Waiting Duration: The Silent Killer of Customer Trust

Waiting Duration: The Silent Killer of Customer Trust

Waiting Duration tracks the total time a customer spends waiting to engage with an agent. It includes two distinct components:

  • Live Wait Time: Time spent on hold after initiating a call but before connecting with a person.
  • Callback Wait Time: Time between when a callback is requested and when the callback actually happens.

Combined, these give you the full picture of how long customers are left in limbo.

Why It Matters

No one likes waiting — especially when they’ve taken the time to reach out. Long waits send a clear message: your time isn’t valuable here. It’s one of the fastest ways to frustrate customers and destroy trust.

High Waiting Duration correlates directly with:

  • Lower CSAT
  • Higher abandon rates
  • Increased repeat contacts
  • Agent escalation or aggression on arrival

It’s also one of the earliest signals that something upstream is misaligned: staffing gaps, routing inefficiencies, or broken callback logic.

How to Calculate Waiting Duration

Waiting Duration = Live Wait Time + Callback Wait Time

This can be averaged across interactions or tracked per customer, per queue, or per channel.

Example SQL-style logic:

waiting_duration_seconds = IF(
    call_type = 'live',

    -- Live call
    ring_to_agent_connect_time - call_start_time,

    -- Live switched to callback
    callback_connect_time - callback_request_time +
    (callback_request_time - call_start_time)
)

You’ll often see this metric broken down into Average Waiting Duration, Median Wait, and 90th Percentile Wait to identify how the slowest experiences are trending.

Beyond the Average

A single average can hide a lot. A few customers waiting 20+ minutes can destroy the experience, even if your “average wait” looks fine. Track distribution percentiles. Flag anything above your operational thresholds.

And don’t forget callback wait. Many orgs implement callback to improve experience, but if customers are waiting 45 minutes for a call that never comes on time, it’s worse than just keeping them on hold.

Make it Actionable

  • Live Wait > 3 minutes? Investigate staffing, routing, or IVR bottlenecks.
  • Callback Waits > 15 minutes? Review queue logic and callback pacing rules.
  • Wait spikes during certain hours? Your forecast is off or intraday adjustments aren’t happening fast enough.

Waiting Duration isn’t just about seconds — it’s about perception. Customers remember how long they waited, even if they don’t remember what they said.

  • Abandonment Rate
  • Queue Depth
  • ASA (Average Speed of Answer)

Want to Dig Deeper?

Would you like a chart or mermaid diagram to visualize the breakdown between live and callback waits?