CALL CENTER CENTRAL - The OnBrand24 Blog

Clearing Away the Call Center RFP Fog

If you’re writing a call center RFP, you probably feel you’re in a tug-of-war.  Whereas you want to identify the one call center ideally suited to your particularly needs, you suspect the call centers want to be all things to all people.

But there are tricks to clearing away the RFP fog.  The first thing to do is to sharply define the assignment(s) your prospective call center will be tasked with, and then write an RFP that specifically addresses those needs.  If you’re looking for outbound call center services, get into the innards of the lead generation, sales appointment setting and sales telemarketing challenges you face.  If it’s inbound services, direct your questions to the specific customer service, order processing and problem resolution capabilities you need.  

In short: avoid generalities.  Use your RFP to force the call centers to be specific.

One way to do this is to ask questions that hold the call center accountable to the service-level promises they make.  

Let’s say you care about senior-level involvement in your program.  Instead of asking the call center whether there’s senior-level involvement (they’ll all say there is), ask them specifically how senior managers will be involved.  Ask for specifics on regular senior-level feedback/reporting on the effectiveness of your program.

Or let’s say you want access to the call center to observe its telemarketers in action.  Ask if you can visit the call center site at your desired level of frequency.

If you’re concerned about invoicing issues, such as hidden or unexpected charges, ask to see three or four invoices from the call centers’ existing clients (they can black out confidential information).

If you’re concerned about call center agent quality – and who isn’t? – ask to meet the team of agents assigned to your project prior to signing a contract.  You should also ask to hear recordings of their calls as often as you’d like.

Having said all that about specificity, there is room for open-ended questions, such as:  What is your call center’s “sweet spot” – in terms of size of client, project scale and nature of project (again, tailor the question to inbound or outbound services)?

Client retention and relationship longevity reflect a call center’s effectiveness.  When you talk to the call center’s references, ask how long the partnership has lasted.

Flexibility is another trait to look for.  For example, ask if the call center provides a 30-day trial program period that allows you to scrutinize, and cancel, the relationship.  You should also ask about program monitoring and adjustment.  Is the call center eager to measure results against goals?  How does it identify – and then accentuate – techniques and messages that generate results?

Effective call center agent training on your program is a critical issue you can use your RFP to examine.  Ask for details on the call center’s training methodology and look for substantive differences in the training approaches of the other call centers you’re looking at.  Specify the special skills and knowledge that the agents assigned to your program will need to be successful.  Include the length of time it takes to train your own sales team, and ask if the call center is willing to dedicate the time and resources to replicate your training method.  

Results and return-on-investment are, of course, paramount call center measurements.  Push them to talk about their experience with programs similar to yours, then challenge them to provide expected results ranges: revenues per week, leads per day, appointments per month, first-call resolution percentages, abandonment rates, and so forth.

A word of caution: Don’t spend a lot of RFP time and energy on the call center’s technological resources.  You can find that information on their web sites, from which they will cut-and-paste boilerplate answers.  Any call center worth its salt will have extensive redundancy and security capabilities, as well as automated results reporting.  Better to visit the call center and see their technology and their reporting capabilities in person than to ask for large amounts of detail in your RFP.

References, of course, are important.  Ask to speak with existing clients whose programs correspond to yours.  Get them on the phone and ask a lot of the questions included in your RFP:

How is call center to work with?
Are they responsive?
Are you satisfied with the lead generation / customer service results?
Have they done what they promised?

And – most important: Have they lowered business costs and improved sales revenues?

Meet OnBrand24’s New Vice President of Sales

Jeff Velodota, whose 23-year career in the call center industry spans all facets of call center operations, has joined OnBrand24 as Vice President of Sales.

“Jeff is a call center industry leader,” said Mark Fichera, CEO of OnBrand24.  “He has an outstanding record of delivering great client service – from inbound call center customer service to outbound lead generation and sales appointment setting.  We look forward to the highly positive impact Jeff’s expertise will have on the success of OnBrand24 clients.”

