Poor 'hold music', or even worse none at all, has the potential to cause over half of callers to abandon calls to customer contact centres, according to Avaya (NYSE:AV), a global leader in corporate networking solutions and services. Faced with such a situation, 15 percent of all callers will not call back. However, there are strategies companies can take to help avoid this problem.

The findings of research by Avaya identified that length of waiting time is the greatest frustration for contact centre customers. Some 20 percent of callers will hang up after queuing for 20 seconds. This increases to half of all callers hanging up at 45 seconds. Silence during the waiting time leads to the greatest number of people hanging up and never calling back. Most surprisingly, the research concluded that, in certain cases, playing the wrong music may have a worse effect than playing none at all.

Real-life examples of inappropriate hold music uncovered by Avaya include:

• A hospital casualty unit found to be playing the 'Funeral March' by Chopin
• A clothing firm specialising in larger sizes for women playing Queen's 'Fat-Bottomed Girls'
• A mail order company playing 'Hanging on the Telephone' by Blondie
• One company advised its callers that their call would be answered shortly and then were played the chorus of 'Rocket Man' by Elton John, "I think it™s going to be a long, long time¦"

Carey Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), commented: "People are living frenetic, often frustrating lives and don't have much spare time on their hands. Waiting on the end of the line to make a simple enquiry will make them feel even more undervalued and annoyed. Hold music won't pacify them, but bad or inappropriate music will certainly make their experience even worse.

"People don™t mind going through the decision tree rigmarole, wading through a set of numbered options, if they are requesting high value items. They appreciate that this is often the most efficient way for companies to deal with customers."

John Winchester, Vice President & General Manager of Avaya in UK and Ireland, said, "There is a serious side to this issue. Namely, companies can impact their bottom line by playing inappropriate music. It™s tantamount to saying 'you mean nothing to us as a customer " go away.' The damage this can do to the brand is enormous.

"It is important to take a holistic approach to customer service. When you consider that organisations in the public and private sector are spending tens of millions of pounds each year on contact centre technology, it is vital that they cover all the bases. This means using technology to minimise hold time and ensuring that when music is played, it meets the expectations of the customer."

Spending on call centre systems in the UK was estimated to be £110 million in 2000, according to Gartner.

Avaya recommends that hold music should be appropriate to the brand and wherever possible appeal to the profile/age group of the customer calling. It also recommends that technology is used to advise callers where they are in the queue and or how long they can expect to hold on for.

It is also recommended that hold time is kept to a minimum. In part, this can be achieved by using rules-based software to prioritise callers who have been waiting the longest.

The research was prepared by Avaya's UK Business Consulting Team. It is based on data from a thousand telephone calls made to companies in the financial services, retail and utilities sectors, proprietary survey information and by extrapolating data from a range of publicly available research.

Avaya " the leader in Contact Centres
Avaya is the world's leading provider of technologies to Automatic Call Distribution/Call Centres. The company's technology ranges from intelligent call routing systems and interactive voice response and recognition systems through to the latest Internet Contact Centre technologies, offering text chat, click to talk, escorted web browsing, etc.

Avaya is an innovator in the use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software in customer contact centres. Such software is used by businesses and customer care agents to manage all aspects of the customer relationship from initial contact through to processing transactions " in short, providing seamless connectivity and workflow management between people and information.

About Avaya
Avaya, headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., is a leading global provider of communications solutions and services that help businesses, government agencies and other institutions " including more than 75 percent of the Fortune 500 " excel in the customer economy. Avaya offers Customer Relationship Management Solutions, Unified Communications Solutions, Hosted Solutions, Multiservice Infrastructure, and Converged Voice and Data Networks " including the company's no-compromise Enterprise-Class IP Solutions (ECLIPS) " all supported by Avaya Services and Avaya Labs. Avaya is the worldwide leader in unified messaging, messaging systems, call centers and structured cabling systems. It is the U.S. leader in voice communications systems. For more information about Avaya, visit its Web site at http://www.avaya.com.