6 Strategies used by Call Centres.
I am always amazed when I walk into a really great call centre and see how exceptionally effective and productive they are.
The don’t try to achieve. They achieve.
There is a very good reason why they are so effective and it’s because they have a clear and repeatable strategy that works every time. Wouldn’t you like to say that about your business? All of us work hard but not all of us achieve the results.
Wouldn’t you like to know if you apply some key strategies that your business will be consistently successful?
I am going to share 6 strategies that call centres use to :
1. Help them to sell more
2. Make them more productive
The premise of these strategies are all to significantly increase your chances of making a sale while driving down the cost of each sale. Which I suppose is the very definition of productivity – to get more for less.
Well, here we go.
Strategy 1: Automated Lead Generation
The most productive call centres immediately setup automated lead generation that their agents will call to attempt to sell their products. Some call centres acquire databases that they then use to make cold calls to customers. Not only do I hate this, it’s simply not the best strategy. Cold calling means customers are not expecting your call and are immediately upset even having to take the call.
The most productive call centres generate hot leads. Now, there are a few ways of generating hot leads:
1. Facebook marketing
2. Bulk email campaigns
3. Bulk sms campaigns
If you already have a database containing your target market, then you can certainly use SMS and Email campaigns and get customers to reply yes if they are interested.
Most business however do not have a database or they do not have a clean database and they simply don’t have the required information about their contacts like : where do they live, age, gender, interests, current status (married, children, etc.). There is simply not enough information to effectively target your target market. We don’t want to follow a shotgun approach also known as spray and pray. We want to be like a sniper with a very accurate scope taking into account they distance, the wind and the humidity to ensure he hits the target not on the leg but in the head or in the heart. That’s why facebook marketing is the best way to target your target market. Facebook already has a database of your target market with a lot of additional information about them. Facebook allows you to bring out your inner sniper. Now facebook alone is not the blue pill that all of us have been waiting for. There is a very specific way in which we not only get customers to give us their contact details but also we only want the customers who are genuinely interested to request a call
back from us.
Our consultants are trained to do excactly that. If you haven’t already done so, click on the link below to give us you name and contact details and one of our friendly consultants will give you a call.
Strategy 2 – Lead Queueing / Prioritisation
The best call centres have a system that queues the leads according to priority.
The principle behind this is that we want to call the hottest lead first. The hotter the lead, the better your chances of making the sale. In this age of instant gratification the client wants an answer now. If you only call back 2 days later, the client already googled all your competitors, got quotes and probably bought. Forget about making that sale. The priorities are generally as follows:
1. Live leads – these are leads from your website / facebook or from a sms / email campaign where the customer just responded to your call to action. If you received 10 leads in the last hour and you only get onto the phone now, the last lead will be
first in the queue.
2. Call backs – this is where a customer asked you to call them back for example tomorrow at 9:30. Come tomorrow 9:30, that lead is now the most imported lead and jumps to the top of the queue. If the customer asked for 9:30, please don’t call them
at 10 or 11. There is a reason why they asked for 9:30.
3. No Answers – Once you run out of live leads and call backs, the final priority will be no answers. This is where you tried to call the customer and they did not answer the call. The principle here is that we want to call the customer at least 5 to 10 times before we close out the lead as unreachable.
As you can imagine, this is almost impossible to achieve without a system.
Well, don’t fear, we have a system for you. They integrate the leads and takes care of the queue for you.
If you haven’t already done so, please share your contact details with us so that one of our friendly consultants to setup a consultation with and help you grow your business
Strategy 3 – Data Collection / Cleansing
I am always amazed when I walk into a shop or a restaurant, I very rarely get asked for my details. Or if I already have an account with a shop they don’t ask me for my latest details. Now I am just referring to name, mobile number and email.
What about if I am married, how much I earn, where I live, what my preferences are. Does a restaurant record against my name what I ordered the last few time, how many time I eat there in a month or what will make me eat there more? Data is the new gold. That is why there is a practice in the IT industry called Data Mining. We see data as a mine where we can go and mine to find out where the cold is. Where the low hanging fruit is. Is it males between the age of 25-35. Is it people staying in a specific area or earning a certain amount.
Once again, this is quite hard without a system. If you haven’t already done so. Please share your contact details below and one of our friendly consultants will give you a call to setup a consultation and help you grow your business.
Strategy 4 – Workflow
Workflow is exactly what the term suggests. It’s the flow of work from one task to the next or from one person / department to the next.
An example of a workflow is:
1. The agent receive a lead and makes the sale
2. A workflow task is then generated to the scheduling agent to setup and appointment between the customer and the technician to do the installation
3. A workflow task is then generated to the technician to go and do an installation
4. Finally the contract is activated and the billing can now commence
I always equate workflow to the slap the crocodile / frog games that you find in most arcades.
In the beginning, the crocodiles pop out slowly and its easy for one person to manage. However, as you go to the next level or get more business, the crocodiles pop out faster and faster and you just can’t slap them all anymore.
If you however assign a person to each crocodile, the whole process becomes manageable again.
Once you lead and sales process is automated the flow of work and delivery becomes your next problem and you need to make sure that you deliver a great service to your customer. This in turn will help you to sell to them again. If you don’t, you will find that clients come in the front door and leave out the back door.
We want to help you to not only get customers but also to keep customers.
If you haven’t already done so. Please share your contact details below and one of our friendly consultants will give you a call to setup a consultation and help you grow your business.
Principle 5 – Payments
Receiving money in your bank account is ultimately the validation of your sale. I can sell to 100 customer but only 90 paid. This means I have only made 90 sales.
Making the payment process fast and accessible is a key principle.
A great example that I saw of this was with one of my customer in the retail space. A credit card payment took them 2 minutes to process. Their shop was at the airport and always full of people. The problem was that most of these people was rushing to their next flight. The banks then came up with the credit card tap functionality that decreased the transaction time to 30 seconds. This ultimately account for a 30% increase in revenue.
Whether it be credit / debit cards, instant eft or debit order collections.
We can help you to collect your money faster.
If you haven’t already done so. Please share your contact details below and one of our friendly consultants will give you a call to setup a consultation and help you grow your business.
Strategy 6 – Live Dashboards
I’ve heard it said that information is power and that’s true.
The problem is that in more than 90% of the cases the person with the power is not the person with the position.
Your staff will only tell you what they want you to know about them. They don’t want to get in trouble. They don’t want to be told off.
I’ve found in my time of leading people, I have had to become a master interrogator if I want to know the real truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is however a massive source of frustration and a huge time waste.
Call centres insist onLive statistics and live dashboards.
The want to see how many
– Leads came in
– Leads have been worked
– Calls were made
– Sales were made
– Clients said no
– Wrong incorrect contact details
– Etc
They are not going to wait for the month end report and make a change in direction.
I they see the campaign is not producing the results they make changes like.
– Campaign media / wording
– Price offering
– Target market
– Staff working on the campaign
They want to see conversion rates like
– Clicks to leads
– Leads to Sales
– Presentations to Sales
The point is if you know the truth, the truth shall set you free to make the right decisions quickly.
This might sound complicated to you but in our solution we have made it so simple and have already thought about the question you will ask or should be asking.
If you haven’t already done so. Please share your contact details below and one of our friendly consultants will give you a call to setup a consultation and help you grow your business.
Written by:
Phillip De Jager Managing Director of ICS Flow
