By Tracey Schelmetic
The home agent model for telesolutions call centers has been attracting a great deal of attention as of late. Often, new trends such as these are more hype than reality: Once the mainstream news media picks up such stories (and they have been picking up the home agent story), it often means the concept is more flash than reality.
This is not the case with the home agent model, however. Increasingly, companies are expanding their hiring of home telesolutions agents. As success stories spread throughout the call center industry and the business Over 800,000 High Quality telesolutions Domains Available For Your Business. Click Here. world at large, combined with the negative press being garnered by offshore outsourcing Latest News about Outsourcing, more companies are beginning to perk up at the mention of home agents, recognizing it as a viable option to shipping jobs offshore and taking a crapshoot with quality.
Win-Win Solution
Perhaps one of the reasons the work-at-home model is succeeding so well is that it offers benefits to both employer and employee and, done properly, presents no downside. In an era of increasing traffic and awareness of the contributions of auto emissions to bad air quality, the home agent model is quite "green."
It also contributes to better productivity, as workers are not wasting up to an hour (or more) per day on a commute. The time saved can be saved for family, or extra work hours. Because it requires no expansion of physical facilities, it keeps capital expenditures down. It also tends to attract a more mature, more stable and better educated caliber of agent.
The newest player to the home agent model is Akron, Ohio-based InfoCision Telesolutions Management, which has been around for two decades and has been named among the top 10 best places to work in Ohio by the state chamber of commerce. The company has about 150 people currently on staff at home, and it's looking to expand that number.
InfoCision is having no problems recruiting highly qualified home agents. The company works closely with state and local agencies to identify qualified candidates for the work-at-home program.
Its recruitment literature informs potential workers that, "If you have mobility issues that make it difficult for you to work outside the home or are a stay-at-home parent, or if you simply want to work from home, InfoCision's work-at-home program is what you've been looking for. No telemarketing experience is necessary -- we provide extensive training and coaching via the Internet."
Fringe Benefits
As for how InfoCision's Telesolutions home agent program stands out against others, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs Steve Brubaker said it's in the way the company treats its home employees.
"The difference in our model is that our work-at-home employees have the same pay, benefits and status as those employees who work for us in our bricks-and-mortar locations," said Brubaker. "We do not use the approach of independent contractors as many others in the industry."
Indeed, InfoCision's telesolutions home agents receive full company benefits. Requirements to be a home agent include only high-speed Internet access, a decent computer, up-to-date Windows and Internet Explorer and antivirus and antispyware software.
The home agent model for call centers has been attracting a great deal of attention as of late. Often, new trends such as these are more hype than reality: once the mainstream news media picks up such stories (and they have been picking up the home agent story), it often means the concept is more flash than reality. This is not the case with the home agent model, however. Increasingly, companies are expanding their hiring of home agents.
Given the positive testimonials from both clients of outsourced home agent programs and the home agents themselves, it's hard not be positive about the trend. As home agent programs expand further, perhaps a few commuters still stuck on the Telesolutions highway will begin to notice a little more breathing room.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Aberdeen Research Examines Best in Class Contact Centers for Telesolutions International
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Contact centers that are striving to improve the experience for the customer have taken a whole new approach to customer service. No longer is it enough to offer live telesolution agents to answer phone calls. Best in class companies have implemented other support channels to enhance the overall customer experience, while also reducing costs.
Many telesolutions contact centers have also turned to virtual agents. This distributed agent strategy can be a challenge for some organizations as it is difficult to determine the right combination of people, processes and technologies that are critical to the effectiveness of the virtual call center.
According to an Aberdeen (News - Alert) survey, 63 percent of respondents are currently supporting a distributed agent strategy. These centers are seeking to increase call center efficiency while also reducing costs.
Aberdeen classified Best in Class (BIC) companies according to the tracking of their improvements in three key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs included customer satisfaction, where these companies improved by 62 percent; average call duration time, which was improved by 50 percent; and call abandonment rate, which companies improved by 40 percent.
Aberdeen also found that more than 35 percent of BIC companies have seen a greater than 10 percent improvement in customer satisfaction upon implementation of a distributed agent strategy.
This particular Aberdeen survey of more than 150 companies found that half of all respondents would upgrade their Telesolutions call center by adding distributed agents within the next 24 months. The top challenges that these companies face in such an implementation include real-time visibility and centralized management across a distributed agent strategy.
These challenges are helping to drive contact center traffic to the Web as the Internet is quickly becoming the most cost-effective tool for managing customer support issues and monitoring distributed agents. Also being considered are regional call center offices and outsourcing call centers as cost-reduction strategies.
Several common characteristics are shared by BIC firms, according to Aberdeen. These characteristics include 89 percent of BIC companies versus 67 percent of others provide Internet access to their Telesolutions distributed agents to help boost performance.