Jeff spent most of his career rising through the ranks at a major call center services company, beginning as a telemarketer in 1987 while a college student at the University of Connecticut, from which he earned a Bachelor of Science degree (with honors) in accounting.  He eventually became Vice President of Client Services and Sales.

Instrumental in building that company into a Top 25 call center services provider, Jeff was involved in all aspects of its business, client service and marketing operations, including implementation of advanced call center technology.  

“OnBrand24 has a great group of clients and a highly talented and experienced group of managers and call center agents,” said Jeff.  “As a leading Massachusetts call center, OnBrand24 draws on a great talent pool in the Boston area.  OnBrand24 is poised for great growth.

“I’ve always found it very exciting to partner with clients in developing the call center strategy that will boost their sales, improve customer service and customer satisfaction – all the while lowering their business costs,” said Jeff.

Outside of work, Jeff is an avid motorcyclist.  But he says his greatest passion in life is being a good father to his four-year-old son.

Welcome Jeff!

OnBrand24 Masters Many Marketing Tasks for Sappi

“R&R” usually means Rest & Relaxation – but when it comes to the call center services OnBrand24 provides for Sappi Fine Paper, it stands for Responsiveness & Relationships.

OnBrand24 is a full-service call center based in Beverly, MA, that uses a full range of services in support of Sappi, a preeminent North American producer of coated fine paper with production capacity of 1.3 million tons of paper annually.  Each year, OnBrand24 transacts hundreds of thousands of communications with Sappi customers all over the U.S. and Canada.

The OnBrand24-Sappi relationship, rare in the call center industry for its longevity, dates back to 1990.  OnBrand24 is integrated throughout Sappi’s CRM strategy – from inbound customer service, order processing and mail fulfillment, to outbound marketing awareness, to email outreach and database maintenance, to product warehousing and archiving.

The centerpiece OnBrand24 service is rapid and accurate response to specialized paper sample requests from Sappi customers, who include designers, printers, paper merchants and publishers.  Hundreds of complex sample orders are handled every day by OnBrand24 agents, who process the orders and export them to Sappi’s shipping center in New Jersey.  This requires thorough knowledge of Sappi’s product line, accurate reporting of the sample order (including brand, weight, color and size) and real-time tracking information.

OnBrand24 is measured on timeliness and accuracy, and the call center consistently measures up well.

“OnBrand24 is very reliable,” said Patti Groh, Director of Marketing Communications, Sappi Fine Paper North America.  “We depend on them to seamlessly handle the critical first phase of the sales cycle – the sample request – and also to relate to customers on a personal level that represents Sappi well and reflects our culture.”

Over the years, OnBrand24 staffers have developed strong relationships with Sappi customers.

“Some customers like to take their time, tell us about their weekends or their kids, while others are all business – they just want quick detailed response and rapid feedback,” said Mark Fichera, OnBrand24 CEO and President.  “So calls can last anywhere from 1 minute to 15.  We know how to treat each customer, how to handle any situation.  We get the order details right and we handle the relationship right, too.”

OnBrand24 also works closely with Sappi’s regional sales representatives, processing high volumes of sample orders over the phone, by email, fax or online.  Orders can be highly complex, requesting that 25 separate sample items be sent to 15 different customers.  All of them are dispatched quickly and with maximum attention to detail.

And because OnBrand24 is in operation 24/7/365, the call center is always available to provide order shipment tracking updates in real-time.

Managing Sappi’s sample order operation is just the start of the paper company’s relationship with OnBrand24.  The call center’s outbound services are used to support Sappi industry award programs.

OnBrand24 assists Sappi with two of their industry award programs, Ideas That Matter and Printers of the Year.  Ideas That Matter is an annual grant program that helps designers support and transform their creative ideas into a powerful force for social good, such as anti-smoking and environmental conservation.   The Printers of the Year award is a highly prestigious industry honor given for excellence in printed communication.  

For both, OnBrand24 serves as a “call for entries” generator, calling thousands of contacts and encouraging them to participate in the awards competitions.

