Customer-service wait times triple in US as staff shortage vex call centres

The average length of a service call rose by several minutes since the pandemic started, according to call-centre analytics firm CallMiner. — Photo by Petr Macháček on Unsplash

Thanks to a trio of pandemic-era shake-ups – job vacancies, work-from-home, and chattier callers – customer-service wait times are soaring in the US.

The average length of a service call rose by several minutes since the pandemic started, according to call-centre analytics firm CallMiner. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, callers were so desperate for human contact that they started “talking about the pandemic, talking about the vaccines, talking about the political climate”, said CallMiner chief technical officer Jeff Gallino.