In addition, 72 percent of BIC companies versus 43 percent of others are currently using online knowledge management systems. Finally, 53 percent of BIC companies versus 25 percent of others have implemented speech,IVR and self-service technologies.
A distributed agent strategy can be managed effectively as long as measurement, monitoring and management are involved. Aberdeen has found that 35 percent of BIC companies are using call monitoring, IVR and workforce management tools to produce a minimum of 10 percent improvement in customer satisfaction upon implementing a distributed agent network.
The research firm has also found that implementing a distributed agent strategy with the right tools has help 45 percent of BIC companies to see an improvement in call center uptime and 48 percent have realized an improvement in call closure rate.
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Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
Contact centers that are striving to improve the experience for the customer have taken a whole new approach to customer service. No longer is it enough to offer live telesolution agents to answer phone calls. Best in class companies have implemented other support channels to enhance the overall customer experience, while also reducing costs.
Many telesolutions contact centers have also turned to virtual agents. This distributed agent strategy can be a challenge for some organizations as it is difficult to determine the right combination of people, processes and technologies that are critical to the effectiveness of the virtual call center.
According to an Aberdeen (News - Alert) survey, 63 percent of respondents are currently supporting a distributed agent strategy. These centers are seeking to increase call center efficiency while also reducing costs.
Aberdeen classified Best in Class (BIC) companies according to the tracking of their improvements in three key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs included customer satisfaction, where these companies improved by 62 percent; average call duration time, which was improved by 50 percent; and call abandonment rate, which companies improved by 40 percent.
Aberdeen also found that more than 35 percent of BIC companies have seen a greater than 10 percent improvement in customer satisfaction upon implementation of a distributed agent strategy.
This particular Aberdeen survey of more than 150 companies found that half of all respondents would upgrade their Telesolutions call center by adding distributed agents within the next 24 months. The top challenges that these companies face in such an implementation include real-time visibility and centralized management across a distributed agent strategy.
These challenges are helping to drive contact center traffic to the Web as the Internet is quickly becoming the most cost-effective tool for managing customer support issues and monitoring distributed agents. Also being considered are regional call center offices and outsourcing call centers as cost-reduction strategies.
Several common characteristics are shared by BIC firms, according to Aberdeen. These characteristics include 89 percent of BIC companies versus 67 percent of others provide Internet access to their Telesolutions distributed agents to help boost performance.
In addition, 72 percent of BIC companies versus 43 percent of others are currently using online knowledge management systems. Finally, 53 percent of BIC companies versus 25 percent of others have implemented speech,IVR and self-service technologies.
A distributed agent strategy can be managed effectively as long as measurement, monitoring and management are involved. Aberdeen has found that 35 percent of BIC companies are using call monitoring, IVR and workforce management tools to produce a minimum of 10 percent improvement in customer satisfaction upon implementing a distributed agent network.
The research firm has also found that implementing a distributed agent strategy with the right tools has help 45 percent of BIC companies to see an improvement in call center uptime and 48 percent have realized an improvement in call closure rate.
-----
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Telemarketing Changes
By Laura Tiffany
Next summer, the Do Not Call Registry will turn five years old. The Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and Congress are embroiled in a flurry of activity to strengthen the registry and relieve consumers of the need to re-register their numbers after five years.
Earlier this month, the House passed H.R. 2601 to cap the fees the FTC can charge to access the Do Not Call Registry of phone numbers, and H.R. 3541, which would make phone number registrations permanent rather than requiring consumers to re-register every five years. The bills also just passed in the Senate and are now headed to President Bush for his signature.
Unsurprisingly, the Do Not Call Registry isn't going away. For consumers, it's worked like a dream. Log on to , enter your number, and there's no more unsolicited telemarketing calls waking you up from a nap or interrupting your dinner. For owners who can no longer call people they don't have a previous relationship with, it's been a more difficult adjustment."There's been less [telemarketing since the registry began]. There's clearly been a change," says Cerasale. "And was actually starting prior to the creation of the National Do Not Call Registry." He explains that many call centers were already switching their focus to inbound calling, some major service centers had shut down, and the use of cell phones--which businesses can't solicit to because of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991--had already dampened the outbound calling industry.
David Goldsmith, a business forecaster and president of MetaMatrix Consulting Group, agrees the changes have been significant. "More than just lists have changed in the past few years. In technology terms and in what's happening in the world, 2003 is light years ago," says Goldsmith, who was recently the keynote speaker at the American Teleservices Association annual convention. "The industry knew that the moment the list would go active companies, would go out of business and many did. Others adapted as there is always a need for new and innovative ways to touch customers on both the inbound and outbound side of the business."
