Call waiting: More business strategy mistakes on the phone, Consumer finds | So Good News

Some companies had a quick response time, but others really needed to change, Consumer says. Image file
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Uber is among the best performing businesses in the country when it comes to answering customer calls, Consumer NZ research has found.

Consumer NZ recently found waiting times for 21 companies across telecoms, banking, food and transport ranged from 15 seconds to an hour.

All Consumer test calls were made on weekdays between 9am and 3pm.

When it came to waiting time, Hello Fresh was the fastest to respond, with a quick 15 second wait.

Meanwhile, 2degrees was among the worst with a wait time of 54 minutes and 50 seconds.

Uber was terrible, never answering the phone calls, and finally when they answered one they still refused to negotiate.

Waiting time about 12 minutes.

“Many of us get really frustrated when we’re sitting on fire,” says Caitlin Cherry, chief consumer officer.

“Some companies had a quick response time, while others really needed to step up their customer service game.”

He told Midday Report that it is surprising that the telecommunications industry is poor, “considering that they have mobile phones and communication”.

Airlines also fared poorly, with Air New Zealand taking 38 minutes and Jetstar seven minutes to respond to calls from Consumer NZ.

The banking sector also proved to be inactive, Kiwibank took 40 minutes while ANZ and BNZ took 20 minutes.

“We were surprised that the best performers were food bags. Hello Fresh responded within 15 seconds, Woop and My Food Bag were less than two minutes.”

Cherry said most businesses can be contacted through other means, such as email and chatbots on the website, but if people have difficult questions contacting them is fine.

There were also people who did not have an internet connection and needed to be able to reach someone on the phone.

Phone numbers are hard to find

As well as evaluating call wait times, Consumers also noted how difficult it was to find the company’s customer service number on Google. The manager listed the number of websites it took to find the phone number for each company.

“It was very difficult to get a customer service number for most businesses,” Cherry said.

Of the 21 companies that were searched, only 11 numbers were easily found.

“Uber came back at the bottom of the pack. It took more than 14 minutes and three searches on their website to find Uber’s contact number.”

Only one company, Norton Security, did not have a phone number listed online. Instead, customers should submit a request for a call back from Norton Security’s support team.

“Although Hello Fresh had the fastest response time, its number was difficult to find – taking two minutes that involved 14 clicks on its website and chatting with a chatbot,” Cherry said.

Netflix and Disney + delayed the Consumer for one to five minutes respectively, but both offered music, which made the wait more enjoyable.