How to make waiting time when connecting to a conference better for the user?

Question

We have a part of our app where in the user has paid for a consultation and is then presented with a button to connect to the consultant. As in below:

When the user clicks on this button, the consultant (on the consultant app) will receive an incoming call alert by which he will be presented with a short information about the customer. This information is brief but the consultant needs to review it before "accepting the call". See below.

While the consultant is reading the brief information, on the customer's app, will show a display like below:

My question is, how do I design this "waiting" page or write a copy for it in a way that makes the waiting time bearable. Coz the consultant may take a few seconds (maybe 10 seconds) to review the profile on average.

I cannot put a progress bar because there is no "definite" time. Also, to note that this information will also be present during the actual conference, so it's okay even if the consultant doesn't completely read it at this point.

I am also thinking whether to use a "loading" icon instead of a "call" icon as it primes the user for waiting. (When calling someone (call icon), you feel that it should be an immediate response. But if it's a loading icon, maybe the user would be more willing to wait.) See below.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Using a Phone ringing audio with an animating phone icon will be best in this situation. Since you mentioned that the average wait time could be 10 seconds - it should not be an issues with the users as The average ring time before someone hangs up is 17 seconds in real world phone calls, which means the users are mentally ready to wait 17 seconds before the ringing stops.

A study done on ring time says:

Based on our research, we found that the world-wide average time someone lets his or her phone ring before answering is 8.67 seconds.

http://tawkon.com/blog/en/ring_time

Think of using some existing call patterns such as Skype call interface.

Answer 2

If you know the average wait time, it might be nice to notify the user of that. You could put "average wait time: 10 seconds" and then have it countdown. When it hits zero, you could change the style (red or something WCAG compliant) and change the text to "sorry, we're over by XX seconds" and have it start counting up. At least the user knows it's taking longer than normal and they can see how long they've been waiting and can decide for themselves how long to let the counter run before "hanging up".

You could even get creative and have some milestone times (in the bad sense) so that after 10 seconds of overage, you can change from "sorry", to "we're really sorry this is taking so long" and then after 15 or 20 seconds, "wow, the gerbils are getting tired". I'm sure you can have a creative person some up with some nice phrases that are a bit amusing but still convey that you're sorry.