PCMS Contact Centre

You might have heard Christmas is coming soon, but what does that mean for a customer contact centre offering telemarketing / telesales?

Well, the results can be mixed, if your customer contact centre is offering telesales then there is every chance that sales will go through the roof if you are selling consumer products.  Telemarketing is a different beast, when appointment booking I’ve had some real gems booked in ready for the New Year, remember not everyone will be on holiday.  Where possible every Customer Contact Centre needs to think about the best use of their agents’ time.  This might mean letting more agents have holiday during this period if appropriate, I like to use the period between Christmas and New Year to prepare to hit the ground running when normal services resume.  Here are my 5 tips for making the most of the quiet period;

1.        Holidays – as I have said before, and mentioned in previous blogs, when telemarketing agents are making call after call and only hearing ‘she / he is on holiday until 4^th January,’ their motivation drops and they stop expecting any success.  If you can, let a few more agents than usual have time off so they are ready for when targets are back from annual leave.

2.       Look for the diamonds – every year without fail the majority of agents working during that period will find a diamond in the mix.  Months of searching and repeated calling will result in a Director’s PA being on holiday and the call going straight through or a much sought after prospect having a free diary during that time for a key sales appointment.  This happens every year, don’t forget this time can be a goldmine!

3.       Training – while the agents have time to think and thoughts turn to success for 2012 use the time to train telemarketing agents.  Telemarketing agents can practice new techniques, update call flows and go back through product knowledge to keep themselves fresh for 2012.

4.       Make a date with data – the success of any telemarketing contract is driven by the quality of the data.  While things are quiet use this time to revisit your data making sure contacts are up to date, best telephone numbers are held and email addresses are correct.  Time invested in telemarketing foundations will be reaped in the New Year.

Jo Bell, Commercial Director at Mortascreen, provided some eye opening statistics in the October issue of Promotional Marketing Magazine; “It is a staggering fact that data decays at an alarming rate if you consider 7,000 people moving home and 1,500 people passing away every day.  Data is often overlooked as a company asset….”

5.       Plan for success – as a manager use the time to your best advantage by planning for 2012 if you haven’t already done so.  Look for the best time for promotions, consider when extra holiday requests will come in, think about the impact of the Olympics and other sporting events on resources, look for new opportunities and think about how you can develop you team to continue the success you have built up so far.

Heidi Coles

Business Development Executive

1.        Call Centre Helper -  Article Reducing Stress in The Contact Centre.

An article I came across in Call Centre Helper “Reducing Stress in the Contact Centre” looked at the innovative technology Stressonhold have developed to measure individual stress in Contact Centres – many people do not realise just how stressful it can be working in this environment so it’s important to us that we pay close attention to how our agents are feeling about their roles.

PCMS has supported Comic Relief for many years by donating the contact centre on the night of the event to handle calls and take pledges from the public.  On the evening of Comic Relief, our phones are manned by volunteers from within the contact centre and around the business, including the family and friends of PCMS employees.  Comments from individuals who do not normally work in the contact centre usually include ‘I didn’t realise how much hard work it is on the phone’ and ‘it’s very stressful taking calls’.

Any contact centre environment is challenging in particular telemarketing.  With telemarketing in mind PCMS uses the following methods of reducing stress in a telemarketing environment;

1.        Make sure telemarketing agents make use of regular breaks –   When using a dialler agents have no or little control over the calls as they are connected, by having regular breaks agents are given the opportunity to recharge their batteries and unwind a little throughout the day.

2.       Feedback – Make sure your telemarketing agents are given plenty of opportunity to understand how they are performing.  Here at PCMS,  all agents have 1-2-1 sessions monthly which covers their performance against target and allows them the opportunity to feedback to their team leader on how they feel they are performing.  When giving telemarketing agents feedback, be honest, if they need to improve tell them but also show them how they can go about this.  If they are performing well make sure they know this too.  Stress frequently occurs when agents have no concept of how well they are doing or if they need to make improvements to get better results.

