During your tenure in your profession, you've probably grown accustomed to hearing more negative than positive comments about call centers. That should come as no surprise.
In addition to complaints among the general public that call centers are foisting on them interactive voice response (IVR) systems and overseas agents, the perception persists among consumers that the main reason call centers exist is to engage in telemarketing. What's more, telemarketing, like IVR systems and offshoring, has earned the reputation it has because call centers often implement it poorly.
As a call center manager, you are well aware of the distinctions among customer service, outbound communication and telemarketing. You recognize that some but not all call centers do telemarketing. You also recognize that outbound communication includes, but isn't limited to, telemarketing.
Indeed, the term "outbound" can easily refer to e-mail messages or live text messages that customers receive while or after they visit Web sites. But in terms of live communication with customers, "outbound" usually connotes telemarketing. And it is in the context of live conversations by phone that we refer to the term "outbound" here.
Why are we discussing trends in outbound rather than, say, describing the latest features of predictive dialers or the newest outbound services from outsourcers? The reason is that the evolution of outbound has less to do with products and services, and more to do with why companies reach out to customers to begin with.
In their everyday lives, consumers don't generally come across schedules for agents, and they rarely discern a connection between agents' schedules and the length of time they wait on hold. But you don't need to know much about call centers to tell the difference between a good and a bad outbound campaign.
The popularity of legislation to limit telemarketing and spam attests to a fundamental problem: The manner in which companies get in touch with customers
generally reinforces negative perceptions of outbound communication, and, in effect, does more damage to companies' reputations than any legislation can.
"I believe that consumers' attitudes toward cold-call telemarketing, and the subsequent telemarketers' lack of sensitivity to those attitudes, resulted in a backlash," says Kathleen Kelly, CEO of TeleDirect International (Scottsdale, AZ), a developer of predictive dialing systems. The backlash, Kelly explains, includes both a lack of receptivity to cold-call solicitation, in addition to legislation.
As several executives we interviewed acknowledge, telemarketing can be more efficient at converting prospects to paying customers than blanketing consumers with direct mail, faxes or e-mail messages. But it's also possible for outbound efforts to be more effective if they incorporate and apply many of the principles that guide inbound centers.
Call centers that answer inquiries often seek to bridge the gap between what ought to happen during calls and what actually occurs. When a customer gets in touch with a company, it is the company's responsibility to understand and respond to what the customer says.
Responsibility is power. A call center agent has the power to influence not only a customer's view of a company, but also the customer's decision to do business with the company. That power is greater when the customer initiates a conversation than it is when a call starts off with the agent speaking.
Yet the very notion of a conversation, where agents listen to customers, is usually absent from the practice of outbound campaigns. Inbound calls require a dialogue; an outbound call is often a monologue. Telemarketing campaigns typically have one goal, which is to sell. The problem with many outbound campaigns is that they don't enable agents to convey knowledge of or interest in listening to the individuals they call. By ignoring the conventions of engaging in conversations, outbound campaigns often undermine agents' attempts to earn customers' trust, which in turn all but eliminates the possibility that customers listen to what agents have to say.
When outbound campaigns treat the individuals they call as though they are all the same, customers become inured to telemarketing, and likewise perceive one telemarketer to be indistinguishable from another. As a result, outcomes of calls from telemarketers have little, if anything, to do with the specific reasons for the calls; instead, they reflect customers' moods or whims at the moment. When companies reach out to customers, what matters most isn't the goal of their efforts to communicate; it's the execution.
Hence a recommendation from Amit Shankardass, senior vice president of solution planning with ClientLogic, a Nashville,TN-based outsourcer: "What call centers need to do less of is assuming that one size fits all."
Cold Calling Warms Up
How are companies adapting their approaches to outbound? For one thing, they're rethinking their approaches.
"In the past, they were more interested in the sale," says Frank Fuhrman, vice president of marketing with the service bureau American Customer Care (Bedford Hills, NY). He observes that telemarketers are now "starting to build rapport." (Fuhrman is also the current president of the New York Metro chapter of the American Teleservices Association, which mainly represents companies that conduct, or provide tools and services for, telemarketing.)
ClientLogic's Shankardass concurs with Fuhrman that outbound efforts are changing. "In the last few years, the focus has moved more from acquisition to retention," he says.
ClientLogic's outbound efforts typically emphasize retention over acquisition. The service bureau primarily handles clients' inbound calls, but it does place outbound calls to clients' existing customers to remind them, for instance, to renew subscriptions, including those for magazines and for Internet services. (TiVo, which pioneered digital TV recording services, is among the outsourcer's clients.)
"The hard sell is not as effective as it used to be," Fuhrman says. He adds that customers are more adept than ever at recognizing pitches from agents who read the same script regardless of whom they call. "Consumers are becoming more educated," he points out. "They're learning to say 'no' faster [and] earlier in the script."
But that doesn't mean, from Fuhrman's point of view, that cold calling is in decline among the companies he's observed. "With mail and fax responses as low as they are, they're doing cold calling, but they're doing it better," he says.
Mary Conway, senior vice president and chief marketing officer with the telemarketer DialAmerica (Mahwah, NJ), agrees that compared with other methods of outbound communication, calls present companies with the most immediate way to connect with customers and prospects. One can dispose of e-mail messages and direct mail pieces without reading them. But one can't make the decision to converse with a caller without listening, even if briefly, to what the caller has to offer.