In addition, OnBrand24 manages Sappi’s email outreach program, which includes maintaining their email database, updating and editing tens of thousands of customer email records and developing segmented, specialized lists.  Those lists are critical to rapidly notifying customers about special promotional offers, price changes, new products and targeted offers for market segments.

“The typical email service firm would put Sappi at the end of a queue and make them wait their turn, but we get their emails out in a matter of one or two hours,” said Cecilia Thompson, OnBrand24, Director of Major Accounts.  “Managing their emails is very detail oriented with a lot of real-time edits and alterations.  But Sappi is in a highly competitive, fast-paced industry, and that’s the kind of agility and quick turn-around they need.  We’ve optimized our operation to meet that need.”

OnBrand24 also handles brochure and literature fulfillment for Sappi promotional programs, with mailings numbering over 10,000 annually.

And the call center serves as archivist of Sappi promotional and advertising campaigns going back more than 10 years.  Hardcopy content is kept available for Sappi marketing staff or their ad agency for review of previous creative work.

“OnBrand24 is woven into the Sappi fabric – we think of them as an extension of our own staff,” said Groh.  “We have complete confidence in their ability to respond rapidly to our customers and maintain great relationships with them.  They know Sappi so well – and they know our customers so well – that they’ve become an important part of our success.”

OnBrand24 Rolls Out Soft Selling Skills for InBound Agents

Building on the strong service culture of OnBrand24’s inbound call center department, OnBrand24 has launched a new training initiative focused on enhancing the sales effectiveness of our inbound call center customer service department. We understand the value of prompt and efficient customer service. However, we also realize that our client’s business is still driven by converting every potential call into an opportunity for additional sales revenue.

Critical to inbound sales success is our call center agents using specific language to offer inbound callers add – on items during order processing, along with phrasing to convert customer inquiries into positive actions (placing an order, register for emails notices or catalogs). Agents are taught effective listening skills, including buy signals, and to positively reinforce purchase choices to build rapport.

Program measurement is extremely important because it allows us to refine and improve our sales effectiveness in real time. We conduct measurement with OnBrand24’s Telescript system, which allows us to classify every call with a specific result code and, in so doing, to monitor our conversion rate (total calls divided by sales). Examples of result codes include: Sale, customer inquiry, complaint, order status etc. OnBrand24 provides you with a monthly report outlining all of the calls taken on your behalf with the associated result codes by quantity and percentage.

OnBrand24 works with each customer to set sales goals to measure our performance. Another important component is training our staff for specific upsell opportunities with your product line. Agent contests or incentive compensation is highly encouraged at OnBrand24. Additionally, smart website design that prompts companion item sales enables our agents to sell add-ons in a helpful manner that flows naturally from our service orientation.

Our inbound supervisors continue to train agents primarily through role-playing tailored to specific clients and their marketing and sales messages. Training supervisors score agents’ recorded calls and provide specific feedback. A formal post-test allows trainers to identify training clarification needs and agents who require additional help. An incentive program provides awards for “best calls,” selected by the call agents themselves.

OnBrand24 is determined to represent each client’s brand in the way you want. We welcome the opportunity to add further value to you. And we encourage you to work with our inbound call center managers, Maura Cone and Pam Broderick, to develop your revenue enhancement opportunities.

Alpha Software Drives Product Launch With OnBrand24 Outbound Sales

So many customers, so little time… That was the challenge Alpha Software, a global leader in database application software, faced earlier this year when it released Version 10 of its Alpha Five flagship product. In the world of database apps, Alpha is nothing short of legendary. Since its inception more than 25 years ago, the company has developed a highly loyal user community that today numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

When Alpha launches a new product version, one of its biggest challenges is contacting its enormous installed base.

So Alpha assigned OnBrand24 the critical assignment of telesales market outreach to existing Alpha Five customers. The project has been hugely successful, exceeding Alpha’s expectations and leading to additional telesales assignments for the call center service provider.

"OnBrand24 has been absolutely great," said Brett Johnston, Sales Manager at Alpha Software. "We’ve been very impressed with their ability to establish a highly capable team that quickly developed a strong technical grasp of our technology and the ability to communicate new product features in a compelling way. We quickly came to regard OnBrand24 as a satellite office for us, a direct extension of our sales and marketing team."

