Category Archives: Outbound call center

The agent’s notes from the call center trenches – Part 1

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by Diane Cuaresma

Working in a call center is not all fun and games as people from other industries perceived it to be.

Here, we work extremely hard. One of the obstacles we deal with is fighting off the urge of falling into sleep during the wee hours of the morning.

I have been with the call center or BPO Industry for almost three years now. I am proud to say that I enjoy working here and I see my hard work paying off. I started as sales agent at a company based in Ortigas Center, Pasig City. It was my first foray in the contact centers after a stint in teaching. Obviously, the two industries are totally different from each other. Work in a call center is a far cry from what I was once accustomed – teaching and shaping minds. Now I still make instructions but on top of it, vigorously promote services to people around the world.

As they always say – “Nothing is inevitable but change” and the only thing we can do is to adapt and to surpass challenges.

My second title within the industry was call center representative. There are 2 types of roles assigned to a call center representative – the first one is sales or doing outbound calls, and the other one is customer service, the inbound call center support.

If I were asked to choose which function I strongly prefer, I go for inbound customer support. I love dealing with callers and answering their questions. I work as an order taker and have been promoted by title in just a short span of time.

Like other professions, call center work entails a high degree of discipline, focus and determination. It takes more than just saying, “Oh, I know that person” or namedropping famous people to fast track promotion. To prove yourself worthy of bigger challenges and responsibilities, you need to stand out from the rest with the right skill sets to boot.

In my next article, I will share some of the techniques I use to succeed at work in the call center.

Career Choices in a Call Center – Part 3

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In this final installment on call center career choices series, we will discuss the different types of call centers.

Let the truth be told – there are “call centers” and there are THE call centers!

A successful career depends on choosing the right one for you. Different people require different skill sets, work preferences and attitudes.

The guide below will help you choose the RIGHT call center environment that fits you.

1) Contact center – What differentiates contact centers from the others is that instead of utilizing calls, they resolve a myriad of concerns such as fax, live chat and e-mails. They can send out e-mails (marketing/sales) or answer incoming e-mails (support, assistance, answering queries).

2) Inbound call center – Inbound call centers (as their name implies) handle inbound calls (calls initiated by the customer). These calls range from sales queries, technical support, customer complaints, and directory assistance.

3) Outbound call center – Outbound call centers focus on outbound calls (cold calls, calls coming from the outbound call center agent) to prospective customers and/or sales leads.

4) Blended call center – A blended call center is a hybrid of the above three. It combines automatic call distribution for incoming calls with predictive dialling for outbound calls. They usually enjoy “hybrid” agents who can do both inbound/outbound calls as well as e-mail and chat support.

We hope that the information will help you make the right choice in choosing a call center career that best fits you.

Career Choices in a Call Center – Part 2

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This is the second part of the Call Center Career Choices series. Here, we will discuss the call center careers in the transcription industry, and other in-demand jobs available.

3) Transcription
Jobs in the transcription call center focus on converting audio recordings and live calls into text format. Transcription jobs require excellent listening skills and accurate typing abilities.

IP Relay - IP-Relay professionals help clients who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, speech-disabled, or deaf blind to place calls to standard telephone users via a keyboard or assistive device.

Voice Transcription – Voice transcriptionists listen to recorded and live calls (conference calls, meetings) which they transcribe into text formats.

Medical Transcription - Medical transcriptionists listen to recordings by physicians and other healthcare professionals dictating a variety of medical reports, such as emergency room visits, diagnostic imaging studies, operations, chart reviews, and final summaries. They eventually transcribe these recordings (translating medical jargon and abbreviations into their expanded forms) into text form.

4) Others
These call center careers do not fit any of the above categories. They are on a league of their own.

Directory Assistance - These agents provide telephone number information to callers, and have access to alphabetical or geographical information and directories to answer questions and suggest alternate locations and spelling under which the number could be listed in.

Collection – Call center collection specialists (also known as telecollectors) contact the clients of banking and credit card companies to collect accounts on their behalf.

Medical Collection - These call center professionals contact patients and insurance companies to collect accounts on behalf of these hospitals.

Technical Recruitment - Technical recruiters source and process potential candidates who have technical capabilities, such as software programmers, network/systems engineers and Internet gurus.

Language Educators - Teaches english and other languages to online participants through a simulated classroom environment by establishing a student-teacher relationship using various teaching strategies.

In the rapidly growing and evolving world of call centers, new careers and technologies are always emerging. And there are many call center professionals out there who will answer the call and accept the challenges that lie ahead.

Career Choices in a Call Center – Part 1

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With its continued rise, the call center industry has evolved and diversified that a lot of people are now having difficulty in understanding the various call center job ad posted online.

People these days cannot tell the difference between technical support and telemarketing. All they do is that they are all taking calls.

This two-part primer will guide future call center professionals to choose the kind of career that best fits their skills and preferences. Call center jobs can be classified in four categories:

1) Support
2) Sales
3) Transcription and
4) Others

We will first discuss Support and Sales.

