The Blackridge Company, a software retailer, recently implemented a service offering free telephone support for its customers. After 3 months of service, the average length of a technical support call was 15 minutes, 3 minutes higher than the company's target length of 12 minutes. After studying the operations of the new telephone support division, the company discovered that customer support agents were putting customers on hold for an average of 4 minutes per call while these agents researched possible solutions to the technical issues at hand.
The Blackridge Company could reduce the average length of its customer support calls by better training customer support agents in the technical aspects of the software, assuming that this is a realistic possibility.