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response to customer callers. Customers can be either existing or
potential, business customers or consumers. It can provide
customer care, customer service, act as the follow up to direct
response (TV, radio, poster or press). A call centre can make sales
calls.
The call centre brief should be clear about the objectives. For
direct response, the database of interested potential customers is
most useful to both you and any involved suppliers.
Careful consideration of the order and content of call centre
responses allowing flexibility of response makes customers
perceive that they are leading the conversation while actually
having information extracted from them to meet the objectives.
For a Helmsmen client, the call centre staff obtained information
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regarding where the caller had seen the telephone number, the
caller’s name, address and postcode, the time and date of call, and
gave out information giving the name and telephone number of
their nearest supplier and an alternative. The call centre staff were
pre-briefed about the client product and were able to answer
general queries as required. The telephone number appeared in
editorials, advertisements, inserts, mailshots and on the Web site.
The supplier subsequently redeemed a voucher offer.
The telephone line itself may be offered as a free phone or local
call line rather than a national call charge line to encourage
prospective callers to make the call. The call centre will have a
number of lines available that can be used – it is important to get
the number right in all marketing material. The call centre can take
orders. It can be used to confirm that other marketing activities
have happened as agreed.
Outbound telemarketing is more successful with B2B than with
consumers. A call is accepted if it is seen to be relevant and offers a
clear benefit to the customer. It can be used to fix appointments,
even when near cold calling, if the relevance and benefit measures
are readily understood. It is better if it is part of a campaign and
the recipient has already been sent direct mail and been told to
expect a call. It can be used as a customer relationship-building
tool routinely calling customers to check all is well, to find out
what is selling, to take ideas for new products, obtain feedback
about consumer interest in purchases of your concept, to take
orders or make sales offers.
Call centres as a part of integrated marketing
An inbound call centre is a part of integrated marketing and must
be consistent with other marketing activities. An outbound call
centre (telemarketing) could theoretically act entirely on its own
but it is wisest to integrate it in a campaign, where typically, a
letter precedes the telephone call and, on success, a letter
confirming the call outcome follows.
A campaign may consist of some advertisements in an area
followed by a direct mail shot in the same area followed by tele-
marketing with two follow up mailings to those who do not
respond initially.
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When call centres have a strategic role
A call centre used in its telemarketing role can be a means to carry
out research with existing customers to ascertain views or new
concept acceptability. It is a fast means of obtaining a response. It
should not be used to carry out market research without training
the operators in marketing – particularly the ability to pick up
what is not normally articulated. Training is required to overcome
the natural instinct to please and give answers the person called
thinks match the need.
MAKING A CALL CENTRE OPERATION WORK
Whether you decide to undertake the operation in-house (in
which case you will have recruited persons with the necessary
expertise) or you use a call centre (see Appendix 3) the need to
clear your mind as to what you are trying to do is paramount.
Think of the marketing purpose throughout as given in the
marketing objective. Produce a call centre brief, which conveys:
■ the campaign objectives and the purpose of the call centre
marketing activity within that campaign;
■ a description of the target audience;
■ any responses that are required, collection of what data, etc;
■ estimates of response rate (immediacy of calls is a factor with
direct response TV; radio and press are more even and often
it is several repeats or re-readings before a call centre is
contacted);
■ whether a freephone, local or national or special tariff rate is to
be applied;
■ the success criteria;
■ details of any test of the operational procedures;
■ campaign dates.
Agree a script with the call centre – usually in a ‘tree’ format. Test
the script. After say a week’s operation, call a meeting and obtain
feedback. How well does the script work, what changes are
suggested? Test changes and repeat. See below for Code of
Practice.
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DIY, suppliers, agencies
An in-house (DIY) operation is recommended where it is not a core
part of the operation. First-time users are advised to use a supplier
until the call centre service operation is fully understood before
taking the operation in-house.
Tips
1. Visit the call centre and explain and demonstrate the
concept to the teams, with product samples. It is important
to train the call centre in your company. This rarely happens
from discussions with call centre staff. Helmsmen have
taken products to call centres on behalf of clients with really
beneficial results. Product demonstrations give an under-
standing of your products, which can be used when the call
centre staff talk to your potential customers. It is a motivator
to the call centre staff to see the products they are taking
calls about.
2. For a small firm, if you want to seem like a larger organiza-
tion than you are, then the purchase of some of the latest
telephone answering machines might solve the problem.
3. Use a ‘professional’ voice to enhance answering machine
tapes.
4. In Helmsmen’s experience, call centre managers have a vast
experience of handling campaigns and will describe total
failures from top blue-chip companies and runaway
successes from others. They are full of excellent advice on
how best to use their services. The good call centre opera-
tors will not rip you off, rather they want to see you succeed
and give advice that is pragmatic and helpful; a successful
telemarketing/call centre operation brings repeat business
and enhances their reputation.
5. It is important that the script the call centre uses matches
your brand values.
Accountability: setting and measuring key performance
indicators
Let the call centre know what you have set as the key performance
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indicators. Experience indicates they will probably be able to tailor
the measurements they use to meet what you want measured.
Usually a response target is set. The call centre managers have
experience and can advise of the likely response. This may be no
more than a return of the calls resulting from a direct mail shot. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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