Call control is part art, part science.

It's the ability to politely, yet quickly move along a customer service call. These skills were originally a big part of call center agent training back when talk time, or handle time, was considered an essential metric.

Today, fewer contact centers are holding agents accountable for the length of each call, but call control still remains an important skill.

Customers don't want to waste time.
Quicker calls generally lead to higher satisfaction.
Faster calls allow you to serve more customers.

I interviewed contact center expert, Myra Golden, to get tips on call control skills. Golden is a certified master de-escalation instructor and customer experience designer who has an impressive call control course on LinkedIn Learning.

Myra Golden’s definition of call control.

Here are just a few topics we covered in our conversation:

What is call control?
Why do calls take longer than they should?
How do you use call control skills with upset customers?
How can contact centers make call control easier for agents?
What can agents do to make customers feel great, but still keep the call on track?

You can watch the full, 22 minute interview or skim some of the highlights below.

What is call control?

Golden offered a succinct definition of call control.

"Call control is the art of politely moving a call forward to closure."

Many customer calls go on longer than they need to. Some customers are upset, while others are just extra talkative.

Years ago, when I had my first full-time job as a contact center agent, I had a regular customer who was quite the talker. He could talk to me for an hour about the smallest of issues. The customer wasn't angry—he just seemed to have a lot of time on his hands.

He was also an important customer who worked for one of my biggest accounts, so I felt I had to stay on the phone as long as he wanted.

One day, an experienced colleague pulled me aside and explained how the long phone calls were keeping me away from other customers. He had just taken a call from another customer of mine who didn't want to wait to speak to me.

It was then that I realized that I needed a better way to keep my important customer happy, while avoiding friction with other customers and my coworkers.

You can hear more of Golden's definition of call control at the :52 second mark of the interview.

Why do calls take longer than they should?

"A lot of the time, it's the customer," said Golden. "They don't know how to get to the point. They want to tell you the backstory and the journey of how they got there."

That was my important customer. He could talk for days about the smallest thing.

Of course, there are many times when the customer service professional causes a call to go on too long. One example is when we don't provide enough information.

"We lose control when we don't proactively answer the customer's questions," said Golden. For example, if you tell a customer someone will get back to them, that invites a number of follow-up questions.

Who will reach out?
How will they contact the customer?
When will they reach out?

It's better to use clear and specific language up front to set expectations, so the customer doesn't need to ask a lot of follow-up questions. For example, you could tell a customer, “I will give you a call back by Monday at 4pm with an update.”

Hear more about why calls take too long at the 3:24 mark of the interview.

How do you use call control skills with upset customers?

Customer service professionals frequently try to speed up the call when they encounter an upset customer. They try to get straight to the point and solve the problem quickly.

Unfortunately, this often backfires.

Customers are more judgmental and less open to ideas when they're angry. An upset customer might resist your suggestions for a quick solution, which ends up prolonging the call.

"When a person is upset, they are very often in the emotional side of their brain," said Golden. The solution is finding a way to help soothe the customer's emotions and get them back to their rational brain. It’s counterintuitive to spend extra time soothing the customer, but this often helps the call go shorter.

Golden has some very good suggestions for doing this. Check out her full explanation at 6:09 in the interview.

How can contact centers make call control easier for agents?

Contact center agents are often hampered by cumbersome procedures or inflexible systems. Golden relayed a story about her own experience as a contact center manager.

When Golden listened to agent calls, she quickly noticed a problem.

"My agents had to ask seven questions before they could get to the problem," said Golden. This made the calls sound more like an interview or even an interrogation, rather than a conversation.

The key to fixing this problem is using a call flow and computer system that is flexible enough to allow you to solve the issue in a non-linear fashion.

"If the customer started out with their story, you could jump right to notes and record while they talk," said Golden. You could then go back and ask for the required information once the customer had shared their story. This led to a more conversational tone, and also limited the amount of times a rep had to interrupt the customer to get required information.

Hear more at the 9:57 mark in the interview.

What can agents do to keep calls on track?

Golden provided several suggestions that can be used, depending on the situation.

When a customer is friendly and talkative, she recommends giving a polite, but minimal response. "I live in Oklahoma. During tornado season, you'd be surprised at how many people ask about the weather. I could talk for 20 minutes about that."

A minimal response to a question about tornadoes might be, "Yes, we did have tornados last night, but fortunately the damage was minimal."

You can then redirect the call back to the issue at hand. I really could have used that technique with my talkative customer back in the day!

Golden gives some additional tips for getting a call back on track when the customer is really angry. Check them out at 13:37 in the interview.