Short Calls

Has anyone got any information in regards to short calls? I am looking mostly for the outbound centres but would be interested to know if there are any case studies looking at the “reasonable” amount of short calls during a month period.

Thanking you in advance.

Question asked by Vicki

What sort of short calls

Please could you let me know what sort of short calls you are referring to. I presume that these are short duration calls made by the outbound dialler when set for answer machine detection. If it detects an answer machine it will disconnect.

Or are you referring to outbound sales calls where the prospective customer hangs up before the conversation gets into full swing?

With thanks to Jonty

Short calls

Sorry! Short calls as in the client or agent has hung up? – as far as im aware we cant confirm who ends the call unless there is some technology you know of?

With thanks to Vicki

Technology problem

I have phoned a couple of people on this one.

I’m not sure if it is a technology problem where calls are being dropped.

There are no industry norms for the level of short calls, but phoning around it seems that if you have anything over 10% short calls then you have a problem.

Listening to the calls should give you a reasonable idea of where the problem is. Your technology (looking at the call detail records) may be able to identity which person hung up the call.

It may also be worth plotting short calls on a spreadsheet against particular advisors. This may also highlight where the problem is.

Short calls – where the customer hangs up may represent a mismatch of expectations either of the time of the call or on the nature of your offer.

With thanks to Jonty

Depending on the types of calls

Unfortunately you are going to have to do some digging to really understand this. Depending on the types of calls you are taking (or making), short calls could be quite acceptable, especially in an outbound operation (wrong party contact, no interest, etc).

If this is primarily an inbound operation, it is worth understanding your call types and looking at the call stats at both a global and individual level. Look for patterns or anomalies – high levels of transferred calls, individual agents with unusually high numbers of short calls, particluar inbound numbers with high numbers of short calls – and drill down from there.

If you record calls, identify a group of short calls and see if there are any similarities – if you have access to speech analytics you can do this in volume, but even manually you should get some insight.

Some PBXs and call recording solutions (or call loggers) allow you to see which party terminated the call – it would be worth checking with your Telecoms folk or the manufacturer to see if this is possible in your case.

Like Jonty, I dont think there are any industry averages – most calls centres tend to have different experiences, even within the same industry. Think about what types of calls you take or make and consider what the likely customer expectations would be – maybe a certain level if short calls are acceptable.

With thanks to DaveUKLee