Obtaining a phone list scrubbed of numbers on the Do Not Call Registry can be cumbersome, but there are a few ways around it, including purchasing software to scrub the list or working with a call center that does the work for you. Businesses can obtain five area codes of no-call numbers for free; after that, as of 2008, each area code is $54 or $14,850 for the national list. (H.R. 2601 saves you some money on this; the amount in 2007 was $17,050.)
Turning Up the Heat
However, even if you get those five area codes for free or lay out the cash for more, you've still got to scrub it against any lists you have. This process can prove difficult for smaller businesses, and marketing experts are instead steering their clients from cold calls to warm calls.
"I work with a lot of people in network marketing and, in the past, some of the clients I worked with would get reverse directories in their neighborhood [to call,]" says Wendy Weiss, the "Queen of Cold Calling" and owner of coaching firm Weiss Communication. "What I've recommended is, instead of doing that, to think about places where their ideal customers congregate." She says one of her insurance industry clients found clients after giving a free speech on financial planning at his church. He then contacted other local churches to offer his free talk.
"So even though it would seem like a really unlikely place, he went from church to church to church, doing his talk and finding clients," says Weiss. "If you're calling from a list you're calling one person at a time. If you call an association and you book a talk, you could be in front of 20 people or 50 people or 100 people." The goal is to make that connection with potential clients, so you have permission to contact them, turning your cold call into a warm call.
Marketing consultant Michael Goldberg found a niche helping insurance companies train their employees in networking and other marketing opportunities after the Do Not Call Registry dried up their cold-calling efforts. He found his consulting bookings rose from five or so a month to 15 to 17, and he's retained by some of the biggest firms in the industry.
"One of the ways to avoid either cold calling and/or the Do Not Call list is if you're calling somebody who was referred to you or if you're calling someone that's expecting your call," says Goldberg. "So a big part of my strategy is if you set up the right connections, either in person or through introductions, then all your calls are at least warm. So you're in a much different state of mind." Like Weiss, Goldberg encourages his clients to give speeches, in addition to networking.
Recognizing Opportunities
Some see the Do Not Call list as an opportunity for better marketing, rather than a roadblock to getting their message out. Last month, Shawn Rohrer, Chad Jenkins and Sean Conrad launched MyOculus.com, a free service that allows members to choose exactly who markets to them and when.
The service was directly inspired by the Do Not Call list. Users can select their areas of interest and how they'll be contacted--if they'll accept calls on Tuesday mornings between 9 a.m. and noon, or if they're willing to receive two e-mails each month. MyOculus contacts the members on behalf of their business partners and doesn't share any information with the business until the consumer says it's OK.
"I think that people don't necessarily want an all-or-nothing proposition," says Rohrer of the Do Not Call list. "They don't want to be invisible to marketing messages, but they just want to have control. A lot of the people who have come against the Do Not Call list are trying to fight it, and we're really walking side-by-side with it."
So although the Do Not Call list seems here to stay, it doesn't have to be bad for business owners and marketers. Learn from Rohrer and his partners' positive spin on the list and become not just a marketer, but a consumer advocate, or get out there and speak and network so you can exult in the ease of warm calls over cold calls. Regardless, when you're reposing in your home, thinking of all the new ways you can market your business, at least no unsolicited telemarketing calls will interrupt your thoughts
Next summer, the Do Not Call Registry will turn five years old. The Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and Congress are embroiled in a flurry of activity to strengthen the registry and relieve consumers of the need to re-register their numbers after five years.
Earlier this month, the House passed H.R. 2601 to cap the fees the FTC can charge to access the Do Not Call Registry of phone numbers, and H.R. 3541, which would make phone number registrations permanent rather than requiring consumers to re-register every five years. The bills also just passed in the Senate and are now headed to President Bush for his signature.
Unsurprisingly, the Do Not Call Registry isn't going away. For consumers, it's worked like a dream. Log on to , enter your number, and there's no more unsolicited telemarketing calls waking you up from a nap or interrupting your dinner. For owners who can no longer call people they don't have a previous relationship with, it's been a more difficult adjustment."There's been less [telemarketing since the registry began]. There's clearly been a change," says Cerasale. "And was actually starting prior to the creation of the National Do Not Call Registry." He explains that many call centers were already switching their focus to inbound calling, some major service centers had shut down, and the use of cell phones--which businesses can't solicit to because of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991--had already dampened the outbound calling industry.
David Goldsmith, a business forecaster and president of MetaMatrix Consulting Group, agrees the changes have been significant. "More than just lists have changed in the past few years. In technology terms and in what's happening in the world, 2003 is light years ago," says Goldsmith, who was recently the keynote speaker at the American Teleservices Association annual convention. "The industry knew that the moment the list would go active companies, would go out of business and many did. Others adapted as there is always a need for new and innovative ways to touch customers on both the inbound and outbound side of the business."
