On Choosing a Telemarketing Call Center

I came upon this article in BNET (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3065/is_n18_v25/ai_18876664/), the CBS Interactive Business Network, and I was fed with knowledge and wisdom about choosing a telemarketing call center. Here's the full article:

Telemarketing is becoming more of a necessity than a luxury--more than 70 percent of publishers are tapping into it, according to DMA surveys. So your choice of call center is critical to the success of your campaign, and your magazine. "Our rising telemarketing efforts have everything to do with rising postal costs" says Sheila Sullivan, circulation manager of Fairchild Publications' Supermarket News. "We mail a double postcard, the cheapest thing you can put in the mail. Then we go to the phones."

Dick Marzella, circulation director of Avcom Publishing Ltd., the Woodland Hills, California-based publisher of such titles as Surfing, Car Audio and Electronics and Audio Video Interiors, says telemarketing works well, especilly for the more elusive renewals.

Skim the cream with direct mail

"I skim off the cream with direct mail," he says. "Afterwards, when I've gotten the easy renewal, I start telemarketing. I wait for those numbers to come back in, and then I go back in with a final direct-mail effort."

To facilitate the process of finding a call center, some publishers (even those with telemarketing experience) partner with a broker to shop for the most cost-effective telemarketer. To set up a campaign is often double the cost of a direct-mail effort.

Supermarket News, a 52,000-circulation paid title, launches two annual efforts that involve 10,000 calls over a 10-week period. Sullivan says working with a consultant cuts down on the stress."We know within the first few days of a campaign whether we're in the right place," she says. "That's the beauty of using a broker. If the campaign isn't working, we can switch locations."

Seek and ye shall find

Whatever path you take, plan on at least a full month of fact-finding. Be realistic about what each call center can do for you."Look at the size of the telemarketing company," advises Gail Stone, president of New York City-based PTM Communications International, a firm that places and manages telemarketing campaigns (her firm counts Fairchild as a client). Some companies require a 100,000-call minimum, she explains. "If you're doing a huge program, you want a company that can handle the volume. If your program isn't big enough for DialAmerica or Neodata, you have to look for a smaller company."

Bob Lewis, vice president of sales and marketing at Peoria, Illinois-based Magazine Marketplace Telemarketing, which currently works with 150 magazine clients, says many publishers test a firm, at least initially: "Publishers will give us half of their list to test and half to another firm, to see whether one firm outperforms the other on a consistent basis. In certain cases, firms put their best people on a test. They'll run out of the best people once you sign on as an account."

Take a close look at the pool of telephone reps manning the lines--through out the day. "A lot of companies hire part-time college students who come in when they can, which may not coincide with the time your program is going on," says Stone. "It's often hard to get that consistency."

The rest of the selection process comes down to the nitty-gritty details, like cross referencing several companies and interviewing each one. "I also suggest looking into how the call center is set up, including the ratio of supervisors to telephone service reps and how long people have worked there. The longer they stay, the better they are at selling," Stone says. "It's important to check out whether the firm has any full-time people on staff at all."

The check is in the mail

Budgeting for a call center depends largely on your magazine's circulation. While consumer publishers aim to make as many calls as possible, business-to-business titles want to make contacts within a specified audience. "You will get more people turning you down in consumer titles than business-to-business," says Stone.

So plan your billing strategy before you sign any contracts. You have three choices: Pay your call center on an hourly basis; opt for a remit cost basis where the telemarketer makes the calls, sends out invoices and collects payment before remitting a portion back to the publisher; or pay on a commission basis, where the telemarketing firm makes the calls and mails the first invoice before turning collection over to the publisher. "Some of the bigger publishers prefer to be billed hourly because if the call center makes numerous calls, they will get a fair hourly rate for their work," Stone says.

Telemarketing costs are evaluated just like direct mail, says Lewis. "We're evaluated on a cost-per-net-order--meaning how well people pay up--and we're evaluated just like a mail campaign. If you do telemarketing in-house, you have phone number-look-up costs and other expenses to factor in--just as you would factor in postage and paper. The more sophisticated publishers just include it in their budgets."

The customer always rules

Every satellite service provider should act as an extension of the magazine's day-to-day business, say the experts. "Telephone service reps have to have extensive product knowledge to give the prospect the feeling that the rep knows the product and is part of the company," Stone says.

For in-bound calls, the phone rep is often the first person a customer reaches at the magazine. "If that person doesn't welcome the customer, you can lose business," adds Stone. "The reps need to help the prospect as much as possible, so look for a firm that offers sales incentives and contests to inspire its phone reps."

To ensure continuing improvement, monitor calls remotely Lewis says his firm gets the phone reps and supervisors involved with overall product marketing, requesting that the publisher send promotional items, media kits and copies of the magazine. "We have a customer-service department, and if a reader has a problem or never ordered the magazine, we can go right back to the rep whose name is on the invoice or acknowledgment."

Service improvements can often be as simple as matching telemarketing reps with magazines that address some of their own hobbies. "If we have a hunting magazine and we assign phone reps to the account who like to hunt, we can get better returns."

Avcom's Marzella often places his own name in the phone pool to monitor reps. "When I connect with the telemarketer, sometimes I'll be contentious and see how he operator handles it. Other times I'll order the magazine and check the invoicing," he says. Ordinarily, Avcom uses telemarketing as the sixth effort. "There is a significant difference between outbound calls for renewals versus cold calls for new subscribers. Renewals lend themselves to a more agreeable audience because they're more familiar with the magazine. It's not like trying to explain the product to new customers."

Your best bet is to insist on a clause that lets you opt out of any arrangement. "Sign a contract to make sure the testing doesn't continue," says Stone. "It's a problem if you're not getting reports from your service bureau. Telemarketing companies tend not to call if things aren't going well. So, just because you aren't hearing from the firm doesn't mean things are going well."

Raise the red flag

Check the telemarketer's track record, says Lewis. "If you'd like to get a campaign up and running quickly, make sure your telemarketer isn't going to get around to it a month later," he says. "If it takes one telemarketer three months to call the names another could reach in three weeks, you might not get renewals or make ratebase."

Andrew Smith, president of Boulder, Colorado-based Aspen Media Research Ltd., a research company specializing in telemarketing for controlled titles, points to financial issues as the biggest underlying concern for any publisher, large or small. "The biggest red flag to look at is total numbers and the bottom line," he says. "Advertisers don't want subscribers who have been forced to say yes. So find a call center that takes a more holistic approach. Business depends on the magazine doing well in total, not getting through the next audit. You have to keep quality up year-round."

Here are some of the salient points that are proved to be very essential:

• Making contacts with a specific audience. Time, money and manpower must be exhausted in targeting the right prospects or decision-makers. Through this, the telemarketing call center can quickly generate easy-to-close sales leads and business appointments in Singapore.
• Contact centers ought to act as an extension of a company's sales and marketing team. A service provider is another teammate in b2b lead generation and b2b appointment setting. As such, it must act like for the goodness of the client it serves in order not to damage brand while revenues are earned.
• A track record says a lot. The outbound telemarketing firm must be experienced in calling for specific industries. Mastery of what it is doing is a pre-requisite for all service providers.

If one chooses to use telemarketing services, they should read bear in mind these information when signing up with a contact center.

Jayden Chu helps companies in Singapore and in other Asia Pacific countries increase their business revenue through lead generation and appointment setting services. He is a professional consultant for telemarketing services. To find out how you can increase your business revenue, go to http://www.callbox.com.sg/