My line of business – the outbound call centre manager

This month, we profile Lee Gurton, outbound call centre manager at the outsourcer Converso Contact Centres

I’m a born salesman. Well that’s what everyone has always told me, so I guess it’s natural that I’m now in the role I’m in. When I was younger, people often described me as ‘cheeky’ and I think it’s this daring, ‘never say die’ attitude that’s helped me in my career. I always thought I wanted to be a fireman, maybe just to prove everyone around me that I wouldn’t go in to sales. But here I am, in charge of outbound calling campaigns for a 200-seat call centre in Southend.

My first taste of call centres was six years ago when I worked for a large bank. To be honest, it wasn’t the best experience and like many other call centre positions, offered little hope of progression. The customer services work itself was fine, but I knew that the hierarchy that existed there would ultimately preclude any form of advancement via the call centre.

Soon after, I joined Converso as a business-to-business (B2B) telemarketing associate and it was here I began to learn my trade. There couldn’t have been a greater contrast with my previous role. First of all the atmosphere was completely different, with everyone being treated the same, from a temp through to director level. How many contact centres do you know where the directors know 90% of its 200 staff by their first name?

The fact that no matter what your position in the company, your view and opinion is always asked for and truly valued, means a lot – and it certainly brings out the best in people. I think it also helps people to relax and really feel at home. Most visitors to the call centre are often surprised by what they find: plenty of smiling faces and a real buzz of positive energy.

How starting at ground level has helped me

When I started at Converso, I went through its standard induction, which is backed up by the Investors in People initiative, followed by an introduction to ‘product and service’ knowledge and sales techniques.

The training team then helped me, like all our beginners, to develop a script that worked best for me.

The fact that I’ve ‘come through the ranks’ has certainly helped in my current role because I can identify with every member of my team, whether they’ve just started or they have a year’s experience. I must say, I really enjoyed my time as an outbound caller, mostly because of the thrill of making tough sales.

It’s not easy outbound calling, and because of initiatives such as the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and BT Privacy, there are now fewer and fewer people to call. But I still believe it is one of the most fruitful, cost-effective and direct methods of achieving sales. What is noticeable is how the introduction of more compliance has actually helped the telemarketer. Being FSA registered, Converso works on behalf of many financial services companies and, because of new rules and regulations, it actually makes the agent’s life easier because the customer is more aware of the detail of the actual product or service, so they are less likely to change their mind later. Compliance helps you to qualify a sales lead.

I’ve been in charge of all outbound campaigns for about a year now, and I can honestly say that no day is ever the same, which is why there isn’t another job I’d prefer to be doing at this moment in time. Each day varies, according to how well campaigns are going. My goal is to always meet and exceed customer expectations and some days it’s harder to meet targets than others.

You might have one day when a campaign just doesn’t seem to be getting the right results, so you need to talk to the team leaders to understand what might be going wrong. Sometimes, I will take over from the team leader and do their job for a couple of hours, giving them time out to analyse areas such as call recordings, data, individual agent performance and so on.

There are many reasons why a campaign might not work. For example, it might be because the script needs adjusting, or the calling list or calling time isn’t appropriate. Years of experience have helped both Converso and me  to understand what works and what doesn’t.

Take the time of calling, for instance. We will never call on a bank holiday, we check when certain areas might be watching a big sporting event, even check on the weather report in a particular region. Ensuring that targets are met constitutes the biggest part of my job, and it’s my responsibility to do whatever it takes to achieve this.

Putting in the hours

On paper, I work 40 hours a week, but the reality is somewhat different. It’s not about the hours, it’s about the results. And if that means working the occasional 9am to 9pm day, then that’s what we do. The Converso philosophy is one of everyone pulling together. We work hard but we also play hard too, and there’s always someone around to  congratulate you or reward you for going that little bit further. In fact, there is a continual stream of extra-curricular activities planned, whether it’s meals out or fishing trips. Everyone mixes, no matter what job they have. Indeed, over 80% of Converso’s management team has come from the floor.

After three years I myself had become a team leader, and at this point I decided to take a short break to do some travelling. From this perspective, the contact centre industry is quite flexible, and it was great to have the ability to take three months off, travelling through Europe, America and Australia.

In hindsight, the experience helped me mature and it also helped me to understand different cultures and meet people from all walks of life. This certainly helped me when talking to people in the call centre and I even got the chance to work as a call centre representative in Australia, which again helped me to hone my skills. It was quite
a challenge trying to sell to a different market, and because they are quite used to receiving telemarketing calls, you had to be far more imaginative in your approach. Interestingly, at Converso, we recently managed a campaign on behalf of an American company, who had hired a UK operation specifically to speak to US consumers. This worked extremely well, because the English accent was a way of standing out from the hundreds of other calls that they receive. The campaign was an overwhelming success.

We usually have three, what we would class as major, campaigns running simultaneously, with some smaller projects too. Traditionally, Converso has had strong experience in business to consumer (B2C) outbound work, but we are focusing on developing our dedicated B2B team now too, so I am also responsible for overseeing the recruitment and training needs that have to be tailored to this area. I’m in charge of three team leaders, a training manager and also the dialler manager, so part of my day is often spent speaking to all these people so we can all work together to make the campaigns work.

When I moved from being a telemarketer to team leader, the role changed slightly because I was less involved in actual calls, and more in face-to-face communication with the team. I really enjoy this aspect of the job, trying to get the most out of people, incentivising them and getting them to work as a team. I do miss the phones sometimes, but I often step in for colleagues, as do even the directors, if we need to cover for staff shortages.

As for the future… although I’m happy with the role I have now, I have ambitions for greater responsibility. Converso is one of the fastest growing companies in Essex, so as the company grows in the UK or overseas, I would like to become, say, area manager or perhaps get the chance to travel abroad to manage a call centre there.