Call Center Blog

In lead generation circles these days we see discussions of the alleged obsolescence of the cold call. Here’s how the argument goes: web sites – specifically, visitors to web sites – are the primary means of identifying qualified leads. Wait for the visitors to show up and then call them, and don’t waste your time on people who haven’t shown interest in you.

Sure, outbound call centers looking for prospective buyers should reach out to web site visitors. We have several clients who have hired us for that role as an outsourced lead generation call center. We call web site visitors and then give the client’s inside sales team prospects who are interested in receiving more product information, in scheduling a sales appointment or in making a purchase.

But what about prospective buyers who don’t know about a company’s web site, or visit competitors’ web sites, or don’t know that a company’s products and services exist? These are people for whom the completely cold call can also be a great lead generation tool.

Sure, digital lead generation is highly effective and cost efficient. But relying solely on the web can be limiting. For example, small and mid-sized companies that do not have a strong keyword position may not show up on page 1 of Google when prospective customers search the web. And if you’re not on page 1 you’re nowhere.

And even for companies on page 1 of Google, relying completely on web site visitors can be misguided. What if the snippets of content that show up in a Google organic search don’t attract much attention? There may be plenty of potential customers who never bothered to click on a given web site.

For these scenarios and a myriad of others, the cold call remains an essential business development strategy requiring great cold calling talent within the call center, a solid understanding of the correct targets to go after and quality lists of potential customers.

Done right, the cold call works very well, it pays major dividends – and it should not be ignored.

Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Beverly, Massachusetts

New Savannah Call Center

OnBrand24, provider of outsourced domestic call center services headquartered in Massachusetts, is opening a new contact center facility in Savannah and has begun hiring representatives and administrators.

OnBrand24, a domestic call center services provider, and Connect First, a provider of cloud routing solutions for the direct response industry, have announced a partnership. Connect First’s Cloud Routing is a hosted solution that allows intelligent load balancing of inbound calls to multiple contact centers.

OnBrand24 call center services, as a Certified Cloud Routing Destination for Connect First, will have a distinct advantage over contact centers that are not certified destinations. Connect First’s ACD enables its cloud routing customers to better manage multiple call centers, along with a lower cost to route calls, more intelligent call routing, better answer rates and more comprehensive reporting and monitoring. Connect First provides its customers a “window” into the productivity and resource availability of multiple call centers, and enables real-time monitoring and adjustment of call routing. It’s an ideal solution for companies that use multiple internal or external call centers.

A premier domestic call center services provider since 1981, OnBrand24 offers comprehensiveinbound and outbound call center services across B2B and B2C markets. The company specializes in customer service, order processing and help desk for the ecommerce, retail, healthcare, technology, business services and manufacturing industries.

OnBrand24 is a growing, 175-seat company with facilities in Beverly, Mass. and a new call center in Savannah, Ga. All OnBrand24 agents work on-site, which promotes enhanced quality assurance, knowledge sharing, work performance monitoring and client brand reinforcement. All agents have been trained under the Sandler sales method, instilling advanced customer service, upselling and cross-selling techniques.“We are thrilled to be partnered with OnBrand24,” said Darren Prine, Connect First VP of Sales. “OnBrand24 is a true leader within their industry, and we believe they will provide tremendous value to our cloud routing clientele.”

About Connect First: Connect First is an award-winning SaaS telecommunications and cloud contact center software provider that focuses on customer satisfaction and elegant hosted solutions. Connect First offers a robust platform, designed and supported by a team of highly experienced engineers, designers and business analysts, and backed with personalized in-house customer care. Solutions include Cloud Routing, Inbound ACD, Outbound Dialing, Call Tracking, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Voice Broadcast, Disaster Recovery, Predictive Dialer, Real-Time Telemetry, CDR Reporting, Live Agent Chat and more. Through a consultative approach with each customer interaction, Connect First builds customized solutions to meet the needs of a discerning customer base. Visit http://www.connectfirst.com for more information or a free consultation with a contact center solutions expert.

