How long are your customers willing to wait for an email response or a return phone call? How about a face-to-face consultation or online chat?
The clock is ticking – is your call center or contact center prepared for rapid responses? Just how rapid those responses happen is, of course, determined by the medium. Here are common wait time expectations for different contact portals and methods.
Customer Wait Times:
- Email inquiries. At least within the e-commerce realm, today’s online shoppers are an impatient bunch. Some want a response within an hour, but most customers are fine with a reply email within 24 hours. Go beyond a day to reply, and you risk losing business.
- In-person consultation. Waiting for an actual person to handle client issues feels like forever sometimes. Yet many people are willing to wait 30 minutes or more to speak with a customer service representative face to face. With scheduled appointments, up to 24 hours is acceptable.
- Online chat. One of the most popular modern contact methods, chat portals have grown exponentially over the past 5 years. One of the main reasons for chat’s popularity is wait times; about half of all customers expect a reply within 60 seconds. And it’s rare to find a client willing to wait with an unresponsive chat window – almost 95% of customers won’t stay longer than 5 minutes.
- Phone call. Remember the good old days, when an actual phone call was the preferred customer contact method? Well, phones are still very much in play…but customers are growing increasingly impatient with wait times. Nearly a third of customers will only wait one minute until hanging up!
To enhance your customer response times, try an outsourced contact center, complete with inbound & outbound communication, call analysis, live agent support, and more.
Smitha is the CEO and CFO of TeleDirect. As the CEO of TeleDirect, Smitha is responsible for running all facets of the business and has a proven executive management track record. Smitha obtained her license as CPA in 2007 from the California Board of Accountancy. With more than 15 years of experience in business, finance and accounting, Smitha is also responsible for implementing financial controls and processes. She is also responsible for organizational improvements and streamlining business operations that drive growth, increase efficiency, and bottom-line profit.
