Sixteen minutes!
Yep, 16 minutes of my life until someone answered my phone call to the customer service line. Seriously. Do you think it is reasonable to wait 16 minutes to get a customer service representative to answer and provide some online help?
Finally, after 16 minutes of waiting a real person picks up, and you know what they do? Yes, they put you on hold. Or sometimes you just get this message: "Please call back during business hours. Goodbye," and the phone hangs up. This is absolutely outrageous!
Also, they always say that "your call might be recorded for quality and training purposes". But when I call back, they obviously didn't train anyone, because I again get the same (lousy) customer service.
In my mind customer service should be a real person, who knows how to help, and who can answer a call after a few seconds; maybe up to a minute. I think I'm being reasonable here, because most of us callers probably tried the self-assisted touch points, like web or mobile apps, and couldn't complete the action for some reason. Now, if we already bothered to call, we probably need some real help (and in a timely manner). If a service provider can't provide this, then they should not claim to have customer service.
The feeling of waiting on the line and not getting an answer, or being placed on hold, should be yesterday's news. I think a lot of the phone calls customers make can be spared in first place, if service providers enable customers to reach them using the channels we use to communicate with our friends on a daily basis, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, and more.
Instant messaging (not a chat platform) can and should be leveraged in the customer service domain, with a clear promise to get back to the customer within a reasonable amount of time (not necessarily real time) and when it suits them. That would really indicate that 'our call is important to them.'