A survey of 3,630 UK companies - 106 of them hotels and B&Bs - by audio branding specialist PH Media Group, found that hotels and B&Bs kept customers on hold for an average of 29 seconds per call with those with more than 50 employees the worst culprits.
PH Media group sales and marketing director Mark Williamson said leaving callers waiting on the line had 'grave implications for profitability' as previous research had shown that half of callers will hang up within 20 seconds if left on hold.
“These results represent a significant challenge for the hospitality sector and could pose a threat to profitability," he said.
“Callers are simply unwilling to wait on the end of the line while subjected to silence, poor quality music or beeps so firms are putting themselves at serious risk of losing business.
“Good call handling is often overlooked as a key sales and marketing tool but the telephone still acts as an important touchpoint and first impressions count. If each caller enjoys a positive experience, customer service standards will go through the roof.”
Call handling practice
The survey looked at all aspects of call handling and gave a score to each business. Companies were scored out of 100 with criteria including time taken to answer a call, the number of people or departments a caller was passed through before reaching their desired department, use of consistent voice and music and standard of voicemail and out-of-hours messaging.
Hotels and B&Bs surveyed scored an average of 33 and Williamson urged the industry to re-evaluate its systems to ensure all calls were dealt with in the right way.
“Inevitably, not every call will be answered within a matter of seconds, so when callers do need to be placed on hold for any length of time, informative and entertaining audio messages can help to maintain their attention and decrease perceived waiting time," he said.
Across all companies, 34 per cent of callers left on hold were subjected to silence, 26 per cent heard music and 26 per cent heard beeps.
Hotels and B&Bs did not score the lowest however, signmakers came out worst from the research, leaving their callers on the line for 73 seconds in an average call, while garden centres performed best, logging an average time of 17 seconds.