3.       Say thank you – I always make a point of thanking my team when they hit their target, when they have worked well or even if they have done a small job for me.  When your telemarketing team know they are appreciated they know what they are doing is worthwhile their job becomes more rewarding and their stress levels will reduce.

4.       Motivational games – Don’t underestimate the power of motivational games, think of the success the FISH! Philosophy has had.   The PCMS telemarketing team is currently playing snakes and ladders  based on the number of sales they get for a small prize.  The telemarketing teams are fiercely competitive and the games have had some excellent results.  By providing an element of fun in a tough telemarketing environment it breaks the tension and allows agents an outlet.

5.       Vary tasks – If possible allow agents time to carry out tasks away from the phone.  This isn’t always possible in a telemarketing environment but does allow agents a change from the usual routine.

6.       Define career paths – By their nature sales people tend to be ambitious, telemarketing agents are no different.  At PCMS when agents have completed their probationary period they obtain level one status.  After 6 months when a minimum amount of experience has been obtained they are given the option of working through the level 2 plan.  Telemarketing agents have moved into other areas of the business such as technical support after being given experience in these areas.  One of our PCMS Team Leaders, Sam Rea,  started as a level one agent and has worked through the ranks.  ‘I’ve worked for PCMS for a number of years and have been given the opportunity to work for a number of different customers and on a number of campaigns in my time here.  I’ve always had plans to progress in my career and PCMS have always supported this.  When I was promoted to Team Leader it gave me a great sense of achievement and motivated my colleagues too as they saw one of their own moving up the career ladder.’

7.       Holidays and shifts – Make shifts too long and agents become tired and stressed.  Managing shifts and holidays is always a challenging task in the contact centre environment and where possible it is good for agents motivation to be allowed the time off they want / need.  However when booking holidays or changing shift patterns remember the people who are left.  Too many telemarketing agents on holiday or off on a particular shift and the remaining telemarketing agents have to pick up the remaining target which increases the pressure on them.  Keep shifts in proportion with demand and remember the people who have to cover those on holiday.

8.       Team meetings – Regular team meeting allow telemarketers the chance to discuss future plans, air their concerns and bond as a team.  If a team are working well together, understand each other and telemarketing agents have peers to turn to if they need support or assistance should an agent feel stressed then they have the support of their immediate colleagues.

9.       Understanding – Check your agents understand why they are working in the way they are.  It is easy to ask your telemarketing agent to deliver more sales but make sure they understand why you are asking.  For example prior to the summer holiday period approaching explain to your agents that they should concentrate on exceeding their target to help them through a traditionally quiet time.  When agents understand why they are being asked to do something they are more likely to deliver the results you are asking for.  When you are pushing for results without an explanation agents can feel stressed and undervalued if they do not understand the underlying reasons.

10.   Team Leaders – When considering reducing stress in a contact centre the focus is usually placed on agents.  Don’t forget your team leaders, make sure all of the above apply to them as well as you agents.

Heidi Coles
Business Development Executive

Email Marketing: Ten Tips For A Successful Campaign is a great article for any business considering an email marketing campaign.  The article offers sound advice and tips on what to consider when planning your email marketing campaign, in addition to this here are five tips to ensure you get the best from an email marketing campaign;

1.        Add to the email.  Do not always assume interested prospects will respond by email -  follow up with telemarketing.  Remember telemarketing is a skill so use a professional telemarketing company to make your follow up calls as this gives your business the opportunity to speak to prospects directly.

2.       ‘Not right now.’  While it is vital for your email marketing campaign to generate a return on investment give the “not right now,” prospects the time they deserve.  For example if your business offers financial advice but during the telemarketing follow up to an email campaign a prospect advises their funds are tied up for another 12 months, make a note and agree to call them three months before their funds are released.  A well maintained leads diary is worth its weight in gold.

