How silence can kill your business

It happens.
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Awkward silence during phone calls may be common, but extended silence of more than three seconds can kill your customer engagement.

It can make your customer feel like they are always waiting, that your service is slow, and left frustrated at wondering why everything’s taking so long.

Your Customer Is Expecting An Answer – Right Now!

There’s a running joke that millennials today prefer texting over speaking on the phone, so if they’re calling, it’s because they want their problem solved as soon as possible.
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They don’t want to wait for you to respond to their email or their social media post, and they want to talk to a real person to solve their problem.

So when your agents aren’t responding to customers, they feel like their problem can’t be solved right away and their confidence in your business decreases.

​Reasons For ‘Dead Air’ During Calls

Silence on calls can mean your agents aren’t communicating or engaging as well, or that they’re not sure about their subject matter to provide a response to the customer.

Sometimes, however, your customer could have asked a tough question that your agents don’t commonly encounter, so your agent has to spend more time investigating and finding a response.

Your technology may also be at fault if it’s not loading fast enough for your agents to be able to update customers on a timely basis.
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Tracking silent calls can help highlight agents who are struggling or uncover reasons for poor customer experience.

NeoSound Intelligence’s software can detect the percentage of calls that are silent so you can find out if there are agents who are struggling to engage customers and work with them to improve their skills.

​You can also view the metrics of customer calls on a day to day basis so you can detect particular spikes or dips.

​You can locate batch files and view length of the average pause at a glance to identify the calls with longer pauses to improve overall customer experience.

​It’s Not Difficult to Avoid Awkward Silence - and Make A World Of Difference For Your Customer Experience

It doesn’t take a lot to engage your customer and avoid dead air.

Your agents can keep your customers updated with what they’re doing and ask them questions.
They can engage the customer in small talk, or you can have your agents ask the customer’s permission to put them on hold and play music during that time.

That’s why it’s important for you to be able to identify the agents that are having problems with extended silences with NeoSound Intelligence analytics software.
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These steps can help you vastly improve customer experience so your customers can feel confident that your business can help them solve their problems.

See also:

• How to make more in less time —  Cold Calls Checklist
• The Way To Maintain Customer Communication Standards
• Phrases your call center agent should never say