Obtaining a phone list scrubbed of numbers on the Do Not Call Registry can be cumbersome, but there are a few ways around it, including purchasing software to scrub the list or working with a call center that does the work for you. Businesses can obtain five area codes of no-call numbers for free; after that, as of 2008, each area code is $54 or $14,850 for the national list. (H.R. 2601 saves you some money on this; the amount in 2007 was $17,050.)
Turning Up the Heat
However, even if you get those five area codes for free or lay out the cash for more, you've still got to scrub it against any lists you have. This process can prove difficult for smaller businesses, and marketing experts are instead steering their clients from cold calls to warm calls.
"I work with a lot of people in network marketing and, in the past, some of the clients I worked with would get reverse directories in their neighborhood [to call,]" says Wendy Weiss, the "Queen of Cold Calling" and owner of coaching firm Weiss Communication. "What I've recommended is, instead of doing that, to think about places where their ideal customers congregate." She says one of her insurance industry clients found clients after giving a free speech on financial planning at his church. He then contacted other local churches to offer his free talk.
"So even though it would seem like a really unlikely place, he went from church to church to church, doing his talk and finding clients," says Weiss. "If you're calling from a list you're calling one person at a time. If you call an association and you book a talk, you could be in front of 20 people or 50 people or 100 people." The goal is to make that connection with potential clients, so you have permission to contact them, turning your cold call into a warm call.
Marketing consultant Michael Goldberg found a niche helping insurance companies train their employees in networking and other marketing opportunities after the Do Not Call Registry dried up their cold-calling efforts. He found his consulting bookings rose from five or so a month to 15 to 17, and he's retained by some of the biggest firms in the industry.
"One of the ways to avoid either cold calling and/or the Do Not Call list is if you're calling somebody who was referred to you or if you're calling someone that's expecting your call," says Goldberg. "So a big part of my strategy is if you set up the right connections, either in person or through introductions, then all your calls are at least warm. So you're in a much different state of mind." Like Weiss, Goldberg encourages his clients to give speeches, in addition to networking.
Recognizing Opportunities
Some see the Do Not Call list as an opportunity for better marketing, rather than a roadblock to getting their message out. Last month, Shawn Rohrer, Chad Jenkins and Sean Conrad launched MyOculus.com, a free service that allows members to choose exactly who markets to them and when.
The service was directly inspired by the Do Not Call list. Users can select their areas of interest and how they'll be contacted--if they'll accept calls on Tuesday mornings between 9 a.m. and noon, or if they're willing to receive two e-mails each month. MyOculus contacts the members on behalf of their business partners and doesn't share any information with the business until the consumer says it's OK.
"I think that people don't necessarily want an all-or-nothing proposition," says Rohrer of the Do Not Call list. "They don't want to be invisible to marketing messages, but they just want to have control. A lot of the people who have come against the Do Not Call list are trying to fight it, and we're really walking side-by-side with it."
So although the Do Not Call list seems here to stay, it doesn't have to be bad for business owners and marketers. Learn from Rohrer and his partners' positive spin on the list and become not just a marketer, but a consumer advocate, or get out there and speak and network so you can exult in the ease of warm calls over cold calls. Regardless, when you're reposing in your home, thinking of all the new ways you can market your business, at least no unsolicited telemarketing calls will interrupt your thoughts
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Schedule telemarketing time for more successfule Telesolutions
by: Stan Rosenzweig
Telephone canvassing, or cold calling, is the practice of sitting down with a long list of potential prospects you've never met and telephoning them, one at a time, to learn which of them needs what you sell and then arranging to sell it to them.
Believe me, nobody likes telephone cold calling. Salesmen don't like it because they perceive that cold calls are to unfriendly, unkind strangers who would rather see you in a California kickboxing ring, going one-on-one with Governor Arnold, than see you in their offices. It's true. They are. They would.
Prospects don't always appreciate cold calls, because they are from people they don't know, asking questions they don't want to discuss. These calls are unscheduled, intrusive and sometimes can be a general pain in the South Forty.
At other times there are better Telesolutions, however, prospects do respond well to cold calls. They open up freely and give us the chance to sell them what they need.
So, here's the dilemma: If we don't like doing it, and prospects don’t always know when they like it done to them, why is it that we all MUST make cold phone calls part of our selling strategy? There are countless reasons. Here are just a few Telesolutions:
1. It's the fastest way to qualify prospects and maximize valuable selling time.
2. It’s also the fastest way to them know what we do.
3. It's targeted. It's the best way to find the decision-maker.
4. It creates a quick personal relationship with the buyer.
5. It keeps us productive when store traffic is down.
6. It reaches prospects we’ll never run across in our other selling activities.
Every time you sit down to make telephone-canvassing calls, can you clear your mind of self-doubt? Concentrate on the goal of the moment and you will find that each new day will bring you new business, will raise you to new heights in professional productivity, and will give you a great sense of personal satisfaction. Enjoy the Telesolutions
Telesolutions International
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