How to cut call wait times. A practical guide for UK businesses

When someone rings your business and has to wait, they don’t see a queue, a ring group or a call menu. They hear a phone that nobody’s picking up. Every second counts against you, whichever part of your phone system it happens in.

This guide explains how to measure the wait your callers really get, where the time usually goes and the changes that bring it down. Most of them don’t need extra people. You can use it with any phone system, and we’ll point out where ChromeX helps.

Last reviewed 9 November 2026. Written by John McGilveray at Chrome Telecom.

Key takeaways

• A caller’s wait includes the call menu and the ringing, as well as time in a queue. Many reports only show the queue part.
• In 2024 the UK’s main broadband and landline providers kept callers waiting 2 minutes 1 second on average, according to Ofcom. It’s a useful yardstick for your own figures.
• Long waits often come from a few busy hours, long ring stages and phones nobody’s sitting at, more than from too few people overall.
• Small, regular changes work better than one big overhaul. Change one thing, then measure again.

What your callers actually wait through

From the caller’s side, a wait has three parts.

1. The call menu. “Press 1 for sales, 2 for accounts.” A long greeting and five options can take 30 seconds before anything rings.
2. The ringing. If the call goes to a group of phones that ring one after another, each phone might ring for 15 or 20 seconds before the next one starts.
3. The queue. If nobody picks up, the call waits in line until someone’s free.

Here’s how that adds up. Say your main number plays a 20-second menu. The caller presses 2, and the call rings three phones in turn for 15 seconds each. Nobody answers, so it joins the queue and waits another 25 seconds.

Your queue report shows a 25-second wait. Your caller waited 90 seconds.

That gap is why it’s worth checking what your reports count. Some systems only report time spent in the queue. ChromeX queue reports show ring time as well as queue time, so the ringing doesn’t go missing. With the ChromeX analytics add-on, the live average wait adds the two together for you. Your call menu plays before the call reaches the queue, so add your greeting and menu time on top. On another system, ask your provider what its wait time includes.

How long is too long?

There’s no official standard for a business, but there are useful benchmarks.

Ofcom publishes how long customers of the UK’s main telecoms providers wait on the phone. In 2024, broadband and landline customers waited 2 minutes 1 second on average to reach an advisor, up from 1 minute 48 seconds in 2023. 7% of their calls ended before the caller spoke to anyone. The quickest provider averaged 25 seconds and the slowest 7 minutes 9 seconds.

Contact centres often aim to answer 80% of calls within 20 seconds. That’s a sensible starting point for a busy reception too. Set a target you can meet in your busiest hour, not only on a quiet afternoon.

Then track two figures against it. One is the full wait. The other is your abandonment rate, which is the share of callers who hang up before anyone answers.

Seven ways to cut call wait times

1. Measure for two weeks before you change anything

Pull two weeks of figures: calls received, calls answered, calls abandoned and the wait before answer. Two weeks shows you a full working pattern, including the start and end of each week.

Schedule a weekly report to whoever runs the team, so it’s waiting for them on Monday morning. Figures that turn up by themselves get read. Figures someone has to remember to run often don’t.

ChromeX reports can be scheduled and sent by email, or downloaded as CSV or PDF files. Queue reports can also count the calls answered within a time you choose, such as 20 seconds.

2. Find your busy hours, then cover them

A good daily average can hide a bad hour. A day that averages 20 seconds can still have a spell where people wait three minutes.

Break your calls down by hour and by weekday. Patterns tend to show up quickly once you do. For example:

• A vet practice where everyone rings at 8.30am, when appointments open.
• A garage that takes most of its week’s bookings on Monday morning.
• An office where most of the team takes lunch at 1pm, which is exactly when customers ring on their own break.

The fix might be staggered breaks, someone starting half an hour earlier, or a second person joining the group for one busy hour. It’s often not a new hire.

3. Shorten the route before the queue

Go back to the three parts of the wait and trim each one.

• Keep call menus short. Three or four options is usually enough. Put the option most callers want first, and keep the greeting under 10 seconds.
• Ring phones together, not in turn. When every phone in a group rings at once, whoever’s free answers. A group that rings one phone after another adds 15 to 20 seconds for every person who isn’t at their desk.
• Decide when a call moves on. Set how long a call rings before it goes somewhere else, and where that is. It might be a second team, a mobile or a queue with a message.
• Route by time of day. Calls that arrive before you open or after you close should go to a message, voicemail or an on-call number, not ring around an empty office.

