Phone Wait Time Benchmarks, Q1 2013 [TABLE]

Table - Phone Wait Time Benchmarks

Don’t keep your prospects and customers on hold for long, because some will hang up. That’s according to a benchmark analysis released by Ifbyphone. Measuring call activity and response times among its clients during the first quarter, Ifbyphone found that about 60% of calls were answered, typically in slightly over one minute. But a significant 15% hung up right at about the 40-second mark, per the researchers.

Another 22% were sent to voicemail, most commonly because agents were in “inactive mode,” meaning that they were on break, busy, or because the business was closed (13% of all calls).

The average time a call waited on hold was 56 seconds, per separate results from the study, proving that if customers want a quick response, they should choose the phone over a social media post. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.