Let an AI wait on hold for you

Forty minutes of your evening, handed back

It's ten to six. The airline has canceled tomorrow's flight, and a recorded voice has just told you your call is important. So you put the phone on speaker, prop it against the pepper grinder and start chopping an onion. Twenty minutes later you're on the same eight bars of piano, and you don't dare leave the room in case somebody picks up.

You don't have to do that part any more. An AI phone assistant can make the call, get through the phone menu and sit out the hold music. Then it does one of two things. It rings your mobile and puts you through the moment a person answers, or it handles the conversation itself and sends you the result in writing. We call the first one hold-and-connect. Which you want depends on the call, and mostly on whether the company needs to check that you're you.

What it needs from you before it dials

Not much, but the few things matter. Think of what you'd scribble on the back of the envelope before making the call yourself.

• Who to call. The company, and the number from the bill or the booking email if you have it.
• What it's about. One sentence. "Tomorrow's flight was canceled and I need the next one out."
• The reference. Booking code, order number, the reference printed on the letter. Whatever they'll ask for first.
• Connect or handle. Do you want to be put through when a person answers, or should the assistant deal with it and report back?
• Your limits. What you'd accept and what you wouldn't. A later flight is fine. A different airport isn't.

While the music plays

Once it dials, the assistant does the dull bits. It listens to the menu and picks the options that lead to a human, the rebooking desk or the billing team or whoever your one sentence points to. Then it waits. Ten minutes, thirty-five, it makes no difference. It doesn't get bored, and it doesn't hang up in a temper at minute nineteen the way the rest of us do.

You do whatever you like in the meantime. Cook. Drive. Stay in the meeting you would otherwise have stepped out of. Your phone stays quiet until there's somebody worth talking to.

The moment a person picks up

If you asked to be connected, the assistant says "one moment" to the agent and rings your mobile. You answer, and you're already talking to the right person. No menu, no queue. You pick up the conversation at the point where it gets useful.

If you asked it to handle the call, it says who it is and on whose behalf it's calling, asks the question, and writes down the answer. Where the refund has got to. The earliest slot for a technician. Whether the form you sent ever arrived. Should the agent ask whether they're speaking to an AI, it says yes. It doesn't pretend to be you and it doesn't pretend to be a person.

Either way a written summary follows, with what was said, any reference numbers and what happens next. There's a fuller walk through the mechanics on how it works.

When you still have to be on the line

Here's the honest limit. Plenty of companies won't discuss an account with anyone but the account holder, and they check. Date of birth, the first line of your address, a security word, a code texted to your phone. An insurer will do it. A bank certainly will. A utility usually does before it changes anything on the account.

Your assistant shouldn't be answering those for you, and we'd go further: don't put passwords or security answers into an instruction for any assistant, ours included. This is exactly what connecting is for. The assistant does the waiting, you do the proving who you are, and the dead forty minutes in between belong to nobody.

Payment is the other hard stop. The assistant never reads out a card number and never agrees to a charge. If the airline wants a change fee, or the utility wants a payment taken over the phone, that comes back to you as a decision. It also won't advise you on an insurance claim. It can ask where the claim has got to and write down the answer, and that's all.

If you miss the ring

It happens. You're in the shower, or the call connects during the one stretch of the school run where you can't touch your phone. The assistant doesn't leave the agent sitting in silence. It says sorry, arranges a callback, and tells you what was agreed in the summary.

Not ideal, since a callback means another wait of some kind. But it beats what happens when you miss your own turn in the queue, which is starting again from the first bar of the piano.

Which calls to hand over and which to join

One question sorts most of them. Would the company need to know it's really you? If not, hand the whole call over. If so, ask to be connected.

• Hand over: where's my refund, is there an outage on my street, what time is the technician coming, can the delivery move to Thursday.
• Join: changing the name on an account, disputing a bill, canceling a contract, anything to do with a claim.

Two calls that sit in the middle

Rebooking a flight is the obvious one. The assistant can do it with your booking code and your limits, and it comes back to you if there's a fee involved or a choice you didn't cover. But some airlines want to speak to the passenger before they change a ticket, so if you're not sure, ask to be connected. We've written more about that in travel calls an AI can make for you.

The other is the company you've already rung twice. You know the menu, you know the reference, you know they'll verify you. That's a connect call every time. For the wider picture, including the calls that never reach a queue at all, see can an AI call customer service for you.

And one small practical thing, because it's the step people trip on. Turn your ringer up while a hold call is running. The whole arrangement depends on you answering one call, and most of us keep our phones on silent out of habit.

Common questions

More on everyday use

• How an AI books a restaurant table by phone
• Using AI to schedule and move appointments by phone
• AI call screening: what happens when a stranger calls your line
• Nobody leaves voicemails. Here's what to do instead