By A.J. Windle, Director of Operations
Great outbound telemarketing companies have been evolving over the last 10 years to include chat, text and email in their communication strategy. The addition of these non-voice contacts helps increase engagement with prospects and customers. In addition, these non-voice contacts provide an instant medium to follow-up and share additional information as part of the customer care or sales process. As Director of Operations at Quality Contact Solutions, my experience has been hard-won. Here are my 5 pro tips for using non-voice contacts in the call center as part of a telemarketing program.
Non-Voice Contacts Pro Tip #1: Technology Selection
Email, Chat and Texting application set-ups can be complicated; however, they don’t have to be. Make sure you’ve done your research on what application you will be using, its abilities and limitations. Be sure to identify the ease of use for the end user. Is the dashboard clear and efficient, is there a proper tracking method and how is the information stored long term? Thinking through the answers to these questions will reduce your pain later. And my pro tip is that if you aren’t sure, talk to your peers, ask around, call us, we’d be happy to help. We deploy these Non-Voice Contact contacts for many clients in many different industries on a daily basis.
Non-Voice Contacts Pro Tip #2: Create Templates
Ensuring the quality of non-voice communication is always a hot button and rightfully so. Ensuring communications are proofed prior to sending can be challenging. My pro tip is to create canned templates and don’t allow for the templates to be edited. The use of templates maintain consistency in all communication and allows for no human error. If free form responses must be used for your written communications in your call center, I recommend queueing the messages for a Quality Assurance review before they are sent.
Non-Voice Contacts Pro Tip #3: Test the applications
I recommend thoroughly testing every aspect of non-voice contact process before going live. Make sure you understand how the process works, including what the sender and receiver experience will be. Send all templates to yourself, review for errors and note changes. For emails, send the test messages to others with various email clients to see how they display in different environments. Text yourself and ask yourself if you like the message you see, and would you respond to it. If not, adjust. This testing process is critical to ensuring successful non-voice contacts.
Non-Voice Contacts Pro Tip #4: Quality Assurance is Critical
Just like listening to live calls when a program launches your quality department should be reviewing chats, texts and emails for proper communication, errors and opportunities for improvement. If your outbound marketing team is going to be successful in the roll-out of these non-voice contacts, then quality control is a must.
Non-Voice Contacts: Pro Tip #5: Assess and Make Changes
It’s like a script that looks good on paper but when you hear it in a live environment for the first time you say, “What was I thinking?”. In my experience, non-voice contact templates are not immune to bad authorship. They looked good during the planning phase; however, if people aren’t responding to the messages then they essentially aren’t effective and need to be assessed and revised. This is time consuming however it is very important to assess and make changes quickly.
At QCS we have deploy Non-Voice contact strategies all the time with our programs and our clients love it. Best of all, we know the process, best applications to use and it’s quick. If you are interested in adding Non-Voice contact strategies to your program give us a call at 1-866-963-2889 and press 1 for sales. Or email me at aj.windle@qualitycontactsolutions.com. We’d love to help!
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A.J. Windle is the Director of Operations of Quality Contact Solutions. A.J. is responsible for ensuring every client program is successful on a daily basis, including achieving the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that matter most. With a deep call center operations background, A.J. is a hands-on leader and has built his career on creating win-win-win relationships for his team, his clients and the owner-operated call centers he is responsible for. A.J. loves to keep score and he is proud of his team’s scoreboard. A.J. knows that great leaders find a way to make sure their team wins. A.J can be reached at aj.windle@qualitycontactsolutions.com or 516-656-5106.
