Customer service call back

Yesterday, I was on the phone with IKEA about a delivery. The customer service agent was courteous and nice, but my problem required her to call the store and then a delivery company. All in all, I was on hold for 21 minutes. She came back a few times to “check up” on me while I was patiently listening “hold music” explaining me all the wonderful things you could do with their app and website – none of which were very applicable to my case.

In the end, she did solve my problem and I was happy with that. But it did costs me 22 minutes of my life which I could’ve spent on something else. There was no point for me to be on hold while she was making those calls. She could’ve just called me back. A voice mail would even be enough in this case.

Delta and Verizon have the option to have them call you back at your convenience when the help desk is experiencing a “large call volume”. I think that’s great. It doesn’t change any of their customer support procedures or impact the call center organization in a significant way while relieving the customer from an aggravating wait on hold.

In this case, it would’ve been better if she would’ve said that she would look into it and call me back when she found out. Or even give me a choice.