Let’s just put it right out there: Customers hate waiting on hold. There’re no nuances here. Every minute that goes by is another minute the customer becomes angry and frustrated, and by the time a live agent picks up the call, that agent is starting the transaction at a disadvantage with a less-than-pleased customer. So why do so many call centers continue to put people on hold?

There are times when it’s absolutely necessary. Sudden calls spikes happen even to the best-prepared contact centers, and there are times when an agent needs to do a little bit of research in order to resolve the customer’s issue fully. These occasions should be the exception, however, and not the rule. Customers are well and truly fed up with waiting on hold, and for good reason, according to Tom Huston writing for Business2Community.

“A study found that U.S. consumers on average spend about 13 hours a year, or 43 days in a lifetime, on hold,” he wrote. “Not surprisingly, 58 percent said they were frustrated by hold times. In fact, in an Accenture (News - Alert) survey, consumers’ top two complaints were having to contact customer service multiple times and being kept on hold for too long.”

Customer experience Web site OnHoldWith.com documents some of the most egregious examples of waiting on hold, and they’re not, as you might expect, with government agencies or utilities with no competition.

“Consumers are reporting 45 minutes on hold with a national department store, 30 minutes stuck waiting for a large cable company, 53 minutes in Muzak purgatory with a cell phone provider,” wrote Huston. “The magnitude of the problem is apparent by the speed at which the complaints scroll past.”

In some cases, customers report having to give up before they even reach a live human being. Long hold times should be at the top of the list for every company that has an interest in staying in business and making a profit. The need for scheduling solutions that can examine historical information and other factors to ensure the contact center is adequately staffed to meet expected call volume is critical today. Manual scheduling methods – once the norm but now more suitable for a museum of call center technology – simply cannot account for all the factors that will produce long hold times. Technology is the way to eliminate the roadblocks to prompt customer support.

“Intelligent call center workforce management can make all the difference,” wrote Huston. “Be sure you have the right number of people on hand to cover peak periods, and figure out a fallback plan if you find out you are understaffed on a busy day. Explore a system that allows customers the option to receive a callback from the next available agent rather than waiting.”