The Smile in the Dial – The Power of Emotive Perception

The well healed words of wisdom “smile when you dial”,  which contends that smiling when talking on the phone makes sales and support efforts more successful and helps build trust with customers, is more than just a nice cliche,  There is significant scientific study on the subject and substantial proof of the practices effectiveness,

 Smiling changes the tone of voice and releases endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin that improves the mood of the smiler and directly improves the customer experience. 

Smiling triggers Emotive perception which, in scientific terms,

“involves automatic activation of pre- and primary-motor and somatosensory cortices, and the inhibition of activity in sensorimotor networks reduces performance on subtle or challenging emotion recognition tasks.While automatic and presumably nonconscious, sensorimotor simulation of facial expressions is modulated by the perceiver’s social context and motivational state.”*

In layman’s terms this means that smiling encourages those that we interact with to smile back.  So,  callers who perceive a smile in the voice of the representative they are talking to are subconsciously encouraged to smile themselves, and in so doing to trigger the release endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin that improves their mood. 

It may seem overly simple, but it has proven effective over a myriad of examples, and the simple truth is that friendly callers convert more customers and build brand loyalty better than any other single resource available.  

In a pr- pandemic Microsoft study of thousands of consumers from around the world, the majority of respondents indicated that they continue to use the phone as their preferred channel of communication with sellers. Furthermore,  96% of respondents stated that customer service is important to their loyalty to a brand, and 56% had stopped doing business with a brand due to a poor customer service experience. 

At BDC United we have learned the value of the smile in the dial first hand. Over countless customer contacts it has proven effective time and again, Contact BDCU for a demo today and learn how we can help put a smile in the dial for your customers.

*https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(16)00016-4?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1364661316000164%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

https://info.microsoft.com/rs/157-GQE-382/images/EN-CNTNT-Report-DynService-2017-global-state-customer-service-en-au.pdf