Why the Length of the Phone Call Is a Better Metric than the Number of Phone Calls Made.
Sales managers have been pressing for more production by insisting on more dials for decades with zero increase in conversion rates.
Unfortunately, the reason you ask your agents to make more calls is to make up for the low conversion rates.
The number of calls made is a valid metric to make sure agents are working, but the only thing that matters is the quality of call.
Here is a story to demonstrate this point.
Zappos call center made this discovery 29 years ago only to change online retail sales forever with exceptional customer service.
What Zappos found was their call center moral was dismal, and the customer experience ratings were terrible.
Like any good manager, they asked for more production.
More calls
Quicker response times
Shorter and quicker calls. Solve problems fast so that you can make another call.
More follow-up
That led to more burnout and no significant increase in customer satisfaction.
Until one day, they noticed whenever the length of call exceeded X minutes, their customer ratings skyrocketed.
The consumer enjoyed and rewarded quality conversations.
Remember this… Zappos was a new concept. Nobody was buying items online, let alone shoes.
The experience needed to be 10 out of 10 to survive.
Zappos modeled Nordstrom service. They seek out legendary stories of client service and experience.
They told their team there would be no limit to the length of calls.
In fact, they encouraged longer quality conversations with their customers.
Then this happens…
The longest ever recorded customer phone call at Zappos is 10 hours and 43 minutes.
And the rest is history.
Here is what you can do.
1. The number one thing you can do to increase lead conversion is to get your call center (agent)(isa) to have longer and more meaningful conversations.
2. Track length of call times.
3. Have ISA department reports total time on phone first over call attempts.
4. Acknowledge and reward those with the best call times. That is moving the needle on experience.
5. The odds are your agents and ISA are rushing their calls over spending too much time on the phone.
One of my top buyer specialists sold 44 homes. His average call time is 14 minutes.
He requires fewer leads and converts at the highest rate.
-Nick Mclean
Get To Know Nick McLean.
Nick operates a team with over 20% of the local market share.
