Why No One Should Be Waiting 20 Minutes On Hold Anymore
In the UK, the news is about how HMRC, the tax-collecting part of the government, is under criticism for people being on hold for more than 20 minutes to deal with issues. This is a no-win situation for everyone involved.
A stressful situation
No one should be waiting 23 minutes to speak to someone in this day and age. When you consider that it’s HMRC, it’s even worse. For many, calling HMRC is a stressful experience as it’s to deal with tax codes, money they are owed, or extra money that HMRC wants to take out of their pocket. It’s unfair to give people this extra stress, because we know that it takes a toll on people.
Science has shown that being on hold or having a call unanswered this length of time has a detrimental physical and mental effect on your health. Anything more than six minutes starts to cause problems for many people.
Also, aside from the immediate health issues, if someone is spending that amount of time on calls before being answered, what is being impacted? Is that time that could have been spent productively working, spending time with family, eating lunch? It’s far from ideal.
Business and operational impact
It’s also awful beyond that. It’s far from optimal for HMRC either. Obviously you’re going to have extreme customer dissatisfaction, especially if calls are abandoned or issues aren’t dealt with on the first call. But we are all stuck with HMRC; it’s not like swapping one shoe company for another. You can’t go elsewhere.
The impact on staff
So there’s an obvious strain on the systems if people are on hold for such a long period of time, but there’s also a huge strain on the staff there, and this shouldn’t be forgotten. As I’ve said, most people aren’t phoning HMRC with a spring in their step. It’s something they have to do and rarely something they want to do.
So being on hold for 20-plus minutes is the icing on the cake. Tempers are up, and who deals with the brunt of that? The contact center staff. Not only do they get the brunt of the wait time, but they then have to try and deal with whatever issue the person is calling up about. Longer term, you can bet that has an impact not only on staff morale, but also on staff retention and hiring.
The tech to help the humans, not replace them
While many situations and scenarios that HMRC deals with do need a human touch, there are also many calls that can be dealt with in this day and age either by an IVR system or AI chatbots that are plugged into the data and the systems. Note that I’m not suggesting we need less humans helping here.
The modern tools that are making a huge difference to call wait times work best when working alongside humans, not replacing them. We’ve seen industries—like universities at Clearance time in Autumn—go from wait times of 20 minutes to under one minute.
By using modern contact center tools effectively, employees at organizations like HMRC can streamline their workflows, improve customer service, and enhance overall productivity in handling tax-related inquiries and tasks. Call routing, using integrated communication channels including social media, email and web queries, and offering automation and self-service options can all make a difference. So can advanced analytics that show the supervisors and managers where there is a need for more support.
The win here is that the tools can show where the business process and workflows can be improved.
Selling the benefits to the public
The other element that needs to be considered though is making sure the public knows and understands the benefits and are encouraged to use the non-human agents where possible. Some people may be skeptical about what a chatbot can do, but the technology is there for them to take some of the load off the human agents. The public needs to be not only aware of that, but trust in it.
Sadly, HMRC isn't the only one the public is fed up with—we’ve already seen that customers across all industries are incredibly frustrated and fed up with delays and that satisfaction is down year on year. What makes this frustrating is that there are tools and processes out there that can help.
