Stop wasting my time IVR's

I called an IVR fronted service today (a bank) and the IVR waited 4 rings before it picked up.

Surely in this day and age of IVR systems (much though I hate them) there is no reason the thing cannot at least pick up immediately?

I know fax machines that do the same thing. In fact, on my office fax machine (a Canon) I have an option that I can set it to 0, 2 or 4 rings before it picks up.

Isn't "ring ring" for an IVR or fax machine a little pointless?

dean :

Isn't "ring ring" for an IVR or fax machine a little pointless?

I am guilty of building systems with a couple of rings before auto pickup... In my experience users prefer a short delay from finishing dialing to the call being answered. Would be interested to know what others think.

I've also encountered a few office PBXs that throw a wobbly if the call is answered too fast, which has resulted in dropped calls that would otherwise have been successful.

True, digital systems can pick up an incoming call 'instantaneously', leaving the network no time to generate the ringback to the caller. From a caller's point-of-view though I think it's more comfortable to have at least one ringback cycle before the call is picked up. You're more sure that the call is being put through that way. I agree that four rings for an IVR seems too much.

The reason the fax machine can go up to 4 rings is probably so that you can share a line between human and fax. At four rings the fax can be pretty sure that no human's going to pick up this call.