

If you need to discuss paperwork that has to be referred to you can't go for a drive or walk in the rain. If it's sensitive, a discussion at a burger joint isn't wise.

In the good old days, one didn't have to make reservations to go to a movie and the screen was bigger than the one in your rec room.

We used to get busy signals and call back. Now we get voice mail "I'm on another call or away from my desk" but in reality, you're on vacation and won't be calling anyone back for ages.

Enjoy your day. I'm doing lunch with a little cutie I met 53 years ago.
 
I get this bogus "we're busy" message maybe 80% of the time I contact a call center type operation.

If there was truth in advertising the message would be something like this.............................

"Hello, we're not picking up your call because we don't have to. You're calling us today because you have no other choice and we know this. We'll get to your call when it's convenient to us and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. So suck it up, have a good day and be thankful you're not calling CRA."

2 days ago I was calling the Region of Peel and waited 45 minutes before I hung up............. Yesterday, I left my contact info vs. waiting on hold and they called me back in about 30 minutes.

But, I'm not sitting there holding the phone and stewing about it. The key is to be doing something else productive while you're on hold. I usually do online stuff like read a paper, do banking, play FreeCell, read GTAMotorcycles (talk about wasting time.......). I could also empty or fill the dishwasher etc.............

So, its a PITA in general, but expected and I plan for it.
 
I spent 1.5hrs on hold with BMO last week...now it was Truth and Reconciliation Day...but both my bank card, and my e-transfer function failed at the exact time I needed to take money out and trying to pay for some items.

Fortunately the ETF function returned while I was on hold, but unfortunately they weren't able to resolve my issue with the bank card (somehow PIN reset and nothing worked) so I did have to go to the branch.

I'm also finding that calling in first thing in the morning where possible usually gets me an answer or someone on the phone within a few minutes.

And I'm a big fan of the feature 'press 1 if you want us to call you back when you number comes up'. I always take that option, and it works great as I typically get a callback within a few moments.
 
Hasn't happened recently, but a few years ago, I remember IVR's consistently dropping my calls after waiting forever for a human being to answer. Not just one company, like several. The telcos were the worst. Which is ironic, because of what kind of business they are in.

Very frustrating when you've been on hold for over half an hour and they just hang up on you mid-wait. Then you call back and are put back at the end of the queue. 😤
 
Lightcycle said:
Hasn't happened recently, but a few years ago, I remember IVR's consistently dropping my calls after waiting forever for a human being to answer. Not just one company, like several. The telcos were the worst. Which is ironic, because of what kind of business they are in.

Very frustrating when you've been on hold for over half an hour and they just hang up on you mid-wait. Then you call back and are put back at the end of the queue. 😤
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When that happened to me I couldn't help but vaguely suspect that I had been "accidentally" disconnected to limit how much I was tilting the call center metrics
 
Well I guess it beats going there in person. At least while on the phone I can do other stuff if am at home on the computer.

But yeah phone customer service isn't great. I rarely have to call in for anything, but had to call RBC lately
First call waited a bunch of time, then oh, I need to pass you onto another agent to deal with that... transfer.... then...click...disconnect...
Second call... waited again, got through.. mentioned I need to expedite this because of previous call.....we then go through all the same questions, again, then I need to put you on a brief hold....minutes later. It got resolved well enough.

Yeah @mimico_polak call back option is good if they have it.

What tops this off, when they try to push you to use online tools, usually I will check them out, but typically they don't offer the same level of detail or flexibility as speaking to someone.
 
I was shocked, I called my dealership to ask a service related question. Someone answers on the second ring and was polite and helpful.
 
mimico_polak said:
I spent 1.5hrs on hold with BMO last week...now it was Truth and Reconciliation Day...but both my bank card, and my e-transfer function failed at the exact time I needed to take money out and trying to pay for some items.

Fortunately the ETF function returned while I was on hold, but unfortunately they weren't able to resolve my issue with the bank card (somehow PIN reset and nothing worked) so I did have to go to the branch.

I'm also finding that calling in first thing in the morning where possible usually gets me an answer or someone on the phone within a few minutes.