Summing up the contrast between direct mail and telemarketing, Conway says, "Every time someone answers the phone, the 'envelope' gets opened."
But Conway is concerned about the present state of outbound. "The demand for telemarketing has gone down," she says. "It's directly related to the legislation."
The executives we interviewed have different views about the effects of do-not-call legislation. Gary Pudles, CEO of the outsourcer AnswerNet (Princeton, NJ), maintains that telemarketing is "still one of the most efficient ways of selling products and services." But he also expects that due to DNC legislation, companies will be more inclined to hire others to do telemarketing for them. "Many in-house operations are outsourcing more because they don't want the potential liability," he says.
Pudles also cautions that whether companies outsource or not, they will have to be more careful deciding whom they get in touch with. Do-not-call legislation, he says, "makes the audience smaller."
ClientLogic's Shankardass agrees. "With the outbound legislation, organizations have had to become more selective," he says. But he also believes that DNC legislation mirrors the attitudes of consumers toward telemarketers.
"Customers have become more discerning in the way they want to be serviced," says Shankardass.
Can Telemarketing Give Customers a Hearing?
With customers growing more resistant to telemarketing, and placing their names on state and national do-not-call lists, companies have had to redefine the scope of their outbound campaigns, as well as the frequency with which they contact customers and prospects.
"The universe of names has diminished significantly," says Conway. "Every name is more valuable."
Based on these two premises, the conclusion that many companies reach is that they need to seek more value from their existing customers. And that's exactly what they're trying to do.
"We have noticed clients relying less on cold calls to prospects," says Lynne Levy, principal product manager with Concerto Software (Westford, MA), whose products include predictive dialers. "Customers are also making proactive customer service a high priority," she says.
TeleDirect's Kelly observes that "customers are receiving more caring calls, where their vendors are requesting information on their levels of satisfaction and soliciting products and services that are more in line with their interests."
This practice, in her view, is more than a trend; it's a better way to communicate. Hence her advice for telemarketers: "Make 'warm calls' rather than 'cold calls' to prospects."
Indeed, telemarketers are referring to DNC legislation to provide a framework for their outreach, not only to prospects, but also to current customers.
"Corporations can call customers with whom they have an existing business relationship, even if the customer's name is on the national do-not-call list," says Sandra Wade, vice president of marketing and product management with SER, a Dulles, VA-based developer of predictive dialers, among other products. "Many outbound programs have augmented their pure telemarketing campaigns, in which they attempt to sell [or] market to new customers, to proactive customer care programs, in which they focus on customer loyalty and look for ways to up-sell their existing customers on new services."
Andrew Davidson, director of marketing with predictive dialer developer Digisoft Computers (New York, NY), notes a similar trend among his company's clients, which he says "are now looking for opportunities to mine their existing customers for new business opportunities."
In many cases, the best business opportunities involve current customers. Concerto's Levy cites examples of what companies often refer to as courtesy calls.
"When customers have an issue open with a vendor, vendors are calling them back proactively when the issue is resolved to reinforce that the customer's satisfaction is their key goal," she explains. "Another example of this proactive service is insurance companies notifying customers when their policies are about to expire so that they have the option to easily renew them."
Ultimately, the most significant development with outbound communication is the process, rather than the goal. That's because the goal, which Fuhrman characterizes as achieving "higher contact rates and lower costs," isn't likely to change.
If there's one lesson outbound and inbound operations can learn from each other, it's the power of influence. For consumers to become more amenable to listening to outbound calls, telemarketers first have to be open to listening and responding to customers.
"Don't deliver a monologue," advises Mary Conway of DialAmerica. That's not just good manners; it's good business, whether the call is inbound or outbound. As Conway puts it: "If you treat consumers well, they'll be receptive."
Where Outbound and Inbound Meet
Given the focus of this article, we're discussing inbound and outbound call centers as though the two were entirely distinct. In practice, inbound and outbound operations function in a manner analogous to the left and right hemispheres of the human brain. The two hemispheres can co-exist separately, but they are far more effective when they work together. Outbound centers need to learn from the practices of inbound centers to forge connections with customers beyond the most recent sale. Likewise, inbound centers need to learn from outbound centers how to apply what they gather from conversations with customers toward the development of strategies for cross-selling and upselling.
As Sandra Wade, vice president of marketing and product management with predictive dialer developer SER points out, in an environment in which "legislation has really diminished hard sales tactics by telemarketers, agents may need additional training to ensure a more subtle 'service to sales' approach."
Outsourcers are well aware of the benefits of combining the best of inbound and outbound. Some of the largest service bureaus are introducing inbound services to complement the outbound services they offer, and vice versa.
AnswerNet is an example of such a company. The outsourcer bills itself as the world's largest telephone answering service provider, but it also conducts outbound campaigns through several other outsourcers it owns.
AnswerNet provides outbound business-to-business services under the auspices of Methuen, MA-based Cerida, which became part of AnswerNet three years ago. AnswerNet also reaches out to consumers through S&D Marketing, a Philadelphia-based service bureau that specializes in telemarketing on behalf of cable companies. Among AnswerNet's most notable inbound efforts was assisting UNICEF in early January with handling calls during a celebrity fundraiser for tsunami victims.
