Somewhere right now, a customer is saying “representative” to a phone menu for the fourth time. They aren’t being difficult. They’re giving you feedback, just not the kind that shows up in a survey.
Every call is a small, unfiltered report on how your business looks from the outside. That’s the heart of voice of the customer best practices: listen to what customers tell you, in their words and in their behavior, and fix what they keep running into. Voice of the customer, often shortened to VoC, simply means the feedback customers give you about their experience, whether they say it out loud or just hang up.
Below are the complaints callers have most often about a business’s phone system, along with the practical fix for each. None of them require a dramatic overhaul. Most require paying attention to the calls you already get.
Why voice of the customer best practices start with the phone
The phone is often where a customer’s patience runs out first, so it’s where their feedback is loudest. Most of the problems aren’t dramatic. They’re small, and they repeat.
Small delays add up
Missed calls, repeated messages, and short waits show up often enough that teams start treating them as normal. Customers don’t. Voice of the customer best practices start by taking those small moments seriously.
Good systems feel quiet
A business doesn’t need more complexity just to look prepared. It needs a setup that matches how people work, how customers ask for help, and how the team responds on an ordinary day. Good systems tend to feel quiet. Bad systems make themselves known.
That’s where call analytics earns its place. It shows what’s happening on your lines instead of what you assume is happening, which makes the next step easier to plan.
“I just want to talk to a human”
This is the complaint people say out loud, sometimes straight into the phone tree. When your phone system is clear, customers reach the right person without extra effort. When it isn’t, they start pressing zero.
What to notice
Customers usually call with a question or a complaint. Too often, they’re greeted by a long automated message and soon realize there’s no clear way to reach a real person.
Automation handles simple requests well. Complex issues are another story, and that’s usually when callers want someone who can think through the problem with them.
Why it matters
Callers who can’t reach a person often give up. A Consumer Reports survey covered by NBC News found that 67% of Americans had hung up on a customer service call before their problem was even addressed, and not being able to get a person on the phone topped the list of complaints.
Every one of those hang-ups is customer feedback. It just arrives as silence instead of a review.
How to fix it
Start by figuring out why callers spend so much time with automation and hold music. Vaspian’s Peak Calling Time report shows call activity for each hour of the day on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. If you find a predictable peak, adding staff during those hours puts more people on the phones when customers need them most.
Next, build rules into your call routing with Vaspian so calls don’t sit on hold too long or go unanswered. If you’re comparing options, inbound call center tools are a practical place to start. Call recording also lets you hear how those conversations go once callers do reach someone, including what they had to repeat to get there.
“I’m still on hold?”
Hold time is where customer patience gets tested. Most people will wait a reasonable amount of time. The trouble is that nobody tells them what reasonable means.
What to notice
If you’ve ever called a large business, you know what a long hold feels like. Callers can be patient, up to a point, if it means getting their issue resolved.
Why it happens
Eventually, callers give up when nobody answers. Long holds usually come from more calls than people available to answer them and from not knowing who’s waiting right now. A caller who hangs up doesn’t stop needing help. They just stop waiting for you.
How to fix it
Vaspian lets you customize what callers hear on hold, so they can learn about your company and hear current promotions instead of dead air. It won’t make the wait shorter, but it does cut down the impatience.
With Vaspian’s Call Queueing Dashboard, managers see live data on how many callers are on hold right now. If a caller hangs up, reports and call logs show your abandoned calls, so your team can call those customers back.
Calling back gets easier with click to call, which means placing a call by clicking a phone number on your screen instead of dialing it by hand. Vaspian One Click is a Chrome extension that works with the Vaspian desk phone or softphone you already use. Click a phone number on any web page, and your phone rings first, then connects the call. One Click also keeps your recent calls right under the dialer, with a filter for missed calls and a badge that counts the ones you haven’t seen yet.
Following up on missed callers is one of the simplest voice of the customer best practices, because it answers the complaint before the customer has to repeat it. It’s also a good reason to look at outbound call center tools instead of treating callbacks as a one-off fix. For teams working through a long callback list, this guide to auto dialers for call centers explains how dialing tools fit into the plan.
