Please hold, next available operator could be a while

When you want to have a whinge about your rates bill, the Auckland City Council's quick-draw telephonists will be listening in under 10 seconds.

Want to get a tax rebate? Try waiting for up to 14 minutes.

The council's call centre has again won out in the Herald's survey of waiting times to get attention from customer service centres.

The Herald surveyed the time it took to get a personal answer from the customer service centres of seven major organisations at 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 8pm.

Auckland City Council - the only organisation without an automated answering service - were consistently quickest off the mark, usually answering within two or three rings.

Its operators also are trained to deal with a range of inquiries.

At the other end of the scale was the Inland Revenue Department, which kept the Herald waiting for more than 13 minutes mid-morning on April 4.

Geoffrey Frost, call management national manager, said as well as normal tax inquiries, the Government's changes to Working for Families and the student loan scheme came into effect on April 1.

He said Inland Revenue had hired and trained temporary staff in anticipation of the extra demand and was also using staff outside call centres.

"We have at least 700 people on the phones and next week we plan to have a further 60 extra people on Monday as we expect that, with a short week, demand will be high."

He said calls to Inland Revenue often involved complex queries.

He suggested customers use www.ird.govt.nz (see link below), which had answers to most general questions, calculators to work out entitlements, and forms for applying for entitlements or tax returns.

The internet has meant changes for customers of large companies.

Airline bookings can now be made online, reducing demand on call centres, and Telecom also noted an increase in people using online options for inquiries, "and we think this is a trend that will continue to be increasingly important in the future".

Herald surveys in 2001, 2003 and 2004 had found problems with Air New Zealand's call service for Air Points inquiries - a problem the organisation now seems to have ironed out.

THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR CALL

Points for trying

* IRD: Long wait, but good music. It's hard to work up a full head of steam with Poi E blaring out at you.

* Auckland City Council: Personal service from the start and call centre staff are trained up to answer basic inquiries, reducing the need to be shuffled through the organisation.

* Air New Zealand: Voice messages advising how long the wait is expected to be so people can decide if they can be bothered waiting.

Get over it

* Air New Zealand: For the compulsory wait where Air Points members get to put their numbers in, regardless of whether the inquiry is Air Points-related.

* Telecom: For endless choices on automated service. Six at the first call, and multiple others after that for you to tell the machine exactly what is faulty.