A Customer Support Nightmare from our Pals at PayPal

Last week wasn’t one of PayPal’s best and the proof is in onholdwith.com. An incredible spike in hold-time occurred on July 11^th and the following day the number of complaints jumped by nearly 90%. What happened? Clearly there was a lack of call center agents and a high volume of calls. Frustrated customers resorted to social media to vent their complaints of unruly hold times. With 128 million active accounts in 193 markets, you would think that PayPal would make their call center support staff a high priority instead of forcing customers to wait on hold.

One tweeter even went as far as to write a blog regarding the poor customer experience he had. He started to document his hold-time at the 48 minute mark (which is already far too long). As time continued to elapse this poor consumer reached 2 hours and 15 minutes on hold, only have his call dropped! The fatal ending was more motivation for continued tweeting and an article about his experience. The end result is a blog consisting of 517 movies he could have watched instead of waiting on hold with PayPal – and the story was definitely starting to trend.

A lesson for PayPal and other call centers

The folks at Fonolo continue to talk about the problem of long hold times. This is no doubt a global issue touching both large and small companies alike. The smart ones will realize that loyal customers are forged from positive experiences; others will continue to falter as PayPal has.

There are ways to eliminate top call center complaints such as these, and create a better experience for consumers. One solution that we continue to discuss, is offering customers the option of receiving a call-back instead of waiting on hold.

About onholdwith.com

This site provides consumers with a platform to post and discuss their aggravations. It catalogs and publishes tweets from people waiting on hold and alerts the offending company – ultimately giving consumers a voice. We’re hoping the pressure will motivate companies to take necessary steps that will improve the call center experience.