Customer service hold times, measured: how long to reach a person

By the CallForMe team at Great Work LLC · Updated Nov 2, 2026 · 4 min read

Short answer: We called 19 big US customer service lines on November 2, 2026. 11 put us through to a live person, with a median wait of 8 minutes 12 seconds counted from the moment the line picked up, menu and hold included; the longest was USPS at 23 minutes 4 seconds. 8 never connected us to anyone. One call each, so treat it as a snapshot.

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How long does it take to reach a person? We measured it. CallForMe called 19 big US customer service lines on November 2, 2026 and timed how long each took to put a live person on the line, menu and hold included. 11 of them did. The other 8 asked for account details we didn't have, sent us elsewhere, or left us waiting past our limit.

The numbers

Median for the 11 lines that reached a person: 8:12.

By the kind of menu that answered (median time to a person, among lines that reached one): ai assistant 3:58 (3 lines), keypad 23:04 (1 line), speech 8:12 (7 lines). "AI assistant" means the line said it was an AI or virtual assistant; "speech" means it asked us to say what we needed; "keypad" means it asked us to press keys. The groups are small, so read them as a hint, not a finding.

Lines that didn't put us through

• Chase: asked for a Social Security or tax ID number, or a card or account number, before it would route the call, and repeated the request after other answers.
• Verizon: its AI assistant asked whether it was talking to a person or an automated system, then said representatives were not available and pointed to the My Verizon app.
• AT&T: would not route the call without a 10-digit phone number on an account, and repeated that request.
• Bank of America: asked for a full account number and ended the call when there wasn't one ("for the security of your account").
• FedEx: sent us to local.fedex.com and its virtual assistant, then thanked us for calling and ended the call.
• IRS: said that due to extremely high call volume on the topic it could not transfer the call, and to try again later.
• Progressive: put us in a representative queue it estimated at 15 to 30 minutes; nobody answered within our 30-minute call limit.
• PayPal: transferred us to its agent queue after 2 minutes 36 seconds, then played nothing at all; our call ends after 10 minutes of silence, so no person had answered by 12 minutes 43 seconds (same on two calls).

Your agent can still make these calls for you. Give it your account number, or pass your phone number as transfer_to: when the system wants a card number, an SSN or a one-time code (which CallForMe never reads aloud), it connects you to enter it yourself, then waits on hold for the person.

How we measured

• Our own calls only, never customers' calls.
• Each number comes from the company's own contact page (linked in the table).
• Monday, November 2, calls placed between 9:24 AM and 10:37 AM Eastern. The clock starts when the line answers and stops when a person first speaks, read from each call's transcript.
• One short question per call (the line's hours), then the call ended, so a representative's time was barely used.
• Single calls on single days: hold times move with the day, the hour and the season.

Skip the hold

Tell your agent who to call and what you need. CallForMe works the menu, waits on hold, and either gets the answer or rings your phone once a person picks up. See wait on hold and patch me in and how to reach a real person on the phone.

Related

• How to reach a real person on the phone
• Companies you can only cancel by phone
• Keep long-hold calls on a budget

Questions