Whether it is dealing with seasonal business cycles, launching a new marketing initiative, or reaching out to new customers in Covid-19-afflicted times, a temporary telemarking campaign has the potential to ably support your business in its quest for sales and revenue while bringing distinct cost advantages. Outbound call centre services have successfully complemented ATL efforts like ads to boost the revenue of companies in the past. Adding it to your marketing basket can lend teeth to your campaign by bringing a new dimension to the mix.
Why Telemarketing Is Different
Telemarketing has been in existence for decades now with a history dating back to 1957 when the first telemarketing firm, DialAmerica, was born. Telecalling entered mainstream marketing in the 1970s although it acquired its present form only in the 1980s.
In 1981, the total expenditure on telemarketing exceeded that of direct mail marketing for the very first time marking an important milestone in its history. It has continued to remain an integral part of marketing ever since then despite several ups and downs over the years. The Covid-19 epidemic and the resultant emphasis on social distancing norms has once again shifted the focus on telemarketing by allowing businesses to reach out to leads and customers remotely while also bringing the personal touch.
Telemarketing brings with it a number of clear advantages making it an effective lead generation tool for a variety of B2C businesses. Some of the advantages are:
- Taking your marketing campaign across borders and geographies (increasing your sales territory)
- Building a personal rapport with the customer
- Ability to clear customer doubts then and there
- Cost-effective marketing solution
- Measurable results
Call centres can be in-house or outsourced, temporary or permanent depending on the needs and requirements of the business.
Key Metrics
As an industry that has been around for decades, the call centre industry uses a number of well-established metrics to reveal information about the performance of the department/company/agent and help in devising suitable strategies that make the campaign more effective. Metrics are slightly different for inbound and outbound processes due to each having separate parameters.
Below we list some of the key metrics that are used to measure the performance of outbound call centres. Analysing these numbers will give you important insights into the performance of your telemarketing campaign.
- Conversion Rate: It refers to the number of successful calls in proportion to all calls made. A good conversion rate could be defined in a number of ways depending on the nature of the campaign, such as deals closed, appointments booked, survey questions answered etc.
- Calls Per Agent: It tracks the efficiency of individual agents. A high figure indicates good work efficiency and a better chance of success.
- First Call Close: The number of deals that are closed during the first call. The first call is probably the best time to close a deal as follow-up calls tend to have a low success rate.
- Call Quality: It entails listening to and rating a pre-determined number of live calls to assess the quality of the interaction. Agents may be rated on parameters such as sticking to the pitch script, politeness, building rapport etc.
- On-Call Rate: The amount of time spent by an agent on calls vis-à-vis the amount of time spent between them.
- Hit Rate: The number of calls placed by the agent expressed as a proportion of the number of calls that were successfully connected.
- Hold Time: The time that passes between the customer picking up the call and the agent speaking to them. Thanks to automated dialling, customers and prospects often find themselves waiting for the agent to come online after picking the call. Companies should ideally aim to have a hold time of zero.
- Abandoned Call Ratio: The ratio of calls where customers have hung up due to prolonged hold time.
- Average Call Length: The average duration of calls, as the name suggests. It is often related to the length of the pitch. Pitches that take too long risk having a low chance of success.
- Revenue Per Successful Call: It refers to the revenue generated due to a sale and helps in the calculation of ROI. There are several ways to increase this metric. For example, the agent may offer a second product at a discounted price along with the first to add to the revenue and enhance this parameter.
A Word About Benchmarking
Depending on the process, companies may give more prominence to some of these metrics and lesser prominence to others. The benchmarking of metrics is derived from comparable outbound processes in the initial phase but the activity creates its own benchmarks with the passage of time. These benchmarks are used to evaluate performance and improve efficiency through the modification of techniques and practices.
Operational Metrics & Business Outcomes
One of the key issues with call centre metrics is that they are so vast and extensive that they often eclipse the main point of initiating the telemarketing campaign—which is boosting sales. For instance, one may put too much emphasis on average call length to the detriment of other KPIs like Revenue Per Successful Call leading to agents passing up the chance to upsell the product and resulting in business losses. These incidences point to the need for a balancing of traditional metrics with business outcomes to ensure optimum benefit from the campaign.
Utilising the services of a temporary call centre gives maximum flexibility while offering a cost-effective way of reaching out to customers through the use of well-trained short-term call centre staff. With the coronavirus pandemic restricting people to their homes, a temporary call centre is a perfect tool to reach out to potential leads over geographies and territories while being easy on the pocket. Temporary call centres give you access to a pre-trained, scalable workforce that is eager to prove themselves and ready to hit the ground running. An understanding of the metrics mentioned above can help you run a successful telemarketing campaign with a firm eye on results.
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