Key principles
- Put your customer first
- Place your customer at the heart of your calling process
- Respect their rights and requests – particularly their right to say NO
- Experience your processes and practices from the perspective of your customer
- Take time to understand how your service comes across and resolve any practices you would find inappropriate
- Be honest and fair
- Make clear, honest and open two-way communication central to all practices and processes
- Foster excellent communication
- Share information as appropriate to enable excellent communication
- Be consistent, clear, easily understood, relevant and up-to-date in all communication – whether spoken, written or electronic
- Encourage conversation over conversion
- Be careful when setting timeframes for outbound calling
Encouraging shorter talk times may well be counter-productive – but on the other hand, your customers should not feel ‘hostage’ on the phone either
Find a careful balance and build some element of flexibility into your agents’ efficiency targets
- Deliver what you promise
- Do not overpromise at any stage: whether through goal-setting or through the commitments your agents make to customers
- Only deliver what can be achieved realistically and in a fair, positive manner for both agents and customers
Add value to your customer and brand
As with any channel, your telemarketing campaign is a vital part of your whole brand development and reputation.
Give careful thought to how you can complement and advance your brand or campaign goals through the one-to-one interaction you design.
- Create a positive customer experience
Identify the most impactful communication that ensures your prospect or customer remembers your call for positive reasons.
- Integrate messaging with other marketing
Strategise your telemarketing communication to integrate with any other advertising that may be taking place for the same product or service.
- Support brand development
Ensure that the messaging, tone and specific details of your telemarketing campaign supports and enhances other channel communications and brand development.
For example:
- Script language and phrasing that fits with the brand being promoted
- Select agents whose personality is most appropriate to the brand’s persona
- Pitch your approach to suit for the product you’re promoting
- Brief agents on other marketing activity
Thoroughly brief your agents on all other marketing activity for the same product or service so that they can deliver a more effective and informed offer to your customer.
- Add extra customer benefit
A good quality call will mitigate the inconvenience to those you don’t convert, so look for a benefit to make your call beyond your primary sales objective.
For example, offer a customer services tag to the end of your call, such as: “Okay, I understand that you are happy with your existing car insurer at the moment, but while you are on the line is there anything I can help you with? Would you like to check the balance on your account?”
- Avoid high pressure telemarketing
High pressure, aggressive campaigns can lead to high staff attrition rates and distress consumers who feel they are being treated in a robotic manner, not as individuals.
Conversion rates
- Define acceptable conversion rate
Define the minimum conversion rate acceptable for your campaign, based on both profitability and the likely customer impact or annoyance factor.
- Stop campaign below acceptable conversion rate
You must monitor the conversion rate and pause your campaign if your minimum conversion rate is not being met.
- Define for different segments
Consider conversion rates in the context of specific data sets.
- Define for different data sources
Rates will differ between warm and cold calling and between different data lists selected.