Companies often partner with a call center for outbound telemarketing or lead generation programs. Many firms also include sales and credit card processing for a growing number of products and services.
For sales and marketing activities, ask yourself when was the last time you heard your sales staff say they “liked” cold calling? A call center can be the perfect way to leverage your sales and marketing efforts. Using a call center for lead generation or appointment setting allows your sales staff to focus on additional qualification and closing sales on pre-qualified prospects. However, it is critical that you have a strong partner that properly reviews all leads before submitting them to you to ensure they are truly qualified. A good partner will also employ appropriate email, direct mail and other tools such as social media and online chat to supplement their efforts
One level up is to have the call center complete the sale for you too. Many centers have the experience and the appropriate systems in place to handle sales from simple to complex, including answering pre-sales questions, order customization and payment processing. Payment processing requires that any service you use is PCI compliant and follows all applicable guidelines.
But is using a call center the right option for you? If you have an existing call center you will want to analyze the cost and time to staff and support an in-house center versus using a third party provider. Changes in technology, leveraged resources and economies of scale have made third party call centers more cost effective than ever. You only pay for the services when used, making it much easier to scale your campaigns. In house staff must be paid whether they are working or not. Recruiting, training and managing telemarketers will demand an increasing amount of your management team’s time should you keep the function in-house.
The level of sale complexity will have a major impact on finding the appropriate call center. As the complexity of the product increases, it becomes particularly important to put in place proper operator training, easily accessed product sales information and properly integrated order processing software. Highly complex, long sales cycle products are typically not a good fit for this type of model. However, a call center may have its place at specific steps in the sales process for answering questions or directing prospect traffic to the appropriate staff within your company.
These are just some of the many ways a third party call center can help you support and expand your enterprise. Whether its marketing, sales or customer service, a third party call center can help you focus on the core elements of your business and more easily adapt to changes in demand.