Telemarketing FAQ
How Are Telemarketing Programs Billed? All outbound telemarketing campaigns are billed on an hourly basis.
What is Average Handling Time? Average handle time is a metric for the average duration of one call, typically measured from the customer's beginning of the call and including any hold time, talk time and related tasks that follow the transaction. It is a prime factor when deciding call center staffing levels.
What is Cost Per Call? Cost per call is a metric by dividing the total operational costs by the total number of calls for a given period of time but there are also different ways to calculate cost per call. The reason in following cost per call is to recognize the variables that are driving it upwards or downwards, and the impact they have. This method is used primarily for inbound answering service campaigns.
What is Average Call Value (Sales and Reservations Only)? In sales and reservation division average call value is very important. It is calculated by dividing total revenue generated by number of calls. It’s important to create an environment that will lead to increasing the sales by satisfying the customer.
What is Forecast Call-load to Actual? Over staffing and underestimating calling demand is both a crucial occurrence in a call center it will affect a lot of sectors and components that drives income to the business. Overestimating demand will lead to waste while underestimating will lead tothe ruin of all factor that contribute to good service such as customer satisfaction and service level.
Accent This is a big concern for most people when selecting an agent to work on their calling campaign. While accent is important to a certain extent, it is far from the most important concern you should have. When speaking with your prospective agent make sure you can understand them and they have decent (not necessarily perfect grammar). The main goal is to put someone who is easily understandable on the phone who can follow your set process and deliver results. In our ever more globally integrated world people don’t expect a telemarketer, customer service agent, appointment setter, etc. to be right down the street from their office. As a business decision you should focus on more quantitative factors and not put too much emphasis on an aesthetic quality such as the agent’s voice. My recommendation is if you can easily understand them and vise versa and the agent meets other considerations accent is not an issue.
Comprehension Most call centers will screen on this prior to ever putting an agent on the phone so in many cases your work is already done for you. A quick way to test is to jump around in your conversation and see if the agent is able to keep up. Ask unrelated questions, or for directions to a place the agent will know. Ask for clarification on a given answer. Make the agent think and speak outside of the box from a typical interview where they expect to be reading the script in a roll-play situation.
Script Adherence While most clients who are new to using outsourced voice agents often want the agent to be “conversational” with the script and process, this is usually not the best idea. Having a concrete, repeatable process means you can easily scale, and that you will have much more consistent results. Scripts should be crafted to quickly get the proposition out there and then in an “if, then” format. Rebuttals for common objections should be scripted as well, and additional common objections can be worked into the script as the account is running. While getting an agent than can get off script and effect a casual, friendly manner with prospects would be ideal in some situations it is simply not scalable and defeats the purpose of outsourcing.
Additional assignments What will the agent need to do other than call and execute a script? Do they need to email leads? Fill out a web-form? Instant messenger you with appointment times? These are all aspects to consider when setting up and staffing a campaign. How much time do these tasks take you to complete? Try to get an idea what the agent will need to do on a day to day basis, you may need more staff to complete all required tasks. Number of agents The conventional wisdom is to start a small test with one agent and get an idea of the conversion rate after a month or so, then scale based on that. In theory this isn’t a bad idea since it saves on costs, minimizes risk, etc., but in reality, for most campaigns it is deeply flawed. If you are doing any kind of outbound campaign utilizing a multi line dialer your results will increase almost exponentially by adding more agents. More agents, in this type of campaign, mean more lines dialing, more contacts, and ultimately, more conversions. Additional agents also means group training and feedback, when a group of agents work together best practices are quickly shared and adopted. This is not to say that single seat campaigns don’t produce quality results, just that those results improve significantly with growth, much better than a 1:1 ratio.
Managed vs. unmanaged campaigns When considering a managed vs. unmanaged campaign its important to understand what goes into each. With a managed campaign the day to day work of reporting, agent training and coaching, process assignment and quality assessments are done for you. This does not mean you cannot be as directly involved as you would like with the agents and process, but the heavy lifting will be taken care of by someone else, such as your account manager. Unmanaged accounts are a different story. Your agent is your direct employee. The company will handle payroll, staffing, and making sure the agent is available at their station with working computer and phone. After that its up to you. Things to consider in this case are the process; what are the inputs (calling data, script, additional contact materials such as email), outputs (leads, appointments, reporting, etc.), verifying quality, coaching agents, amending script changes, etc., etc. A good way to decide which option makes sense is to diagram out how the account will work. What you need to give to the agent, what they need to produce, how that information is transfer and what you will need to provide as feedback. If you have a very simple project an unmanaged solution might be the best fit for you. If your process is going to take up more of your time than you would save by opting to have someone else manage the account that is probably the best choice.
Campaign design This is a much too complicate issue to discuss every facet here. The best practice I’ve found is to diagram everything out, start to finish, and ask yourself is this a process I could adhere to using only the information I’m going to provide (without any industry specific knowledge). Remember that the entire call should be scripted for voice campaigns. In most cases your account manager can help you with this step. Below is a list of items to consider:
How to make a successful outbound campaign? An outbound calling campaign, regardless of the goals, is a complicated process to set up to the point it is delivering an ROI. Before undertaking this step in your business make sure you have a plan for what you would like to accomplish. In most cases the best way to approach an outsourced calling campaign is to simply transfer a process that is working “in house” to your offshore partner. If you’ve never attempted to make calls for a particular offering before, how will you know if the results are better or worse than hiring someone to do this in your office? I’ve had prospects tell me things like, “there are 50 million people in credit card debt, sure we’ve never tried this before, but you must be able to get me 15 interested people a day for my debt relief product!” There are many factors outside of a call center’s control that can affect the success of a campaign; including scripting, calling data, and client process. In short, make sure your idea makes sense before investing time and money setting up an outsourced campaign. In many cases its worth a few days of an internal employee’s time to work out the kinks before you contract a call center for a month, with no workable process in place. Please contact us today if you have any questions. 1-424-785-0298 |