No matter how hard you try, there is going to be a point in time when you need to call a customer service line. This may be for your bank, credit card, cable company, or some free program that you are enrolled in and whatever the situation, you will almost certainly be put on hold. Most people do not like being put on hold and waiting to talk to somebody. While it is virtually impossible to avoid being put on hold, here are a few tips to reduce your hold time.

1. Don’t call when everyone else is calling

In some cases, this is easier said than done, but in others it might not be so hard. If your bill comes, and there is a problem on your bill but you have 3 weeks before you have to make your payment, wait a few days or even a week before calling. When the statements arrive, people tend to see them and panic and grab the phone to find out what is going on. Sit back and relax, no matter what the problem is, if there is an error, the company will want to work with you to correct it. Besides, if it is on the books already, leaving it on there for an extra day or two is not going to make much difference.

The less often you get a statement, the longer you can and should generally wait before calling. Remember, this organization probably has a lot of people that receive statements and if you get a statement every month, so does everyone else.

Some companies anticipate everyone wanting to call in when they get their bill and so they stagger the date the statements are mailed out. If the company does this, waiting a little while will not help lessen your hold time much, but it won’t make it longer either. If the company does not do this and sends them all at the same time, your hold time will be less by doing this.

2. Check in to an online service

There are several websites around that claim to help you wait on hold less or not at all. There is one site where you can choose the company you want to call and enter your phone number. The site will then do the waiting for you and your phone will ring a while later and a person from the company you were trying to reach will be on the line.

3. Don’t listen to the robots

There are some websites that claim to give you the “secrets” for different companies to get past the automated systems. As a general rule, you can do this your self with methods such as pressing 0 for each prompt or a combination of * # and 0 in random orders. Another thing to try is to just not say or press anything at the automated prompts. While these methods do not always work, they may be worth a try and if nothing else might help you feel better.

4. Talk to a bilingual operator

Many companies offer an option to continue in English, French, Spanish, etc. However, pretty much all of the agents that will help you in French, for example, will also be able to speak English and help you anyway. This may be a bit of an evil way to get around the system (it’s probably something that John Chow does) it makes sense. With less people wanting to speak to the bilingual operators, even though there are less operators, the lines should be shorter.

I don’t make any guarantees that the above methods will work for your given situation, but they just might. The first one is especially true. I have called places and gotten right through, but then called again around statement time and had to wait on hold for longer than I cared to to talk to someone.