Dead Air

Dead Air refers to periods of silence during a conversation in which no word is being pronounced by the agent. This is different from the Hold Time; let's see how.

As we reviewed in another section, the Hold Time provides the agent time to do research or ask for help, without having the customer actively in the interaction, while the customer listens to music.

When we refer to Dead Air, the customer is kept in the interaction, but the agent is not talking or providing any kind of verbal cue or feedback to the customer.

There is a general rule that agents should never have more than 10 seconds of silence or dead air during their calls, but this varies from client to client. If an agent needs to look up information, they must tell the customer, "Please bear with me while I load your account details," or ask the customer for permission to be placed on Hold.

The main goal is to avoid those awkward silences that can lead a customer to not know if the agent is still connected or not. To go further, most QA scorecards penalize dead air.

If a client account does not allow agents to use Holds, an important tactic is to provide feedback to the customer on the processes the agent is following to resolve their inquiry, and to use techniques such as building rapport.

Let's see two examples:

Example 1: The customer asks for a refund, and the agent needs to look up the policy.

• Customer: "Can I get a refund for this?" 
• Agent: Let me check. (...Silence...) 
• Agent: (...Typing sounds for 15 seconds...)
• Agent: (...More Silence...) 
• Customer: "Hello? Are you still there?" 
• Agent: "Yeah, I'm checking the specific policy for this item."

Result: The customer feels ignored and anxious.

Example 2: Let's use the same situation.

• Customer: "Can I get a refund for this?"
• Agent: "That is a great question. Let me just check the specific refund policy for this item..."
• Agent: (Typing) "I am pulling up your invoice now, please bear with me..."
• Agent: (Typing) "Okay, I see the date here. Thank you for your patience. Yes, we can process that refund."

Result: The customer knows exactly what is happening every step of the way.