With four call center agents assigned to the Alpha team, OnBrand24 has averaged 1,500 calls per week, selling large numbers of Version 10 along with significant sales of training DVDs, educational classes and professional services. Alpha reports an impressive 5-1 return on their telemarketing investment – for every dollar spent on the project, the company is realizing $5 in revenues.

"This was a big challenge for us, but we have talented call center agents with the technical background and the smarts to quickly master Alpha’s needs," said Mark Fichera, CEO of OnBrand24. "We are proud to contribute to a highly successful product launch for Alpha Five."

In addition to boosting Alpha revenue, OnBrand24’s outreach program also supports Alpha’s customer relations strategy. As existing users of Alpha Five upgrade from versions 8 and 9 to Version 10, their loyalty to Alpha software is perpetuated.

Alpha has received positive feedback on OnBrand24 customer service. After completing a purchase of Version 10, a customer emailed Alpha that the OnBrand24 call center agent he spoke with "was professional, knowledgeable, polite, engaging and very good at eliciting insights about the product that only come from many years of using it seriously. I can’t remember the last time I had such fun on the phone purchasing software. You would be well advised to count yourself lucky to have her representing the ‘public’ face of Alpha."

Based on the project’s initial success, Alpha has added to OnBrand24’s assignment, including sales of training products, mentoring and professional services, along with a five-day user group and training class in Las Vegas.

"Many of our customers have been with us for a long time – the Alpha user community is very tight," said Johnston. "I was amazed at how quickly OnBrand24 became an integral part of our culture. With OnBrand24, we’re selling more copies of Version 10 and refreshing more customer relationships than we possibly could on our own."

When to Use a Call Center -- and Why?

In our last post, we talked about a critical aspect of hiring a call center services provider: setting expectations for your program and holding the call center accountable.

This time, let’s move things back a step and examine when the timing is right to hire a call center for lead generation, appointment setting and sales and other outbound telemarketing functions.  Closely related to that: Why should I outsource these capabilities?

Call centers get hired when sales and marketing managers face some of the following challenges that, left unaddressed, can bring a company’s forward progress in the market to a grinding halt:

• Problem: The sales pipeline is empty, or nearly so, too often.  A good call center is a lead generation engine that knows no rest, continually replenishing the pipeline with new leads.

• Problem: The turn-over rate on the sales staff is too high due to lack of sales appointments.  Call centers keep sales staff calendars full – and keep salespeople happy and incented.

• Problem: The quality of sales appointments scheduled by the sales staff varies widely and does not reflect consistent criteria.  Call centers train their agents to adhere to strict standards for sales appointments; they work hard to avoid setting appointments that will reflect poorly on them.

• Problem: The sales staff never gets around to making enough cold calls.  Most people hate cold calling, but it’s the call center’s raison d'être.  Call center agents are naturals at it – they actually enjoy cold calling.  Good call centers do it efficiently, productively and at a low per-opportunity cost that lowers the client’s cost of doing business.

• Problem: Too many new sales leads generated by the marketing department go untouched.  Call centers can train a team of phone sales consultants and scale a telesales program to contact hundreds of leads per week.

• Problem: The few salespeople committed to cold calling tend to be slow at it.  See above.  Call centers are optimized prospecting factories that deliver efficient, productive cold calling results.

• Problem: The sales staff doesn’t have the knack of converting a friendly conversation into a sales appointment.  Call centers continually refine and improve their appointment setting technique.  They work hard at quickly establishing a rapport with prospects while moving them toward agreeing to an appointment.

• Problem: The sales staff can’t keep track of sales leads who have asked to be called back at a later date.  Call centers utilize specialized lead management programs that manage all contacts with a given lead and automatically surface the lead when the prospect wants to be called again.

• Problem: The sales staff gets tangled up in the CRM system, wasting time wrestling with the application and not enough time selling.  Call centers have technology infrastructures that optimize outbound telemarketing operations – they are specialists at keeping outbound programs humming along smoothly and efficiently.

