When's the best time to ring a call centre?

There is no hard and fast rule, but the best times are often off peak.

Just after the call centre opens is usually good. 10-12am is normally very busy, as is 2-3pm.

I ften find 4-5pm to be good. Weekend and evenings can often be surprisingly be quite good times to get in touch. After 9pm can work well for a 24 hour call centre.

With some call centres (e.g. BT fault reporting) you may find that filling in an online form can work better than calling. You may also find a letter is a good deal.

You may also get a few hints on getting through to a company through Twitter. If you go to search.twitter.com and type in e.g. "O2 customer service" you will often find out how well O2 are performing.

Some call centres though are always overloaded. I have heard that wait times of 45 minutes are possible with one broadband service provider, so may not be a good time for some companies.

Simply put, the best time to call is when other customers or prospective customers are unlikely to be able to or want to call. As Jonty says, as soon as the lines are open if this is early e.g. 8am. It also depends on what business you are calling. If the business is likely to be dealing with customers who are busy professionals then 10 - 12 and 2- 6 could be good times. For other businesses dealing with a broader socio demographic customer base, these are likely to be busy times. Evenings after 7pm, if the line is open can be a good time because who wants to make that call when they get in from work unless they really have to. Weekends can also be good times. Some business with an eye to service will actually tell you when the less busy times are as part of their wait message. For one contact centre operation that I managed, I used to include details of the best time to call the line in the fulfilment letters we sent out after a sale was made. Hope this helps.