3.       Data, data, data.  Make sure any data you purchase is accurate and up to date.  When purchasing new data consider your geographical location, industry, business size and how much potential business you can really support (it might be tempting to purchase a list of 10,000 records, this will cause problems if 5000 prospects suddenly want to buy from you and you can only sell to 1000).  Sounds too obvious but make sure you ask for email addresses when sourcing data for an email campaign and if you are following up with telemarketing get the best contact number too.  If you already own a list or have a customer database or CRM but you are unsure about the quality your telemarketing provider will often provide data cleansing for an additional fee.  For more information on the importance of data accuracy check my previous blog Data Your Most Valuable Assets.  http://www.pcmscontactcentre.com/blog/2011/08/data-your-most-valuable-asset/

4.       Repeat point 1.  Resend your emails at a later date and make telemarketing call backs.  The second reminder might just be the time prospects read the email or pick up the phone.

5.       Review and tweak.  Look at the feedback from your emails and telemarketing and ask yourself the following;

a.       Did the campaign offer a good return on investment?

b.      Did prospects like the email format or did telemarketing activities provoke the greatest interest?

c.       Where sales / appointments made with the right target audience?

d.      Is my data accurate or did it cause the campaign to stall?

e.      What feedback have I received from prospects on my campaign?

f.        What should I change?

Following the above process can help you to ensure your email marketing campaigns are a success.

Heidi Coles

Business Development Executive

I was interested to read an article in last week’s Call Centre Helper Magazine by Geoff Galat, entitled “Companies losing out to poor customer experience”.  The article discussed the issue of the majority of businesses having no idea why customers abandon before they have made a purchase from their websites nor how to work to reduce this.

At PCMS we understand this is an unfortunate frustration for retailers and given the extensive experience that we have supporting the UK retail industry, the PCMS Contact Centre has developed a number of techniques to help reduce the number of abandoned sales and help businesses to  pick up more of those wavering customers.  Some of the actions we recommend are:

1. Make it easy to call you – You should have your contact number readily displayed on your site, clearly and boldly as a call to action.  If someone is struggling with your e-commerce site then if they can easily spot your contact number they are more likely to pick up the phone to get help. You have only a few seconds of the customer’s attention before they become frustrated and leave the site.  Clear and simple contact options are a must.
   
2. Make sure the calls are answered – Your contact number is only as good as the people answering the phones, and it is surprising how many times people will call a ‘contact us’ number and not be able to talk to anyone.  If nobody answers the call, most customers are unlikely to try again and will quickly defer to a competitor.  For businesses that can’t guarantee the resource to answer all calls swiftly, outsourcing this to contact centres such as PCMS means that they can ensure all calls get answered by friendly, professional agents.
3. Listen and increase sales! – At PCMS our agents are trained to know the products or services our clients have on offer so we can work with their customers to potentially increase their basket size based on their buying needs.  This should never mean pushing a customer into buying something they do not need, but rather listening to them and suggesting additional purchases that they may genuinely require such as accessories for their new item.
4. Follow up drop offs -  If your database relies on members making repeat purchases, then track the drop offs.  Telemarketing can be utilised to follow up on any members who have cancelled their orders during the process and ask them why they have chosen not to continue purchasing.  This can help to increase your sales and also allows you an insight into why a customer has decided not to purchase, enabling you to then address these issues.
5. Conduct welcome calls -  It is good practice to call new customers when they become members of your site to welcome them to your business.   This makes your customer feel valued and also helps to ensure that they are aware of when offers are available and how to make purchases from the site.  Keep them informed of the benefits of being a member.  By following these processes you set the foundations for building customer loyalty.
6. Thank your customers – Call your customers when they have placed an order thanking them for their business and asking if there is anything else that you can help them with. It’s surprising how few businesses show appreciation to their customer, so those that do are very highly rated.  Keep building relationships and customer loyalty and remember – it is three times more expensive to win a new customer than to develop an existing one.

Heidi Coles

Business Development Executive

I read this article the other day on the Call Centre Helper website and found it to be a very accurate article about the challenges and due process involved when cleansing data for yourself or for a customer.