OnBrand24, a leading provider of outsourced domestic call center services, has been recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of America's top 5,000 fastest growing private companies with a rank of 325 in the “Business Products & Services” category. There are more than 6 million companies in America, placing OnBrand24 among less than .001 percent of U.S. companies recognized by Inc. Magazine.

A domestic call center since 1981, OnBrand24 has been a leading call center outsourcing service with clients across the United States, New England and the Boston, MA, area. OnBrand24 delivers exceptional domestic 24/7 services. 

Customer service call center and lead generation call center services from OnBrand24 are currently utilized by more than 100 companies in ecommerce, retail, food & beverage, technology, healthcare, business services (membership, merchant loyalty and continuity), insurance and manufacturing. The company emphasizes development of customized call center programs that include the personalized attention of OnBrand24 senior management.

 “We are honored to be recognized by Inc. Magazine,” said OnBrand24 CEO Mark Fichera, who purchased the company, then known as Pike Communication, in 2005. “Our growth is based on several factors: delivering excellent call center outsourcing service customized to the unique needs of our clients; our ‘advanced agent model,’ which means we hire experienced and educated representatives; and our premise-based staffing model, in which all of our employees work on-site for better quality assurance, work performance monitoring, teamwork and knowledge sharing.”

The company offers Inbound services on both a shared customer service call center and dedicated team basis, including order processing and order taking, telemarketing, inside sales and Tier 1 help desk. 

Lead generation call center services include B2B lead generation, appointment setting, customer win-back, customer and market surveys, database hygiene, list scrubbing and telesales. 

Along with its Beverly, MA, call center, OnBrand24 will soon open a second facility in Savannah, GA.
Fichera noted that OnBrand24’s growth stems in part from the company’s emphasis on accountability and transparency. All calls are recorded, providing clients with open access to agent conversations with customers. OnBrand24 also provides detailed reports that tabulate all calls, emails and chat interactions.

ABOUT INC. Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today's innovative company builders. Total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 6,000,000 today. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com .

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For more information about OnBrand24 contact:
Doug Black
Director of Marketing
OnBrand24
dblack@onbrand24.com
978-279-9477
www.OnBrand24.com

Question: Is there anything more off-putting than scripted customer service? Answer: No, there is not. 

You contact the call center of a vendor from which you bought a watch, an insurance policy, a dishwasher or a pair of television set because the product is faulty or you need to clarify a warranty, shipping or product function question.

The customer service representative responds with what is an obviously scripted answer. 

“Sir, at this time it is not known why your TV is not working. We recommend you read the owner’s manual or go to our web site. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

The word “policy” often comes up in scripted customer service.

“Sir, I am sorry if you were told that your shipment would arrive in time for Christmas. It is our policy to not guarantee a shipping arrival date. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

In addition to inadequacy and a high annoyance factor, this kind of call center customer service misses a larger point: customer service is more than an obligation, it’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to cement customer loyalty, to sell more products, to gain referral sales from happy customers who tell their families and friends about the great service your company provides. In short, good customer service is all about engagement, about creating a lasting personal connection between customer and vendor. 

Scripted customer service kills personal connections.

My own belief is that scripted customer service agents appear to be, and usually are, under-trained. They can’t go off-script because they don’t have a strong base of knowledge about the product or service. The message this sends customers: We don’t care enough about you to staff our customer service department with knowledgeable employees.

The alternative to scripted customer service is well-trained and qualified customer service specialists. This means hiring employees who have professional experience, not entry level applicants working their first jobs. You need staff that know how to deal professionally with customers and who understand American customer service standards and expectations.

And it means training customer service staff with “dialogue guides,” which are models that help employees speak conversationally while helping customers.

Companies can either build a high-quality in-house customer service department or they can use an outsourced customer service call center.  Either way, customer service needs to get off scripts and get into conversations.

Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Call Center Services
Beverly, MA

Greatness has been described as something that doesn’t remind you of anything else. So what are the traits of a great call center agent? We admit, it’s difficult to define. We know it when we see it, and a lot goes into it. 

