The Blackridge Company, a software retailer, recently implemented a service offering free telephone support for its customers. After 3 months of service, the average length of a technical support call was 15 minutes, 3 minutes higher than the company’s target length of 12 minutes. After studying the operations of the new telephone support division, the company discovered that customer support agents were putting customers on hold for an average of 4 minutes per call while these agents researched possible solutions to the technical issues at hand. 

From the passage above, it can be inferred that the Blackridge Company could reduce the average length of its customer support calls by doing which of the following, assuming that each is a realistic possibility? 

a) Improving the quality of its software products *The calls to support aren't necessarily due to the quality of the product. Moreover, improving the quality of the products is a less realistic possibility.

b)Expanding the hours of operation of its telephone support service *Limited hours is not the cause of the length of each individual call.

c)Prohibiting customer service agents from putting customers on hold *That might extend the call length if the agent can't give attention to searching for a solution.

d)Better training customer support agents in the technical aspects of the software *The cause of the long call is the hold time, during which the agent searches for solutions. If the agents are more knowledgeable they won't need as much time to find the solution.

e)Providing an online support service in addition to the telephone support service *Online support service could reduce the number of calls to the telephone service, but it doesn't reduce the length of the calls to the telephone service.