It is a well-known fact that noise in calls is disturbing. It might not be surprising to realize that the success of outbound sales calls is significantly impacted by the quality of the call. It is not rare that customers hear the ambient noise of the call center before the agents start talking and hang up without allowing the agent to start the pitch or during the pitch. Even if the customers are willing to hear the agent they are still upset by the fact that they are requested to invest their free time while the calling agent is not respecting their precious time by allowing bad call conditions. People are open to listen new proposals when they feel unique and believe that the proposal was tailored for their needs. They cannot feel this way if they hear in the background other agents trying to sell the exact same offer to other customers.

What needs to be done?

The call center managers must make sure that when a sales outbound call is being done, the optimal conditions should be provided for this call: the agent’s response time should be minimal, the agent should know the customer’s facts prior to the call and of course no background noise should be present during the call. We want to give the customer the feeling that this call and pitch was tailored specifically for him/her and the agent is not “selling” but giving a friendly good advice.

How could this be achieved?

Minimizing the ambient noise can be done in many ways. You can make sure each agent is talking from an isolated quiet location either in the office or at home, the environment is quiet and there is no supervisor shouting or children crying in the background. Alternatively, if providing these physical conditions is not doable, you can use novel technology like the Noise Firewall to help you get control over the ambient noise.