The list goes on, but if you see yourself facing these challenges it may be the answer to your questions on when to hire a call center is quite simple: Now.

-- Mark Fichera

Call Center Check List

If you're a first-time user of a call center company you might be unsure what to expect, or ask, of your service provider.  Having been on the service provider side of the equation for many years, here's my recommended approach to hiring a call center.

The first principal: Agree with the call center provider on program goals based on measurable results.  Then, hold them to it.

Like direct mail and social media marketing, one of the great attributes of telemarketing is measurability - and, by extension, call center accountability.

So how do you keep a call center accountable?

Start by developing a list of priorities and objectives - also called a "Service Level Conformance" - that you and your call center manager agree on.  The objectives of your campaign may change as you gain better understanding of your telemarketing strategy.  If your call center lacks the flexibility to set individual performance standards for your campaign - or balks at any of these items - you should probably look for another service provider:

OK, so here's a check list:

- Results Coding: The result of every call, be it inbound customer service, outbound lead generation and appointment setting, should be coded for tracking and analysis.  This is critically important for adjusting and refining your campaign, which you should do in concert with your call center project manager.  Results codes include: Appointment Set, Forwarded Customer to Client, Answered Caller's Question, Survey Completed, Sale Completed.

- Success Rate: Depending on the type of campaign involved there is a "best outcome" call result, such as scheduling a sales call for an appointment setting campaign or completing a sale or successfully resolving a customer problem for an inbound program.  Set a mutually agreed-upon goal with your call center manager for successful calls per week or month.

- Internal Measurement: As the client, measurement of your telemarketing campaign extends beyond the call center's results report.  For outbound programs, it's smart to track the quality of their sales leads, assessing the level of interest and appropriateness for your product or service offering.  For inbound programs, code your ads and have the call center incorporate them into their results report - and then adjust your ads according to those that generate the best results.

- Cost per Call: Call centers with advanced telemarketing technology infrastructures can measure results and costs to a high level of granularity, including breaking your campaign's costs down to the individual call.  Ask your provider for project costs per call and hold him to it.

- Productivity: Similarly, the call center should provide data on call volume handled per FTE per week or month.  Productivity targets vary depending on the nature, length, purpose and detail-level of the campaign.  Work with your campaign project manager on setting productivity targets.

- Abandoned Calls: An objective measure on inbound call center quality is the percentage of abandoned calls.  Your call center should pick up calls within a pre-agreed time limit.

- Service Resolution: This is another measure of inbound call center effectiveness.  Agree with your provider on a target rate for call center resolution on first contact calls.  Target rates vary based on the complexity of the product or service involved.  Set a goal that reflects your program.

- Call Agent Availability: This is a measure of the speed with which call center agents resolve phone calls.  You want to balance speed with effectiveness.  Get your telemarketing provider to set an aggressive standard for agent availability.  

- Service Response: This is a measure of the time required to answer calls.  Obviously, the faster the better.  Your call center should validate the time it takes for calls to be picked up.

And the most important measure of all:

- ROI: This is what call centers are all about, right?  Lower your cost of doing business and boost your revenue.  For outbound campaigns, OnBrand24 clients typically realize returns of between 5-1 and 10-1 of realized revenue over telemarketing fees.  For inbound, results vary widely because campaigns vary widely - but I encourage you to press your call center for some level of ROI expectation.

That's the gauntlet you should put your prospective call center through.  If it passes, you're already well on your way to a strong, profitable relationship.

-- Mark Fichera

Why the Call Center Business Is Booming

When the history of the Great Recession (2008 - ?) is written, the sad accounts of lost jobs, shuttered businesses and general economic hardship will also include a few pockets of prosperity.  One of them will be service providers that help companies cut the cost of doing business, such as outsourced call centers.

To be sure, I'm generalizing based on my own experience.  I can't speak for the call center business overall, just OnBrand24's - and our business is booming.

Why this is happening is no mystery.  In recessions, businesses have the strong tendency to:

• Cut business costs
• Look for ways to grow bottom-line revenue
• Resist hiring new staff
• Look for ways to increase sales resources

Contradictory?  Sure.  But just as individuals in panic situations become irrational and incoherent, businesses also tend to want things that are at cross-purposes with each other.