With ChromeX, authorised people can change call routes in the online portal using a drag-and-drop call flow builder. You can also ask us to make the change for you.

4. Only ring people who are there to answer

Every few seconds a call spends ringing an empty desk is added to someone’s wait. These are common:

• Someone has left, but their extension is still in the reception group.
• A part-time colleague’s phone rings on their days off.
• A meeting room phone that nobody sits near is still in the ring group.

Check who’s in each group every few months, and whenever someone joins, leaves or changes their hours. Make it part of your joiners and leavers process, alongside email and building access.

People also step away during the day. With ChromeX analytics, each person can leave a queue from the ChromeX desktop app before lunch or a meeting, and rejoin it when they’re back. A supervisor can see who’s free and who’s on a call, and add people to a queue or take them off it as the day changes.

5. Put the live queue on a screen

Most people will pick up a waiting call if they know it’s there. A live wallboard on an office screen shows calls in the queue, the current wait and who’s free to answer. Someone finishing a task can take the next call before starting something else.

With ChromeX analytics, you can lay out the wallboard yourself and set targets on it. A tile can turn red when too many callers are waiting, so someone can step in before the wait gets worse. People who sit away from the screen can follow the queue in the ChromeX desktop app instead, with the same alerts. That’s more useful than finding out from a report the next morning.

Keep the screen simple. Two or three figures people can act on are worth more than a wall of numbers nobody reads.

6. Help each call finish sooner

Every minute saved on a call is a minute your team can give to the next person in the queue. The aim is to take the slow parts out of each call, so nobody feels rushed.

• Show who’s calling. A CRM, or customer relationship management system, holds your customer records. Connecting it to your phone system can open the right record when a call arrives, so your team isn’t searching while the caller waits.
• Cut the notes between calls. AI transcription can write up what was said, so less time goes on typing before the next call.
• Help new starters find their feet. Listen and whisper features let a supervisor hear a live call and coach a colleague without the caller hearing. People who feel confident on the phone tend to sort things out sooner.

7. Give callers fewer reasons to ring

Some calls only happen because the caller couldn’t find the answer anywhere else. Opening times, directions, “has my order gone out?” and appointment reminders are common examples.

• Use your on-hold message to answer the questions people ring about most.
• Send a text when an appointment is booked or an order goes out. ChromeX can text one person or a scheduled list.
• Check that your website and Google Business Profile show the right opening hours, including bank holidays.

Each simple question answered somewhere else leaves more room in the queue for the conversations that need one of your team.

What to look for in your call reports

The figures need context. A long call may mean someone got patient, thorough help. A short one may mean the caller was simply passed on. Talk to the team before drawing conclusions.

Which ChromeX licence covers what

The standard ChromeX licence includes hunt groups, time-of-day routing, greetings, on-hold music and call forwarding. That covers most of steps 3 and 4.

ChromeX Pro+ adds call queues with wallboard reporting, multi-level call menus, CRM connections, voicemail transcription, bulk text messaging and contact centre tools. That covers most of the rest.

ChromeX analytics is an optional add-on for teams that use call queues. It adds wallboards you can lay out yourself with targets and alerts, and the live queue panel in the desktop app. Reports can also be sent as often as every hour.

You don’t need everyone on the same licence. Licences can be chosen around each person’s role, so the reception team might have Pro+ while others don’t. We’ll confirm what’s included, and the costs, before you commit.

How Chrome helps

We start with what happens today. We’ll follow a call through your current menu, groups and queue, look at your reports and show you where the time goes.

Then we’ll set up ChromeX around the way your team works, train the people who answer the phones and stay available when you need a change. Busy periods shift, people join and leave, and opening hours change. You’ll have one team to call when the figures need another look, whether the cause turns out to be the phone system, the broadband or a laptop.

Start with one number

You don’t need to fix everything at once. Choose the number that gets the most calls. Run two weeks of reports, change one thing from this guide, then compare the next two weeks.

If you’d like a hand, we can review your current setup and show you where your callers are waiting. Book a free Chrome audit and we’ll talk you through it.