Call handling is in crisis. The vast majority of inbound calls are not handled correctly with the best practices.
It’s no surprise that businesses and marketers continue looking for new venues to capture attention. To better help the industry, Convirza will highlight content around call strategies and tactics.
As we share findings and statistics, you can apply our discoveries to your business, call center, and personal communication to capitalize on every phone call.
Today we are discussing an attribute that our AI technology and machine learning highlights as a key determining factor in call success. It’s called – Determine Needs.
Agents must determine the needs of the person calling. During a phone conversation with a prospect, lead, or customer agents should dig into the reason for the telephone call.
Our definition of determining needs includes your ability to ask open-ended questions to evaluate how you can help callers.
A few months ago, we pointed our AI technology, Conversation Analytics®, at calls in the Direct Advertising Industry.
Would it surprise you that out of 11,464 phone calls received by direct marketers, only 17% of agents asked an open-ended question?
Let me rephrase that with an open-ended question…
How many people do you think ask open-ended questions?
Answer: 1,978 agents tried to determine the needs of callers.
One in every six employees who answered the phone determined needs – that is a shockingly low number.
When business team members determine needs, 57% of calls are converted.
The worst part is this finding is that; when agents find out caller needs, 43% of the conversations did not end up converting.
On the other hand, if you ask open-ended questions in this particular industry, you automatically are more likely to convert that call to an appointment, sale, or reservation.
Of the 11,464 direct advertising calls, 83% or 9,486 agents did not determine caller needs. In the case where our machine learning algorithms did not detect the skill, only 15% of the calls had positive outcomes.
The inverse of this statistic is that when agents didn’t determine needs, 85% of the calls ended up failing.
The real statistics are shocking. Calls are 382% more likely to convert when agents are determining needs. Yikes, that is like receiving 4x the number of inbound calls.
If you just looked at one aspect of your calls and knew for a fact you could better convert calls, would you do it?
Wonder how many of your team members are handling calls well?
Since 2012, Convirza has monitored calls for hundreds of metrics and indicators. Businesses count on us to provide metrics on their front-line communication.
When you’re ready to see how easily and quickly you can get insights on your phone calls, reach out to us. We are eager to show you.
