It's a fact of life when you make phone calls; you're probably going to be put on hold.
A recent study found that being on hold is one of our top three pet peeves. Another estimated that Americans will spend about 43 days of their lifetime on hold. But that number may be smaller in the Bluegrass State.
Mobile advertising analysts at Marchex Institute studied four million phone calls made since 2013. When it comes to impatience, the states whose residents were quickest to hang up while waiting on hold were Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina, New York and West Virginia.
The most patient states turned out to be Minnesota, Illinois, Florida, Colorado and Louisiana.
When New Yorkers did manage to get a live human on the other end of the line, they were found to be the state that talks the most. The rest of the "gabbiest" top five states were California, New Jersey, Nevada and Maryland.
The states who need the fewest words to get their point across? Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas and Oklahoma. In fact, it takes an average of 62 percent more words in the Big Apple to get it said than it does in Des Moines.
As far as the rate of speech, the South's reputation for not getting in a hurry does pan out in the study. The slowest-talking Americans according to Marchex were found to be in Mississippi (110 words per minute), Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama and North Carolina.
The fastest talkers? Oregon (150 words per minute), then Minnesota, Massachusetts, Kansas and Iowa.
The Marchex study concluded that businesses can ease customers' pain -- and grow profits -- by greeting customers in a friendly manner, and finding ways to reduce time on hold.
On the Net:
Marchex Institue blog
