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Beyond Answer Rates: Call Duration

When you get lost in a captivating phone call, it can feel as though hours pass by in the blink of an eye. You find yourself reflecting upon the conversation throughout the day; you learned a lot. This would be considered a quality call, crucial to increasing conversions. A longer call can be a significant factor for specific use cases. For example, you need time in sales to establish your identity and secure your reputation. While in services you want your communications to be as quick and efficient as possible When it comes to call duration your success is determined by your specific case. While answer rates tend to be the bottom line metric for enterprises, the duration of the call is a crucially important piece of data.

With customer trust at an all-time low, it can be frustrating to watch answer rates plummet; this is where we need to think outside the box and utilize all the data that a performance analytics console can provide. Going beyond answer rates can tell you a lot about the health of your voice channel. By adding Branded Call Intelligence to your existing network, Hiya can provide actionable insights to help you make informed business decisions. The voice performance gap can seem like an insurmountable barrier to success, but with specific metrics, like call duration, you’ll be able to see its impact on conversions.

Sales and services

Knowing the length of a connected call can give you insights into the call’s overall quality. For example, in sales, the longer a call lasts the more likely that there will be an organic bond created between your customer and the agent. Longer calls can also help influence the recipient to call back, especially if there is a conversation about a specific issue. Shorter calls are beneficial for services on a tight schedule. In these cases, every second matters and both can benefit from a branded call solution.

Call duration for sales

After adding a branded call solution to your network, you may notice a curious trend among your sales team: Call duration increases, and answer rates go down. Quick hang-up calls lasting under 5 seconds used to be the main culprit of this inverse relationship, which artificially inflated answer rates. However, with Hiya’s Branded Call you can project a name, logo, and call reason on the outbound call. This means that call recipients can see who is calling and don’t need to answer the phone only to hang up immediately. While answer rates may decrease, the call duration of answered calls grows drastically, leading to higher quality sales conversations. . High-quality sales calls lead to more conversions.

Call duration for services

Customers who are awaiting home or delivery services are expecting a phone call and want to answer it. After the implementation of a branded call solution you may actually see your call durations decrease; answer rates, in turn, will start to increase. The length of these calls will go down because reps have already prepared customers with a projected name, logo, and reason for calling. Customers are more likely to trust names that they recognize, so they are happy to keep the call as efficient as possible. More calls made means more calls answered; the faster services can connect with their customers the more sales they can make. 

Branded call solutions

Hiya’s Branded Call Intelligence puts all the insights and analytics you need into one console; you have more control of the decision-making process because you are more informed. After implementing Branded Call Intelligence into your network you will be able to monitor the fluctuation of metrics such as:

  • Call duration
  • Answer rate
  • Contact rate
  • Audience reach
  • Call traffic
  • Reputation
  • Call attempts
  • Blocked caller reports
  • Calls labeled as spam

With all of this relevant and detailed data at your fingertips, you can locate problem areas and fill in any gaps. You will also be able to see where you have found success in the voice channel and in turn bolster those findings.

The long and short of it

A long conversation can denote a call of high quality with a significant amount of shared trust. A quick and efficient phone call can also be beneficial in some use cases. However, one cannot establish any sense of trust unless the customer actually picks up the phone. According to Hiya’s State of the Call 2022, an astonishing 94% of people said they think that unknown numbers are fraudulent. Without the right insights and analytics, it can be extremely hard to get your calls answered, not to mention calls of quality. With Hiya Connect’s Branded Call Intelligence you have access to a powerful console filled to the brim with relevant data points.

For more information or to schedule a complimentary call assessment please reach out. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Author Hiya Team