When speaking to a customer over the phone, how long do you have to speak to them before you have to hang up to serve other customers?

It depends on their inquiries & on many other things.

For Example: Which type of Issue, Which type of Query, Which type of information etc

Dear Yazan 

the answer of this questions depends on the company where you work and also on your position in the company

for an instance if you work in a company that provide free calls to its clients, the company should state how many minutes you should talk to customers on the phone and off course this requires skills in conversation (specially if the language you use is your second language) 

but if this is not the case, then your conversation with clients should be terminated after you make sure that the client is satisfied about your service or convinced to buy your product

if during the conversation, you received another call, then you should offer your apology to the current customer until you reply to the other call and also offer your apology to the new customer for putting him/her on hold and you go back to the first customer 

but do not try to quickly end the conversation with the first one until you make sure that customer is satisfied then you can go back to the customer on hold and also thank him/her for waiting and their patience  

please do not make the customer wait more than 90 seconds, it will be boring and they may  hang up 

it is nice to have a nice music during the waiting time to keep the customer attracted and waiting without being bored

it depends on their inquiries

Customer Experience is an Art and an expert would definitely close the call withint the agreed Average Handling Time, the call gets longer only if the customer has multiple queries or is not convinced with the response of the Associate.  Otherwise a call is generally 120 to 180 seconds.

There is no actual time on how long would you have to talk to the phone speaking to customers because it is case to case basis. I can just say that you should make it as quick as possible. And make sure to never ignore the walk-in customers. Excuse yourself before answering the phone and assure them that it would not take that long before you entertain them.

Usually a threshold is applicable on agents i.e. called AHT but nobody is allowed to hangup/release the call until and unless customer's all queries are not answered or catered. Call needs to be continued as long as customer does not agree for ending it.

Until I have resolved their enquiry satisfactorily.

There are three basics to handling incoming calls / speaking to customers over the phone, and though average handling times decide the capacity i need, however we can't just arrive at a random number on fixing the time we need to speak to customers.. We have to baseline this basis, historical data and time and motion study.

We should keep these three things in mind while being on a call with the customer :

1)Listen patiently and identify the issue, and then rephrase it such that you know where to look for solutions.

2)Once you have rephrased what the problem statement it, that is when you frame a response, keeping in mind the only complete resolution and nothing short of it provided to the customer (in some escalated cases it would take multiple contacts with the customer to solve an issue)

3)Once you have given a solution bases on the SOP's (Systematic Operating Procedures), do ask the customer whether he is satisfied with the resolution, and is there anything else yoou can help him with (Saves a 2nd call from the customer).

Need to satisfied the current customer before we go to the next.

I

It depends on th customers inquiries and what they want or need 

As a former call center agent, we serve customers to the highest possible satisfactory level but we have a log ratio too that needs to be looked after e.g. duration of call and how many calls you made for the entire shift. Not all has an immediate answer to their issues in just one call and that might prolong the conversation depends on how complicated it is. For me there is none in terms of duration as long as they felt satisfied whether the problem has been solved or not. Satisfaction is retention.