It's For You: Telemarketing Without the Hangups
by George Duncan
One sure way to boost response rates is to support your direct mail with telemarketing. While it adds to your cost, the often dramatic increases in response - up to 300% and more - make telemarketing well worth testing.
In truth, there are many instances where telephone support is a necessity. Mail order catalogs, of course, couldn't exist without inbound telesales. Most business-to-business lead generation programs require telephone identification of the decision-maker you need to address with your message. It likely won't be the name on your mail piece. That and other factors in the lead qualification process will mandate telephone support.
Companies that sell products through seminars often find telephone followup essential. And usually more than one call is needed. Why? Because it takes a ton of persuasion to get busy people to override their schedules and physically go from point A to point B. Most of us don't have enough control over our daily lives to know what we'll be doing on a given day two weeks from now. Indeed, any time you want people to alter behavior (and have people "do" something other than send for a free trial), you'll need to provide lots of push.
Companies that develop a customer base using direct mail and telephone often find it highly profitable to cross-sell related products, make aftermarket and repeat sales and more exclusively by phone. Telephone Sales Representatives (TSRs) can develop great rapport with customers and when properly trained, compensated and incentivised, they can be a virtual money machine, as many are for companies in a wide range of categories.
There are two basic types of telemarketing or telesales; inbound and outbound.
Inbound Telesales
If you've ever ordered a product by phone from a catalog, you have a good idea of how inbound telesales works.
The TSR gets a key number from the customer, if possible, which when entered into the computer calls up the customer's I.D. information. In some systems, the zip code is enough. The TSR takes the call, enters the credit card number, maybe offers a special deal on some item, verifies the order and thanks the caller.
Calls coming from 800 numbers in ads, direct mail pieces and other media may not be so easy to manage. One way or another, the TSR must capture name, source code, address and credit card data and if the product is at all technical or complex, he or she should be prepared to answer questions, or hand off the call to a technical rep.
But an amazing amount of infrastructure must be in place for that to happen, from obtaining a toll-free number and long distance carrier to putting together the right combination of telecommunications hardware and software, personnel, training, and fulfillment.
In-House or Outsource? Your first decision will be whether to build your own in-house system or outsource the work to an experienced call center. The following rundown of key points is suggested by Cliff Lattin, Manager of Sales and Marketing for New England 800 Company, Waldoboro, Maine (207-832-0800).
Toll Free Numbers. For example, there are many alternatives to the 800# today. Should you have an 800 number, an 888, 877, 866, or 855 number? You'll want to explore the options. How about a "vanity" number (1-800-Yourname)?
Long Distance Provider. You'll need to meet with the various carriers to determine the deal that's best for you. Some long distance resellers offer better terms than the carriers. Will you operate 24-hours in-house, or hand-off overnight and weekends to an outside vendor?
Phone System. With Plain Old Telephone Service (or POTS), you purchase however many lines you need and have an operator assigned to each line with calls coming in serially. A single T-1.5 connection allows you to take up to 20 calls simultaneously. Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) distributes the calls and lets the supervisor monitor calls and provides statistics and reports.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is the term for those automated systems you encounter at banks, insurance companies, and more and more corporations where you "press one for sales, two for customer service," etc.
Costs for an IVR system can be as low as 25c -40c per call so long as the caller stays in the automated IVR channel. But if they get frustrated or worse, angry, and decide to "opt-out" to a "real person" by punching the "0" for an operator, your costs for that call skyrocket to $4.00 or more - and you've probably created a dissatisfied customer.
Computer-Based System. Issues involved in a computer-driven systems include choosing between a Client/Server or Terminal/Host system, the processor speed, memory, storage methods, fault-tolerance and redundancy and data backup.
For more sophisticated systems, you'll also want to be able to share the data between departments, maintain a relational database to slice and dice the data and import/export data from other sources. (Two weeks before my last birthday I received a birthday card from Radio Shack with a 10% discount "gift" coupon attached. That kind of database.)
Then there's the problem of staffing and training and keeping TSRs motivated - no easy task, as anyone who has run a call center will tell you. Even if you plan to build and staff your own call center eventually, it might be wise to outsource the work initially, until you've worked out all the kinks and learned the ropes yourself.
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