And I'm a big fan of the feature 'press 1 if you want us to call you back when you number comes up'. I always take that option, and it works great as I typically get a callback within a few moments.
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My fave is Press 1 for English.......and they put Aladdin on the phone. :p
 
Jampy00 said:
I was shocked, I called my dealership to ask a service related question. Someone answers on the second ring and was polite and helpful.
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Should have bought a lottery ticket right after with that kinda luck.
 
What about the calls from somebody like a lawyer thats says “ he would like to talk to you so please hold “ or something similar . That just automatically pi**es me off. He wants to talk he can phone himself instead of his machine putting me on hold. Oh wait, I forgot he was too important!
 
Lash said:
What about the calls from somebody like a lawyer thats says “ he would like to talk to you so please hold “ or something similar . That just automatically pi**es me off. He wants to talk he can phone himself instead of his machine putting me on hold. Oh wait, I forgot he was too important!
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A buddy had an appointment with his lawyer the next day but gets a call from the lawyer to cancel the appointment as the lawyer was held up out of town. Buddy got a bill from the lawyer for the long distance call.
 
mimico_polak said:
I spent 1.5hrs on hold with BMO last week...now it was Truth and Reconciliation Day...but both my bank card, and my e-transfer function failed at the exact time I needed to take money out and trying to pay for some items.

Fortunately the ETF function returned while I was on hold, but unfortunately they weren't able to resolve my issue with the bank card (somehow PIN reset and nothing worked) so I did have to go to the branch.

I'm also finding that calling in first thing in the morning where possible usually gets me an answer or someone on the phone within a few minutes.

And I'm a big fan of the feature 'press 1 if you want us to call you back when you number comes up'. I always take that option, and it works great as I typically get a callback within a few moments.
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My pet peeve in this area is when reps can do something for you… but don’t.

BMO rep could have reset your pin over the phone, it takes a minute or two. The rep sent you to a branch to make their job easier and their call handling metrics look better - they felt their time was more valuable than yours. Common practice in banking call centres
 
Mad Mike said:
My pet peeve in this area is when reps can do something for you… but don’t.

BMO rep could have reset your pin over the phone, it takes a minute or two. The rep sent you to a branch to make their job easier and their call handling metrics look better - they felt their time was more valuable than yours. Common practice in banking call centres
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All that when they force their CSR's to rattle of a sales pitch for every available service to every customer on every visit.
 
I also love it when you call a company for something, i.e. tech support and you can hear roosters cock-a-doodle-doo-ing in the background.

Recently called Samsung for a warranty issues, spend 10 minutes with the first guy going over all the basic info and "troubleshooting" then "due to the nature of this issue, we need to transfer you to a different dept".
20 min of boring hold music, 2nd rooster rep picks up the call, same stupid basic questions, some troubleshooting , then warranty denial.

I do use the call back feature sometimes but I have been burned with it on occasion so I don't have much faith with it.

My record is 14 hours on hold with no resolutions.
When Sears closed theirs doors in Canada, we had recently purchased some appliances with extended warranty.
I was at home so I figured I would call them and demand my money back for the warranty. 14 hours of hold music to which the call just disconnected at the end.

Several months later, we received a cheque int he mail for the balance of unused warranty.
 
Lightcycle said:
Hasn't happened recently, but a few years ago, I remember IVR's consistently dropping my calls after waiting forever for a human being to answer. Not just one company, like several. The telcos were the worst. Which is ironic, because of what kind of business they are in.

Very frustrating when you've been on hold for over half an hour and they just hang up on you mid-wait. Then you call back and are put back at the end of the queue. 😤
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That used to be a problem with older I’ve systems as they were physically port limited. When they ran out of ports during busy times, they prioritized answering new calls so they’d released some call on hold to make ports available.

Marketing decision, they never wanted busy signals as most companies thought that to be worse than perpetual hold.
 
I haven't read every post so forgive me if there is a duplication here. What angers me more is that the "we are experiencing a higher volume of calls" message is followed by encouragement to use their "convenient" online AI service.

It is seldom that I will get through to customer service quickly and even more seldom there isn't a language barrier.
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