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Phone marathons to make contact

Brianna Mcilraith

If you are needing to get hold of Immigration New Zealand, you could be waiting more than two hours on hold, Consumer NZ has found.

The consumer watchdog has investigated which government agencies keep people waiting the longest for support via their contact centres. It found Immigration NZ was the hardest agency to contact – it took four attempts to get through to someone, Consumer NZ head of content Caitlin Cherry said.

‘‘First, we had the wrong number for calls from mobile phones.

‘‘On our second attempt, our call dropped out after about an hour and a half on hold. On our third attempt, the call centre was not accepting calls. Finally, after a fourth attempt, and another hour and 10 minutes on hold, we got through to an operator.’’

The total hold time for Immigration NZ was more than 21⁄ hours. Immigration NZ has been approached for comment. The snapshot experiment follows on from Consumer NZ’s recent investigation into the call centre wait time at 21 New Zealand companies.

‘‘The average wait time for government agencies was about 25 minutes. This is double the average wait time we experienced when we called businesses,’’ Cherry said.

The watchdog’s investigation focused on 16 government agencies, with all calls made on a weekday between 9am and 5pm.

‘‘We were surprised that we had to call some government departments multiple times because either the first number we tried was not the right one or we were hung up on.’’ Inland Revenue, Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert NZ) and NZ Customs Service picked up the phone in less than two minutes. At the other end of the spectrum, Work and Income kept Consumer’s caller waiting for over 90 minutes. ‘‘The Human Rights Commission was the only agency where we could not reach a human. We tried two different menu options in our efforts to speak to someone but we were advised to leave a voicemail.’’ Some agencies were upfront and transparent on their websites about the wait time a caller was likely to face.

‘‘The accuracy of the estimated call wait times varied, with only one agency over-estimating the wait time,’’ Cherry said. ‘‘Immigration NZ picked up 22 minutes earlier than expected but it was still an agonisingly long wait to speak to someone.’’

NZTA, StudyLink and Work and Income all under-estimated their call wait times, with the caller on hold at least 10 minutes longer than anticipated.

The investigation found that having identifier information at hand, such as a client number, could significantly shorten the time on hold.

‘‘We understand these government contact centre services are in demand but we don’t think it is acceptable for New Zealanders to have to put their lives on hold to access essential services,’’ Cherry said.

‘‘Our investigation has found, in some cases, that is precisely what is happening.’’

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2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281771338215262

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