Question: How do I develop new inbound and outbound business?
I have been tasked with building up new inbound and outbound business for a small call centre of 16 seats. I was hoping to get some tips and advice on the best approach for this. Every thing I do at the moment is over the telephone, but who do I target, how do I approach them, and is there some kind of basic script of structure that I could adapt.
You could start by engaging female customers in a manner which recognises the differences in the way men and women respond to call centre communication.
We advise and train contact centre agents so that they interact and communicate in an optimum manner with women.
A major Insurance company client which went through this approach, and undertook Call Centre training for their agents, and has seen an over 40% uplift in sales of policies to women.
Comment by Russell Bryant — 14 Aug 2008 @ 11:14 am
Ideally we need a little more information to be able to help you, but the key thing with setting up inbound and outbound business teams are:
* clear understanding across the team of their purpose
* good best practice for both inbound and outbound calls - dialogues rather than scripts
* likely that inbound call handling will have to include sales, sales through service and or cross / upselling
* with outbound call activity, a lot of time and energy can be wasted on making calls which wont bring you the results you require. Make sure you have a campaign management process, a clear understanding of your calls - are they to gain new business or retain and grow the spend of your existing customers.
* your outbound call activity needs to be located in your overall sales process.
* training which includes all of the above ( sorry couldn’t resist that )
* good performance appraisal and call evaluation, ideally with people listening to their own calls, and being coached around how they can improve.
Comment by Diane Banister — 29 Aug 2008 @ 7:12 pm