Customer service is closed when your customer calls
Long waiting times and questions you have to ask three times. Why customer service gets stuck and how to answer the familiar questions straight away.
It is quarter past five. A customer has a simple question about his contract and calls customer service. After eight minutes on hold, he hangs up. Tomorrow he will try again, or look for another supplier.
The problem
Customer service is hard to reach, and customers notice. When the Dutch consumer association Consumentenbond called twenty energy companies twenty times each in 2024, the caller waited longer than five minutes in 29 percent of calls. That is the limit consumers still find acceptable. At one company the wait ran to 38 minutes, and at one supplier a customer waited an average of 18 days for a reply to an email.
It is not a problem confined to one sector. In 2022, the Dutch customer service federation Klantenservice Federatie reported that waiting times were two to three times as long as a year earlier.
Waiting times are indeed often long, and the pressure on reachability is high.
Roel Masselink, director of the Dutch Klantenservice Federatie, to NOS
The cause
Customer service gets clogged with questions whose answers have long been known. What does it cost? How long does it take? How do I cancel? Every time a question like that comes in by phone, someone else is left on hold.
And once the customer does get through, they often have to start again. Zendesk research among more than 6,000 consumers in 22 countries shows that 74 percent are frustrated when they have to repeat information. 81 percent want the agent to continue the conversation without sending them back to square one (2025).
Every time a customer has to tell their story again, you pay twice: in time and in trust.
the editorial team
The solution
Take the familiar questions away from the phone, so your people have time for the conversations that really need a human.
- Answer familiar questions straight away, day and night, in the place where the customer is already looking: your website.
- For a tricky question, offer an easy route to a person, at a time the customer chooses.
- Make sure that person knows immediately what it is about, so the customer does not have to start again.
Stiqqs AI Agent answers questions from your approved knowledge. If a person is needed, the visitor picks a slot in your calendar. You receive the conversation with a summary and the action you need to take. So nobody has to tell their story twice.