All Sony operations in Europe are now using the system, which manages customer interactions whether by phone, fax, email, web, or regular mail, and which has multi-channel support for contact history, reporting, and case management. It also supports multiple languages. All the call centre workers get a “360-degree view” of customer information and accurate up-to-date information about Sony products.

The telemarketing concept has a strong central platform that is still flexible enough to adapt to the localised specific needs of different European countries. Sony says it is quite satisfied with the results, saying it has added many strategic benefits to their consumer electronics presence in Europe.

Sony says it now has the optimum business process interaction management system that will help them strengthen customer relationships and ultimately improve business growth.

All your headsets have warranties and service schedules, but does anyone in your organisation have any usable records of this information? Some may think it isn’t worth it, or that it’s easier and no more expensive to simply buy a new headset when one goes missing or becomes wonky.

However, intelligent headset management can save you some serious money over the course of a year. It’s not uncommon for telemarketing centres to spend 30% or more of their headset inventory value on unneeded replacements or repairs. But most telemarketing centres don’t have user histories for each headset, and if the telemarketing centre is spread over numerous geographical sites, management may not think it is worth the effort.

Knowing the location, status, warranty history, and age of headsets and keeping the information in a database can allow the telemarketing centre to manage headset inventory across numerous locations in real time. This can cut way down on unnecessary replacement or repairs, reducing the typical 30% loss to less than 10% over the course of only one year.

There are steps you can take to try and make sure you don’t fall into these categories. Nobody is saying don’t call if you are a charity or don’t use auto dialers but do make sure you employ enough agents to manage the workload. Make sure you telemarketers or other staff are properly trained and not hanging up the phone after 3 rings just to increase their call rate.

It’s tough in the industry at the moment and let’s make sure we do the job properly!

Now we may not think so but our emotions do come through when we are having telephone conversations. The person on the other end can generally get an idea if you are fed up or distracted in anyway. Smiling whilst you dial not only instills trust with the person you are talking to it also brightens up the conversation.

So the next time you reach for the phone remember smile before you dial – it works!

The problem then for telemarketers is getting sidetracked and mismanagement of these leads. Data should always be time-scaled in order of priority with the most likely prospects first and then filter down to the less attractive ones. The quick sell is not always the best as some of these can just as easy turn into dead ends. Some of the best leads are ones you have cultivated you could find yourself talking to the prospect 2 or 3 times before closing the deal.

Keep you eyes on the ball and don’t try juggling to many at once, this way you won’t let your leads slip through you fingers.

Telemarketing can be a hard job at times. The industry does not need badly trained people giving telemarketing a bad name to all of us.

Marketing = More people know about your company = More work = More profit = More Jobs.

That said people are now looking for better returns on their investments and want more bang for their buck.

We as telemarketing agencies have to give even more value for money services, whilst not letting this affect the quality of services we provide. Word of mouth goes a long way in this industry so we need to remember that the services we provide as professionals can reflect on the telemarketing industry as a whole. The moral of the story is to provide a good level of service and to keep our standards high. That way we all have a chance of being successful and beating the recession!

Things to look for here are:

• Samples of previous projects showing dials made per telemarketing day.
• Is the telemarketer training bespoke to a particular campaign? This one is crucial as you need to know that the telemarketers they provide are fully conversant with your products and services.
• Will they provide a team specializing in your industry?
• How do they report on outbound call results and do they provide feedback at regular intervals?
• Does the agency specialize in B2B telemarketing or B2C (Some companies do both)?
• Can you speak to the telemarketers on you campaign direct? Some companies will operate an open door policy where you will be able to communicate directly with the agents on you campaign.
• Is the campaign for lead generation or appointment setting? Campaigns are usually a mixture of both. What you need to look at here is some idea of the results you will expect to get on your campaign. An example of this would be decision maker hits out of outbound calls made.

These are just some of the pointers to look for when considering the best telemarketing agency for your campaign.