I discovered this immediately after being on two hours of tech support hold, but I'm definitely using it in the future:

LucyPhone

Basically, it waits on hold for you and calls you back when someone picks up. I don't know how it knows when someone has picked up, and I don't have a toll-free number (it won't dial non-toll-free numbers) for it to call for me to test it out. But I don't really care.

That is pretty cool.

The problem is that it's the type of service I keep forgetting to use (or try). I also wonder if the service rep would be willing to wait for you to pick up...

Yeah, I dunno.

I can't remember who it was, but instead of being put on hold the organization I was calling told me the estimated wait time and said they'd call me back when my turn came. It might have been USAA. Whoever it was, it was awesome.

I've also experienced this a few times. I think one of the times was with SAS.

Stig

I think more places are starting to do this, even my knee doctor has this and they aren't exactly a huge company. If you are on hold waiting for the next available agent, you can have the system call you back. When you are the next one in line, the system calls you back and then you slip right back into your spot in the queue. It is really awesome.

Hmm. How do they tell that you're no longer on hold though? I've waited in silence, listened to bad music and occasionally had the your call is important to us spiel when on hold. Not sure how you'd detect that it wasn't music or a prerecorded message?

My guess is that it's the agent on the other end that gets treated to the machine message, telling them to wait while they dial you. If LucyPhone were trying to detect when you were off hold, there wouldn't be enough time to call you between when they were able to detect the end of the hold and when the agent picks up (which are usually the same thing).

Yeah, probably, but he only gets it for, at most, 15 seconds.

I wish I had an 800 number available so I could find out for myself. It'd help in starting the conversation. I noticed when I used it last night that the tech seemed kinda confused.

In that case then as you said, I wonder how likely it will be that the agent will wait for you to pick up. They're not going to sit around waiting on the line when they've got a massive queue to get through.

The tech probably doesn't care that much; his system still shows him as on the phone.

Why don't you just ask him what he experienced?

Having worked in a variety of call centers, it's going to depend. ACL (average call length) was a common metric, and if it goes too high, it can draw attention. At Gateway during the "lets screw up our reputation" era, call center workers could face disciplinary action if ACL went above 13 minutes. Of course driving such metrics like that leads to worse service and customer satisfaction, but at the time the new CEO didn't care about such things. He just cared about making customer service appear more efficient as a cost savings measure. This was after all the same person who loved CCS, Client Conferencing System. Why only have one customer on the line at the same time when you can have 4 or 5, maybe even 6 all trying to be helped at the same time by one tech.