“If I get transferred one more time…”
Transfers are supposed to get a caller closer to an answer. Too many of them do the opposite.
What to notice
Customers call hoping to reach the one person who can tell them what they need to know. What they can’t stand is getting bounced between representatives who can’t answer their question and having to explain the problem from the beginning each time.
Why it matters
In a Consumer Reports National Research Center survey of 1,016 adults, 70% said they were highly annoyed by being transferred to a representative who couldn’t help or gave the wrong answer.
Repeat transfers tell customers the business doesn’t know where their question belongs. Tracking where transfers go wrong belongs on any list of voice of the customer best practices.
How to fix it
Vaspian offers “ring group” assignment, which lets you choose how your phones ring. You can ring a few extensions first, such as your most qualified people, and then ring everyone. You can also set up your auto attendant so highly frustrated callers can transfer straight to a manager.
When a transfer is necessary, One Click helps it go smoothly. Your team can find anyone by name or extension and transfer in one click, either right away or after talking to the next person first, so the customer doesn’t have to start their story over. One Click can also open the caller’s record in your CRM when you answer, so whoever picks up already has context. Building around the right call center phone systems features keeps that work connected to the rest of the business.
“That person was supposed to be a professional?”
Even good teams have bad calls. The real problem is the bad call nobody hears about.
What to notice
You aim to hire professional, experienced employees. Even so, poor customer service sometimes happens on a call and never gets acknowledged, so it never gets fixed for the next customer.
Why it happens
Most businesses only learn about a rough call when the customer complains. Many customers never do. Without a way to review real conversations, managers end up coaching from guesses.
How to fix it
Make great customer service the focus of every call. That’s where tools like speech analytics come in handy. You can record your calls, get full transcriptions of each one, and analyze them to see what’s working and what needs attention.
Reviewing calls is one of the most practical voice of the customer best practices, because it turns what customers said into something your team can learn from. The benefits of call recording go beyond training, too, since a recording gives you a reliable account of what was said. If your calls involve patient information, review the HIPAA Security Rule guidance from HHS before you record and transcribe them.
Putting voice of the customer best practices to work
None of these fixes have to happen at once. The best version of this work isn’t loud. It’s a process that’s easy to explain and easy to use.
Start where callers already get stuck
Look at the places customers already struggle: long holds, too many transfers, and no clear path to a person. Fixing the obvious friction first usually does more good than chasing a long list of features.
Make the next step obvious
People shouldn’t need to understand every setting behind the scenes to get the benefit. They should simply notice that the next step is clear and the call feels easier than it used to. When your phone system works that way, it stops being the thing customers mention, which is a good sign your voice of the customer best practices are doing their job.
FAQ
This section answers common questions about voice of the customer best practices and the phone complaints covered above.
What are voice of the customer best practices for phone calls?
They’re habits that help you listen to what callers tell you, directly or through behavior like hang-ups, and fix what they keep running into. That includes watching peak call times, cutting unnecessary transfers, following up on missed calls, and reviewing real conversations.
Why do customers hang up before reaching a person?
Long automated messages, no clear way to reach a real person, and long holds all push callers to give up. A Consumer Reports survey found that not being able to get a person on the phone topped the list of customer service complaints.
How can a business reduce hold times?
Use reports like Vaspian’s Peak Calling Time report to add staff during busy hours, and set routing rules so calls don’t sit on hold too long or go unanswered. Live queue data helps managers respond while callers are still waiting.
What is click to call?
Click to call lets you place a call by clicking a phone number on your screen instead of dialing it by hand. Vaspian One Click brings click to call to Chrome and works with the Vaspian desk phone or softphone you already use.
How do you stop customers from being transferred repeatedly?
Ring groups can send calls to your most qualified people first, and your auto attendant can give frustrated callers a direct path to a manager. When a transfer is needed, talking to the next person first means the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves.
How does speech analytics support voice of the customer best practices?
Speech analytics turns recorded calls into transcripts you can review and analyze. It shows how customers experience your service, so you can fix problems that would otherwise go unnoticed.