Nine seconds…or it will be goodbye

CUSTOMERS will hang up in less than 10 seconds unless a sales call interests them, says an analysis of 1m calls over the last three months.
Regardless of the nature of the call or company that is calling, the average hang up time by people who weren't interested was just nine seconds.
Those calls that were successful in keeping customers on the line began by asking: “Are you Mrs Brown?” rather than starting with “I'm calling from company X...”.
This immediately engages the customer and makes them believe it is a genuine call; if the caller knows the customer’s name it is more likely to be from a company they already know rather than a generic sales call.
The results also identified times get the best results.  The golden hour for gaining positive responses is 7pm-8pm – and the perfect minute is 7.11pm.
The survey was carried out by a CRM company, Qire, which specialises in “intelligent voice messaging”.
It says it has found that female voices achieve a much greater response, as customers feel relaxed and reassured.  In contrast, feedback said that male voices were unconvincing and intimidated more than half of the target customers.