Call Center Blog

Appointment setting – securing meetings with new prospective customers via cold calling – is one of the most challenging aspects in the entire repertoire of sales challenges.

But appointment setting is also one of the most valuable. In fact, it’s essential to keeping the sales pipeline fed and cared for. Filling the calendar with quality sales appointments is essential to healthy growth and to having a happy sales team.

What are the essentials for effective appointment setting?  Here are a few of the most important:

OnBrand24, a leading call center services provider with outsourced call center facilities near Boston and in Savannah, GA, has begun 2014 with several new client wins and the expansion of its outbound B2B lead generation and inbound customer service call center staff.

When it comes to call center services representatives, there are traits that the star performers tend to have in common. 

Hiring a call center services outsourcer for a B2B lead generation campaign is a big step for many companies. But in the end, they decide to take that step because their sales team doesn’t have enough leads in the sales pipeline and because their sales people are too busy to do cold calling themselves.

The impact of bad call center service is so harmful that it’s surprising how commonly it occurs. We have recently heard about the extreme long waits suffered by credit card holders seeking to discuss the security of their accounts after the recent Target and Neiman Marcus credit card breeches.  In situations like this, the poor customer service inherent in being left on hold is usually compounded by a second source of extreme annoyance: endless repetition of the hold message: 

“Thank you for calling, your call is very important to us, we are experiencing longer than normal wait times for customer service, please remain on hold.”

After the 10th hearing, it can be assumed most of us understand the message. And the thought occurs to most us – possibly after only the fifth hearing – that if my call is so important why am I being left on hold for so long?

In the credit card situation, we heard of one customer who put his phone on speaker, proceeded with his work, and heard the hold message for nearly an hour before his call was answered by a live call center customer service representative.

We’ve been recharging our outbound lead generation and customer service batteries with the Sandler Institute, a leading customer service, sales and management training company.

Getting “Sandler Certified” means each of our customer service and B2B lead generation specialists has undergone 50 hours of in-depth training in advanced cold calling, prospecting, account management, customer support, and phone skills.  This includes cross-selling and upselling, leveraging additional sales opportunities, putting inbound callers at ease and effectively representing our clients’ brands.

Following many years of emphasizing cost reduction, retailers are combing back to a balanced outlook that puts equal weight on cost control and customer service. Retailers are also working hard to handle the high growth and strong demands of multichannel, direct-to-consumer commerce.

This continues our series on great call center services customer service begun last week.

7. Account for wide varieties of customer types

There’s no substitute, in a lot of instances, for a telephone-based customer service. We are referring to automated customer service and order processing. Customers wanting basic service are growing more accustomed to automated

service – and some are perfectly content with it, but only if their customer service request is simple.  When the customer rejects the automated service and abandons the call it is mostly because they have a complex need and desire a more complicated service than has been offered and requires speaking to a call center services representative. That’s when you need to take a fresh look at your customer support processes to ensure they stay on the telephone long enough to resolve their individual needs.


8. Self-service cannot equate to bad service

Nearly all customer-centric environments have a form of self-service. But operators need to be sensitive to its degree of user-friendliness and how inviting, warm and human that it sounds. This is, admittedly, very basic advice, but it is essential to achieving high customer satisfaction levels. And where self-service ends, human customer service interaction – be it telephone, email response or live chat – takes over.


9. Have able call center services agents

Similarly, call center services operators with complex products and services offerings need to be sure the option to speak to a friendly, helpful and knowledgeable customer service representative readily available on the automated call agenda alternatives.  If a high number of customers opt for a live agent, managers need to be sure that there are adequate agent resources to handle the call volume – or else the service level expectation will fall, along with the company’s reputation.


10. The right call for the right call center services representative

If the right call is sent to the right representative, s/he will handle it effectively.  There is a lot of discussion these days in the call center services industry about ‘automating the repetitive tasks’, i.e. automation of customer service. It is often assumed that most, if not all, processes can be automated. However, that is not true. The degree of call center services automation should be determined with care, and can be increased or decreased based on the success threshold of the automation process. But again, in most cases, the best alternative is human interaction: the customer speaking, email or chatting with a live call center services order processing or customer service professional.