Here's the beauty of OnBrand24: We satisfy each of those contradictory goals simultaneously.  Let's take a look:

Cut costs and grow revenue: OnBrand24 does this in many ways.  For example, at very low cost we can augment and extend our clients' customer service, providing additional hours for customers to call for assistance or to order products. On the outbound call center side, OnBrand24 can make thousands of lead generation and appointment setting calls to existing or new customers in a matter of weeks, spurring significant new sales revenue - at very low cost.

Increase sales resources without adding new staff: Companies that hire OnBrand24 add significant resources to their inside and outside sales staffs.  On the inbound call center side, we can teach a team of agents to be an extension of your brand, processing customer orders and quickly creating relationships that reduce shopping cart abandonment, improve customer loyalty and generate revenue. On the outbound telemarketing side, we can blitz your markets, generating leads, setting quality appointments, surveying your existing and potential customers or engaging in direct sales - without adding to your headcount.

Come to think of it, it's not just our call center that's thriving through the recession.  OnBrand24 is helping other companies - our clients - come through the recession as well.

That's what I call a win-win.

-- Mark Fichera

Call Center Technology – The Latest and Greatest

Good call centers fire on all cylinders:

1.    Experienced managers who devise great inbound and outbound telemarketing campaigns.

2.    Professional outsourced call center agents adept at B2B communications and sales.

3.    State-the-art call center technology.

At OnBrand24, we’ve recently enhanced Cylinder No. 3 – the central nervous system of OnBrand24 call center services.  This is part of our ongoing investment in a flexible, scalable and stable technology infrastructure capable of handling the most demanding inbound and outbound call center programs.

We’ve enhanced system reliability with a new IP vaulting and off-site disaster recovery solution, which includes sophisticated remote data backup technologies and redundant server hardware.  In doing so, we replicate our most critical business applications, which reside remotely in a data center, reducing downtime risk brought on by hardware failure or environmental factors.

Client data is moved off-site to a secure underground facility and mirrored to a second data center for full fail-over redundancy. Data stays encrypted in transport and storage, and it remains encrypted in our remote data centers, which meet Sys Trust certification as well as compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard for 2009.

This is the kind of ongoing technology improvements OnBrand24 continues to make.  Enhancements to data security, risk reduction and cutting downtime to the absolute minimum are a constant focus for us.

Whether it’s inbound call center customer service or outbound lead generation and appointment setting, we’ve got the technology backbone to support highly effective – and secure – outsourced call center programs.

Massachusetts Call Center

A call center services company is only as good as the quality of its call center agents. At OnBrand24, we have a major advantage: our agents are residents of Massachusetts, which offers one of – if not the – deepest pools of professional talent in the country.

In fact, a recent study ranked Boston the third smartest metropolitan area in the country. Historically, Massachusetts has always been brainy.  Having found themselves in an inhospitable climate and with few natural resources, the original Massachusetts settlers quickly realized they had to rely on intelligence and hard work for survival and success.

Today, the Boston metropolitan area is chock full of universities and college graduates.  Our companies lead the country in innovation, and our influence on the worlds of politics, media and culture is disproportion to our size.  

So when OnBrand24 needs to hire call center agents we have a large population of highly articulate, educated, professional people to draw on.

The result: our clients get agents who go way beyond merely reading a script. They have the ability to immerse themselves in the products, marketing messages and customer requirements of our clients. They have the professional background to converse effectively with senior-level business managers.  They have the business acumen to identify decision makers and sales opportunities.

We’ve harnessed our agents to a proven call center methodology and comprehensive roster of inbound and outbound services that make us one of the most talent-rich customer services call centers and lead generation companies anywhere.

Sure, you can go to other cities and other parts of the country for your call center services. But before you do, keep in mind what Mark Twain said after he visited Boston:

“In New York, they ask how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, they ask who were his parents? In Boston they ask, how much does he know?”

-- Mark Fichera