Engaging in any form of commercial activity has become so competitive that only the best survive. Lesser outfits are usually able to hang on for awhile, but only the best thrive. In business, as in any other form of human endeavor, it takes a lot of effort to keep ahead of the pack.
The success of any business always involves efficiency – usually as compared to the efficiency of its competitors. And efficiency is no more than the effective use of resources to achieve a business organization’s goals. In manufacturing that means producing more products for less input in the form of raw materials, labor and equipment. Service oriented industries aspire to provide more service for less time, labor and material cost. Companies whose core activity is selling goods and services measure their efficiency in terms of closing rates, and reducing inputs. All types of business need to use the resources available to them in the most effective manner.
Most companies recognize that their most valuable resource is their personnel. While that is true of all companies you can think of, it is more pronounced in companies who sell products and services. Good sales people are extremely hard to find; not all people have the skill needed to close a sale. Only the most skilled sales people can be telemarketers, which is why call centers need to use this valuable human resource as efficiently as possible. Organizations, such as the Manitoba Contract Center Association, promote efficiency through training and sharing of information through their network of members.
While some people may call it pampering, preparing everything a telemarketer needs to close a sale aids the bottom line. Call centers have come to rely on various forms of outbound telemarketing software to assist their sales people with the tedious and really trivial aspects of marketing by phone lines. They do not want to waste their telemarketer’s time dialing hundreds of phone numbers per day to field a few calls to prospective clients. They use software to do the dialing for them.
More than that, they use software to pre-qualify the calls they pass on to their sales agents; they don’t just pass on a phone line when the system detects ringing at the other end. If no human answers the phone after repeated rings, the software breaks off the contact. If the software detects a fax tone it also rejects that call. But if the system detects a human answer then the call gets passed on to a telemarketer. For more on the effective use of software, click here.
Some telemarketing software for small business has features which allow the agent to read off prepared campaign scripts, so they don’t have to memorize anything. That reduces errors and makes the call center agent sound like an expert.
Most software service for telemarketing are cloud based so managers and supervisors are always in contact with their sales people. This also enables real time monitoring of the performances of each of their telemarketers. Problems are detected sooner and corrective measures implemented instantly to increase telemarketer efficiency as far as it can go.