Introduction

Telecom carriers closely monitor the length of phone calls, often tagging phone numbers associated with short calls as low trust. This can result in being flagged as potential spam and prevent you from reaching your intended recipients. While Lofty will not prevent you from making calls, this article will outline how Lofty informs you of your short call duration percentage and why that is important.

What is a Short Call?

Per Lofty's service provider Twilio, a short call is any phone call that lasts less than six (6) seconds. Lofty offers two (2) calling methods, Bridge and Voice over IP (VoIP). Learn more about Lofty's call functionality here: “Click to Call” Function

How can I decrease my short call duration percentage?

The best way to decrease your short call percentage is to have prepared Call Scripts when making outbound calls to leads and by manually leaving a voice message, rather than automatically dropping a voice message to a lead's voicemail box, such as the Slybroadcast Integration. 

When an inbound phone call is routed to your bridge number, this will count towards your short call duration percentage, so the best practice is to answer that call, whenever possible.

Here are a few other best practices:

1. Use Strong, Personalized Openers
   1. Hook them fast so they don't hang up. Rather than asking, "Hi, is this John?" start the call with "Hey John, it's Mary from ABC Realty. I just saw you were looking at 123 Main St online. Do you have a minute?"
      1. This makes the call feel relevant, not robotic.
2. Don't Sound Like a Robot
   1. Avoid sounding like a robot by using a natural pace, smiling when you talk (it works!), and keeping your energy upbeat and warm.
3. Avoid Leaving Dead Air
   1. Even a half a second of lag can lead sometime to believe they are being auto-dialed, and they hang up. Be prepared to speak the moment the call connects.
4. Leave Manual Voicemails
   1. Voicemail drops can lead to ultra-short calls. Deliver manual voicemails and keep them personal and useful. Remember, the goal is to get them to call you back!
5. Focus on Answered Calls
   1. If your call list has not been vetted, you may have a lot of bad phone numbers. Keep a clean call list by only calling verified numbers and prioritize leads who have opted in to be contacted.
6. Text Before You Call
   1. A quick text will let the recipient know who is calling and why, making it more likely they will answer and stay on the line.

I got an email about my short call duration, what do I need to do?

If you received an email notification from Lofty about your short call duration percentage, we recommend taking action to increase the length of your phone calls. This email will also have a spreadsheet of your short call data, so you can take a look to see if there are any patterns that are contributing to your short call duration percentage.

Lofty will not turn off or diminish your calling ability, the email is just sent as a notice that your short call duration is higher than recommended and action should be taken to protect the integrity of your phone number. 

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding this topic or any others, please reach out to our Support Team via email at <support@lofty.com>, by phone at 1 (855) 981-7557, or by a chat with us through your Lofty CRM.