I first started my career in the contact centre industry with a role in outbound data cleansing; I really enjoyed this role as I found cleansing hundreds of records a day successfully very satisfying.

As the article in Call Centre Helper says, all companies have a responsibility to themselves and to their customers to make sure that data is clean and up to date so as not to break any Data Protection laws, but also so as not to ’spam’ contacts who are out of date, or no longer meet the criteria of your target audience.

From a business point of view, having up to date clean data means that you can more accurately segment your target audiences and conduct sales and marketing campaigns that are more specifically aimed at target groups. This will enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns and help to reduce the number of recipients who consider your message inappropriate to them, or ‘junk’.

There is an excellent step by step guide about effective data cleansing in the linked article that I would advise anyone undertaking this task to read.

PCMS have years of experience in effective data cleansing for clients with excellent feedback; if you would like more information on data cleansing please call us on 0800 0828288 and we can discuss this further with you.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

There has been a lot of coverage in the news of the Bigger Society Policy that David Cameron and his government has brought in. Whether you agree with it or not there are certain aspects that encourage business growth and I am sure everyone everyone agrees that in a struggling economy, business growth is a necessity.

StartUp Britain is a campaign backed by Richard Branson and David Cameron, it provides advice to help people start up businesses or expand their existing business. This is achieved by providing entrepreneurs as mentors, a little like Dragons Den; the mentors provide them with marketing, legal and practical advice. The initiative aims to supply budding entrepreneurs with a helping hand to push against the economic climate which has reduced opportunities to start businesses.

I believe that this is the kick start the SME sector needs, and I encourage anyone looking to start or grow their business to participate. As well as valuable advice, the scheme provides you with priceless networking opportunities which every entrepreneur needs.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

Call Centre Helper Magazine recently commented on the use of Predictive Diallers and the negative press subsequent silent calls have received. As one campaigner commented in the article on Call Centre Helper’s website;

“There may be some who think that it would be a good thing if silent calls were limited in this way – I do not. Ofcom’s duty is to eradicate silent calls, insofar as it can, not tolerate them,” said David Hickson, a silent calls campaigner.

PCMS have always been keen advocates of quality delivery and building relationships with our client and their end customer, for this reason PCMS have avoided using a Predictive Dialler in our Contact Centre where possible. Understandably campaigns which involve large numbers of calls require a dialler but PCMS have always been keen to have each agent ready to make each call therefore ensuring each outbound call builds a solid relationship with the consumer and avoid silent calls at all costs.

PCMS have developed a bespoke Power Dialler. This dialler allows each agent to make a greater number of calls, therefore saving our customers time and money, but ensures no silent calls are made as the agent is in full command of the call.

The nature of PCMS’ outbound calling business has meant this has been a real asset to our clients who want to maintain a good reputation and good satisfaction measures with their client base. PCMS are proud of our 97% customer satisfaction score and will always drive to maintain this.

The PCMS Outbound calling team have had another great month. The team have completed a seminar booking campaign on behalf of the USA office.

The brief was simple, in the current economic climate PCMS Datafit wanted to run a seminar which would explain Microsoft Licences to a number of businesses and ultimately save them money.
The challenge was obvious. While the seminar benefitted a huge number of businesses do people really want to take time out of their day to attend a seminar when colleagues are being made redundant and businesses are closing all around them? PCMS Datafit decided professional help was needed and called the Coventry Sales Support office.
The team set to work creating a script which was both inviting and reassured the prospect that this would not simply be a nice day out at the expense of decreased working time but beneficial to saving unknown costs to their business.

With a team dedicated to seminar booking, lead generation and appointment booking the Coventry Contact Centre had the right, enthusiastic people for the job. The result being an increased number of people are booked onto the seminar compared to last year.
Delivering successful, quality campaigns, promoting products which benefit the end customer is the core of PCMS Contact Centre’s ethos. Agents were delighted to be involved in a campaign which saved customers money. One agent commented;
‘Brilliant I have booked four people onto the seminar in my last two calls; I feel I can go home happy now.’