When traveling or speaking with people from other countries, it’s easy to find similarities and differences that unite cultures and make them distinct. What may seem bizarre in one country could seem completely normal in another.
Three cheek-kisses or two? What’s considered adequate personal space? Is this person being rude or concise? Isn’t it strange to eat dinner at 1 a.m. on a Tuesday?
Aircall—as a business phone company with customers across the globe—understands these differences should be celebrated.
We successfully facilitated our first calls in 2014 and now, Aircall phone systems have hosted over one billion minutes worth of incoming and outgoing calls. These conversations have crossed entire oceans, continents, and sometimes both!
Since cloud technology enables easy access to important metrics, we’ve been able to learn a few things about how different countries prefer to conduct phone calls. Here’s a look at Aircall by the numbers.
The Large Numbers
Seven years of phone calls add up quickly. Plus, Aircall has been expanding exponentially since our inception. Over 8,500 companies are using our cloud-based phone system, and we’ve recently closed a Series D funding round (bringing total funding to $226 million).
Inbound and Outbound
Aircall is used by inbound and outbound teams and has facilitated over 122 million calls so far. Serving both Sales and Support use cases, it’s a versatile communication platform. Out of this large number of total calls, approximately 50 million were inbound.
Short But Sweet
Voice has proven itself as a reliable channel for urgent and important matters. However, the average phone call time placed or received through Aircall is just 2 minutes and 27 seconds.
While this might seem brief, it isn’t a surprise. Sales reps often settle for a voicemail message when trying to reach prospects, and IVR systems greatly reduce the time customers spend seeking resolutions from support teams.
Phone Calls Every Day
Since Aircall began facilitating business phone calls, there have been 780,000 calls made or received on average each day.
Exploring Cultural Identities Through Calls
Breaking down the data even further, we’ve seen interesting patterns emerge that reveal various countries’ identities. Here we’ve drawn a few unofficial superlatives!
Most Talkative
Overall, we’ve noticed Canadians and South Africans stay on phone calls longer than other countries.
While this may be because of their friendly natures and great active listening skills, it could also point to successful business practices. Studies have shown, longer sales calls tend to result in more deals won. We hope this is the case for our customers in these regions.
Least Chatty
Calls made and received in Brazil and Japan win the prize for most concise.
Culturally speaking, some nations tend to say more with fewer words. Small talk might be discouraged, or phone calls could just be a precursor to a longer in-person meeting.
Regardless, time-to-resolution is considered one of the most important call metrics for successful customer support teams. Shorter could mean better in this regard.
Best Friends?
After looking at the data, we’ve noticed that these high-call-volume countries talk to one another for more total minutes than any other nation. Are they best friends, trusted colleagues, or both?
Australia’s best friend is New Zealand
Both Germany’s and Spain’s best friend is France
but interestingly…
France’s best friend is Belgium
The U.S. and U.K. are mutual best friends
Even More to Come
More calls are being made every day through Aircall. We’re excited to see which patterns have stayed the same and what new findings emerge after 2 billion and even 3 billion minutes have been logged.
