3 golden rules for a positive call experience.

This morning, I was called by a man working for a PPI Claims Management Company, asking to speak with Mr Tomblin. “That’s me” I said, “how can I help?” “Well Lucas,” he said “I’m calling about the credit agreement you recently paid off under the address at Peel Road?”

So the quick witted amongst you may have noted already that I’m not Lucas. What you probably don’t realise is that I haven’t lived at Peel Road for over 15 years either.

I mentioned to the caller that he appeared to have some incorrect information because my name isn’t Lucas.

“Yes it is!” he said, apparently confident that he knows a stranger’s own name better than they do.

“Erm, it’s not. My name’s Graham.”

“Why did you answer to Lucas at the start of the call then?”

“I didn’t, and if you want to sell me something might it be better not to have an argument with me first?”

“Oh you’re just wasting my F**cking time mate...” I heard just before the line went dead.

I shan’t share the true nature of my thoughts at this point.

It did later make me think about how many companies waste the money they spend on leads and data. Not being sure of what you’re buying and handing data out to poorly trained call centre operatives is a short cut to complaints and compliance problems. Any marketing campaign is only as strong as at its weakest element. This campaign was being conducted by a very weak call centre operative. They were dialling data that wasn’t properly opted-in and was over fifteen years old. It had zero chance of success. I’m fairly confident it generated many TPS complaints too.

A good sales organisation wants to achieve a positive call experience on every telemarketing call whether it results in a sale or not. There are three golden rules to help you achieve this:

1. Get your data right

2. Get your compliance right

3. Train your agents right...

Of course there are a thousand things to think about when getting these three things sorted so I’ve put together a Telemarketing Best Practice guide to help you do just that. You can download it here...