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Call Center Selection Tips
1. Call Center outsourcing tips
If you have decided that your particular sales
outsourcing project is suited to assignment to a
telemarketing, or telesales oriented professional
sales services call center, these tips are for you:
2. Call centers invariably experience a
high rate of employee-turnover.
Good call centers will offer multiple incentives and be on the
look-out for ways to reward and retain the top producers and
stable performers. Be part of the team: offer additional bonuses
or pizza night, or hand written thank you cards for sales made.
Sure call center pay is most often the call center’s responsibility
and tied to productivity — but for maximum results to happen
effectively, the client company needs to encourage high
performers. You will, of course, need to reward success while also
requiring measurement indicators of performance. In the current
highly automated call-center environment, technology monitors
multiple elements of the call team’s process and outputs.
3. Set Expectations
Your selected call center will need to motivate their managers and employees to
meet and exceed your lead-gen, appointment setting, or other telemarketing
goal. The call center management has to let employees know your specific
expectations and what metrics you will use to determine which employees are
rising above the minimum and exceling.
In most established professional sales services call centers, management knows
exactly what to expect from high-performing employees and has past projects to
use as benchmarks on a variety of metrics. Benchmarking performance is
important in a call center — generally staff base salary, commission rate, and
bonuses hinge on positive evaluations. Let your assigned call team know from
the start what metrics you will apply so that the telesales staff can focus on
activities that will earn them the most income.
4. Spot-check Calls
Clients can choose to listen in during a call at any reputable outsourced professional sales
services telemarketing operation. This is useful if results are not meeting expectations or if
you are hearing less than glowing feedback from prospects or your own employees doing
follow-up. Perhaps a telesales employee is acting angry, frustrated or not following the
lead generation script. Hearing both sides of a conversation may put you, or a trusted call
center manager, in a better position to train the employee on alternative techniques, or
make changes to call scripting for better results.
Modern call centers use sophisticated software to monitor every call but you, the client
should not have to listen to more than a few calls to determine whether the lead
generation or appointment setting script needs revision, or whether a call center
employee should take their personal frustrations out somewhere other than on your EMR
sales prospects. If you receive complaints about your call campaign, from virtually anyone,
it’s time to monitor some calls and determine whether the staff or the script need help.
5. Outbound Calls
An outbound call center must be monitored to make certain that positive
interpersonal interactions are measured along with the standard matrix that
outbound telemarketing systems facilitate collecting. Average number of phone
calls each sales rep makes an hour, how many of these phone calls were
completed, the exact amount of time spent on each call, the percentage of leads
converted to appointments, demos, or sales, average hourly and daily number of
desired sales actions completed, and accuracy of transcribed information are all
meticulously calculated.
Higher numbers translate to a higher rating according to the call center software
and most outsourced professional sales services firms providing volume
outbound calls. Make sure the numbers do not sabotage your success by
creating a negative impression that your firm employs rude sales reps who
gather complaints and reflect poorly on your services, all at lightning speed.
6. Inbound Call Answering
Inbound professional sales services call centers measure different
outcomes because it is assumed that a prospect or customer is probably
calling with a specific request or even a complaint. Often in these cases
your outsourced reps will need access to additional information about
your company, your products and services, and even your key staff.
This sort of call handling often goes well beyond what is easily scripted.
In this type of telemarketing, automated measures include the number
of calls answered an hour, and the frequency an agent resolves the
problem during the initial phone call. Data is also collected on the
average call length, amounts of permissible and excessive hold time. The
employee’s overall rating is a composite of all of these factors.
7. everything from routine information
requests to complaints.
It is critical that you remember to praise and reward outsourced reps
who make your company look good during difficult inbound
interactions. The specific parameters will depend on whether you sell
high-end EMR and HIS systems to hospitals or IT security services to
banks. Whether your average caller is a CEO or a mail clerk will also
factor in to the call management instructions you provide your
outsourced professional sales services team.
Here again, monitor calls occasionally or if results are off, so that small
changes in scripting, information available to your rent-a-reps, or even
which products seem to gather negative callers. Manage a successful
outsourced campaign that is inbound, and you’ll reap the rewards via
your more direct sales channels.