A league table of the call centres with the longest waits found favour yesterday with some newspapers, including The Sun - “One Hour Eight Minutes to moan at EasyJet” was its headline (below). There’s a follow-up feature in Today’s Times by an anonymous former call centre worker.

The claims came from a company called WeQ4U, which offers to take the pain and cost out of queuing for an agent at a call centre. Instead of dialling the call centre, you dial WeQ4U’s number (0121 667 5969, if you want to try it) and then key in the call centre’s number. WeQ4U then dials the call centre, and if there is a queue, the caller dials 9* and hangs up.

WeE4U stays on the line and as soon as an agent answers the call, provides a message that the caller is coming to the line while ringing the caller’s phone twice. The caller hits redial and is connected.   

The company gathered data on the time it took to get through, from which it constructed the league table. The worst offender was apparently InHealth Netcare, a private provider of medical diagnostic services, with the longest wait of one hour 12 minutes. Others included, in order, EasyJet Complaints, Yodel customer services, Sky/Freesat, T-Mobile Direct, Diamond Insurance, HM Revenue and Customs, IKEA, the games company Electronic Arts, and Apple UK.

The problem with this league table is that it is based on the longest single delay recorded for each number. A much more meaningful measure would have been the median delay. It also excludes local councils, which would otherwise have occupied five of the top ten places. They are listed separately, without any data on the length of the calls. The worst was Nottingham County Council, followed by Leeds, Lewisham, Norwich and Sandwell. (My headline comes from a message delivered by Lewisham Council as you await a reply. I had ample opportunity to note it down yesterday while waiting a mere ten minutes, chickenfeed by WeQ4U standards.)

EasyJet issued a rebuttal, saying: “EasyJet welcomes independent surveys that are conducted in a transparent and statistically rigorous way. Unfortunately this survey was neither transparent nor statistically rigorous and in no way reflects our customer waiting times, which we constantly monitor to ensure customers receive a good service from us.

“In the last six months we have answered half a million calls to our UK call centre number. On average over 80 per cent of our customers wait less than 60 seconds to speak with one of our customer service team and only 5 per cent of customers wait approximately two minutes of more.”

I can’t say this chimes perfectly with my own attempts to contact EasyJet in the past, but one person’s bad experience doesn’t amount to evidence – which is my basic objection to a table based on a single example of a very long wait.

I think WeQ4U could do a lot better, since it has the expertise. It is an offshoot of another company, Orderly Software, run by the same person, Matt King. This markets a system for call centre operators, Orderly Q, that tells callers when there is a queue how long the wait is likely to be, and advises them to call back after that time. When they do, the software recognises their number and puts them at the head of the queue. The same company offers a service called Orderly Stats to provide call centre operators with reams of details about how their centre is performing.  

WeQ4U’s business model is puzzling. As described, it appears to lack a revenue stream, unless I’m missing something. Perhaps the whole deal is a loss-leader designed to promote Orderly Q? If so, the league table serves a business purpose, if not a statistical one. I’ve e-mailed WeQ4U with some questions and I’ll post any response it provides.