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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.