Study proves the value of good phone greetings
A new study shows the way a customer service agent answers a call has a big impact on how the call will go.
Here are two real examples. Imagine you're a customer calling to get help with an issue. Which greeting gives you more optimism about getting your issue resolved?
Example 1: "Thank you for calling Acme Megacorp, where every day is a great and wonderful day. My name is Joy. How can I make your day great and wonderful today?"
Example 2: "Hi, this is Becky in Boise. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"
Example 2 wins by a mile. The first example is packed with so much corporate nonsense that it's likely to put customers on edge. What human actually talks like that? The second example feels like the start of a real conversation. You immediately get the impression that Becky wants to help.
Greetings clearly matter, but how can we prove it?
I partnered Prosodica, a voice analytics firm, to analyze over 10,000 customer service phone calls across four different industries. Our goal was to prove whether greetings really do matter.
It turns out they matter a lot.
About the phone greeting study
Prosodica used its proprietary AI software to analyze a pool of 10,005 inbound customer service calls from four clients. The companies represented a diverse set of industries: business financing, apparel, telecommunications, and plumbing.
We used the data to answer two questions:
Do certain greetings improve first call resolution?
How do greetings affect call duration (a.k.a. talk time)?
First call resolution was measured by reviewing each call for evidence that the issue was fully resolved, such as a verbal acknowledgement from the customer. This was combined with customers' contact history. A call was marked fully resolved if it was indicated in the call transcript and the customer didn't call back a second time.
The human-supervised AI software examined the start of each call to identify how the customer service agent greeted the customer. It looked for several specific words or phrases. For example, did the agent:
Share their company's name?
Give their own name?
Say "hi," "hello," or something similar?
Indicate the time of day (e.g. "good morning")?
Ask the customer how they are doing?
Ask the customer to share their name?
Results of the phone greeting study
Asking for the customer's name at the start of the call was the most impactful greeting. Including this in the greeting correlated with positive results in three areas:
First call resolution: 12 percent higher
Call escalations: 11 percent lower
Unresolved issues: 33 percent lower
Why does this happen?
Calls tend to be more cordial when names are exchanged at the beginning. It's the first step towards the agent building rapport, which helps customers relax and become more open to the agent's assistance.
I validated this with an earlier study of in-person greetings. That study showed that a warm, friendly greeting caused 69 percent of customers to smile versus a rote "welcome" that got only 3 percent of customers to smile.
The phone greeting data also revealed a trade-off. Calls averaged 36 percent longer when the agent started by asking the customer for their name.
This should concern any contact center leader. I also think there might be a caveat in the data. Past studies I've seen show that handle time stays relatively constant even when first contact resolution goes down. I'm still looking for an explanation, and will publish an update here if I find it.
For now, contact center leaders should consider the trade-off between fewer calls and higher average handle time:
Does the lower call volume offset the impact of longer calls?
Do first call resolutions drive better customer retention?
Do first call resolutions drive better agent retention?
Conclusion
Good greetings lead to better results. Specifically, asking customers for their name at the beginning of a call improves outcomes by 12%. You can do two things to take advantage of this:
Evaluate your team's greetings. Are they friendly and consistent?
Experiment. Try getting agents to start with introductions.
You can help your team develop their perfect phone greeting with this short video. You can see a demonstration of a good phone greeting and then build your own. It’s part of the Phone-Based Customer Service course on LinkedIn Learning.
