Best calling times?
February 24, 2010
Is there is best calling time for outbound calls? The answers to this are many and varied. It all depends on your target audience and the service or product you are offering. B2B calling times tend to be business hours as you would expect peaking in the late afternoon. According to statistics, calls made offering services and products to the general public are most likely to be successful between the hours of five and seven o’clock in the evening. As I said before though, there does not seem to be a definite time for optimum calling so perhaps sometimes it is just the luck of the draw.
Statistics – Statistics – Statistics
February 22, 2010
Many companies rely on statistics such as number of calls, wrap up times, length of time on call etc. The question is how much do we actually get from these figures. You may have a telemarketer making 150 calls a day against another working in the same department making 100 calls a day. Looking at the figures it appears the first is working fifty percent harder. The actual result of these calls paints a very different picture if we then find that the agent with the lowest number of calls has a greater success rate. The lesson to be learned here is if we are going to use statistics we need to interpret them correctly and remember all is not always what it seems.
Mascots and Marketing
February 10, 2010
When it comes to marketing mascots seem to be the flavour of the decade. The most popular marketing mascots at the moment being the insurance dog “Churchill” and compare the markets campaign – “compare” the meerkat featuring “Alexandra” the meerkat. The genius of these adverts cannot be underestimated and will no doubt make the companies involved a small fortune. It has to be said that in the case of one particular advert, having a puppet, playing a puppet, bashing another puppet asking about “cheap car insurance” has to be worth some kind of award and will definitely stick in the mind.
Call Centre Failings on Customer Service
December 3, 2009
A report on a leading call centre site said that “6 out of every ten people are changing have actually switched companies because of poor service levels”. It does not specify which companies they are talking about but we are probably looking at companies providing a service such as Insurance, Mobile phones and banking etc.
One of the reasons given for this is productivity. Call centre’s and other agencies seem to be looking to their managers to increase productivity and increasingly looking at things like wrap up times, call rates and generally focusing on increased productivity without looking at levels of customer service.
I don’t think anybody is suggesting that we ignore productivity just that there is an even balance between that and the levels of customer service given.
Unwanted Calls – The worst offenders
November 26, 2009
It has been said that the average consumer receives on average 21 unwanted calls a month. The worst offenders for this tend to be organisations such as debt collection agencies, mobile phone companies and charities. Other offenders include companies that use automatic dialers and agents who do not let the phone ring for long enough before hanging up.
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!