 Let’s look at the some of the ingredients that contribute to a great call center representative:

Innate Liking for People: At the core of great call center representatives, whether they’re doing inbound customer service or outbound B2B lead generation and appointment setting, is a basic fellow-feeling toward the hundreds of people they speak to every day. They care about and identify with peoples’ needs, they want to solve their problems, get them the information or products that they want or provide them with a solution that will address a major business need.  Agent greatness begins with caring about people.

Telephone Talent: Call center greatness to a strong degree gets down to the voice – inflection, tone and feeling. It takes talent to defuse an angry caller who demands to know why a gift for his son has not arrived by December 23. It takes talent to get a harried businessperson to listen to a sales pitch for a new software solution. It takes talent to help a frustrated customer understand how to use a complicated product. It takes talent to calm a worried family member seeking help for a substance-abusing son or sister.

Perception: Beyond liking people intrinsically and speaking with them in an engaging way, the great call center agent is interested in human psychology, in developing perception into the type of person they are talking to and tailoring their approach to that person accordingly. The Sandler Sales Institute trains salespeople on how to recognize basic personality types and ways to appeal to them. Some people are all business, they don’t care about establishing rapport, just want the facts. Others are more intuitive, they need a general appeal to an overall positive feeling about a product and a company. Still others need their egos stroked and their problems listened to. The great call center agent quickly senses the kind of individual they are talking to and delivers the appropriate customer service, order processing upselling and cross-selling or the B2B lead generation that reflects their insight.

Productivity: Great call center agents are hard working. They’re driven to answer the highest volume of inbound calls, emails or chat inquiries; they try to produce the greatest number of outbound calls; they hold themselves accountable to performance metrics; they welcome input on how to deliver quality call center services in less time.  In short, they have inner drive.

Team Player: Great call center representatives are knowledge sharers. They seek out the best practices used by others, and they readily share with team members how they solved a particular customer service or lead generation problem.

Open to Input: Few people are born great, they acquire greatness by application and continual improvement. When great call center employees go to training sessions, they are interested in what the session has to offer and they are open to suggested ways to improve their performance. 

Adaptable: Call center agents working in shared team environments need to be adept at delivering customer service for several companies simultaneously. The great ones enjoy it. They like the continual change and variety of shared team work. They quickly incorporate the lessons learned during training sessions and rapidly acquire the ability to express a company’s core sales messages and brand. Great call center agents working in dedicated teams are skilled at understanding new products and services that their client has brought on line.

The list of attributes go on, but the agent who combines excellence across these skill areas is well on the way to call center greatness.

One of the most important ways to categorize call center services providers is whether they are premise-based or virtual.  That is, do their employees work at a brick-and-mortar call center facility or from home? 

Overall, virtual employment has grown quickly in recent years, up 73 percent since 2008, according to globalworkplaceanalytics. It’s particularly prevalent in the call center industry for vendors trying to hold down costs or boost profits.

But even as new technology enables workers and companies to remain hyper-connected, a new study indicates that the virtual staffing model has significant drawbacks. A recent article in Forbes magazine offers insights into virtual/on-site trade-offs. Yes, some employees are happier and more productive working from home. But in the larger scheme of things, the advantages of premise-based outweigh the downside, chiefly in the areas of teamwork and knowledge sharing.

To quote from the article: “A healthy organization has a culture that allows the sharing of values and ideas, the formation of a corporate identity, and the sense of competitive urgency that allows a company to be agile and innovative.” And this can only be accomplished when people are working in physical proximity.
In addition, “working from home can fail to fire up remote workers in the same way as a shared company environment.”

This refers to the crucial element of collaboration and the creation of innovative ideas that happens when employees talk to each other, swap suggestions and building on each others’ thoughts.

Concludes Forbes, “…teleworking generally doesn’t work well, because corporations still haven’t solved the issues of remote learning, knowledge sharing, or firing up ideas. If that ‘magic’ is to happen, you still need office face-time.”

These insights apply to the call center industry.  Teams of representatives, working in dedicated or shared teams on inbound customer service/order processing or outbound lead generation and appointment setting, work best when they work in collaboration. Agents and program managers can swap experiences, compare best practices and share ideas in team meetings. All of this invaluable activity is impeded, or eliminated, by agents working from home, with the client suffering from the loss of collaboration.