1)    Support
The careers in the call center’s support department have a wide variety of administrative jobs. They range from administrative work like human resources, accounting to information technology and public relations.

Back-office Support. This provides customers with back-office support to their clients. This would include administrative, clerical, data management/processing and e-mail management.

Product Support. This provides information and technical assistance regarding the client’s products.

Help Desk/Technical Support – Help Desk/Technical Support agents provide troubleshooting support for PCs, laptops, printers, scanners, and computer peripherals, as well as software issues and internet issues.

Customer Service/Care – Customer service professionals ensure that the organization they represent satisfies their customers’ needs. They are usually in charge of providing help and advice to customers using their client’s products or services; they are skilled in communicating courteously with customers via telephone and email.

Foreign Language Support – Multilingual agents provide phone support using two or more languages

2) Sales
Sales Call Center jobs focus on promoting and selling the client’s service/product to potential clients.

Inbound Sales - Inbound sales agents are responsible for answering inbound calls from interested parties with the intention of selling a product/service or taking/fulfilling an order.

They are also expected to provide outstanding customer service and answer the relevant questions of callers.

Outbound Sales – Outbound sales representatives are assigned to sell products or services over the phone to potential clients. They usually predetermine sales leads based upon a list of criteria specific to the sales requirements set out by the company they are representing.

The outbound sales representative calls the sales leads and delivers a sales presentation from a pre-written script.

In the next article will discuss careers in Transcription and Other/Miscellaneous call center opportunities.

Call Center Guerrilla 3: Advanced Guide for Outbound Agents

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by Arthur Kevin Rabago

In the last article, we discussed the basic strategies and tactics you can use to become a successful outbound call center professional. Today we will look at the different tools used to crack even the most uninterested prospects.

If you want to become a successful outbound call center professional – you have to remember two things.

Be persistent. Be polite.

Many outbound calls end in disaster because the caller did not have the patience or was not polite enough to the prospect.

Being persistent and polite may seem very simple, but in reality it is really hard to apply these principles in the high pressure environment of outbound sales.

Using the above mentioned principles, here are some tips you can use to crack even the most difficult prospects:

Listen carefully to what your prospects say and explain anything that is not clear. Ask them to elaborate by using prompts such as “ok,” “mmm-hmm,” and “what else?”

Use terms they can understand, avoiding the use of jargon they may not recognize.

Avoid drawing prospects into a long-winded discussion of what you can offer them until you thoroughly understand what they want or what they need. Use probes to gather this information and avoid being too assumptive of what they need.

Recognize that objections are a natural part of the process.  It is common for a customer to express several objections before they make the final commitment to purchase.

Never take these objections personally and do not assume that it means the other person is not interested. Understand that your prospect will likely have specific concerns about making a decision.

Hint for the sale. The goal here is you do not pressure your prospects into making a decision, so they will not be offended by your request.

Be subtle, have the confidence to ask for the sale many times within the call (the worst that they can do is say “no”).

Be polite. Many prospects want to be given permission to make a decision and look to the caller for that permission.

Again, never assume too much, as the maxim goes: “To assume too much equates to making an ass of you and me”

To sum it up – Polite persistence differentiates the most successful outbound call center professionals from the amateur.

They are not afraid of rejection, and don’t give up at the first sign of resistance. They know when to stop. (No one really likes annoying callers).

Hope this helps you in getting more sales.

The final installment of this series will cover The Zen of Call Center Success.

Call Center Guerrilla 2: Survival Guide for Outbound Agents

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by Arthur Kevin Rabago

In the last article, we discussed inbound call handling tactics. Today we talk about surviving the perils of being an outbound call center agent.

As an outbound agent, you have two important goals – To close a sale and to meet your target.

You will do this through cold calling, and more often than not (it can really be frustrating) to both the caller and the party being called.

Sometimes, it is a matter of making the right call at the right time. Skillful outbound call center agents have several tricks up their sleeves to stack the deck in their favor. Here are some of the best practices that successful outbound agents use:

1. Persistence – Outbound call center professionals pitch a product or service, and client initially declines. Although the prospect may not sound interested in the beginning, the determined agent remain unfazed from asking.

2. Options, Options – The agent pitches several options to entice the prospect and close the sale. That offer may be in the form of a discount, free item and the like.

3. Never Say Die – True-blue outbound call center professionals are relentless; they refuse to give up. No matter how many times prospects say “no”, they will continue offering alternatives until they finally persuade them and close the sale.

Of course, agents have to follow the engagement rules set by their campaign (DNC, no rebuttal, etc). As previously discussed, outbound call center professionals can use a modified version of the WASP technique. In this case, it is called GASP.

G: Greet
*Greet the caller properly
*Introduce yourself, and state the purpose of your call

A: Ask – Collect Information
*Ask questions relevant to the product or service you are pitching
*Probe on what the prospect wants. Look for hints
*Observe the prospect’s reaction

S: Supply – Give Information
*Give the prospect information about the features of the product or service
*Provide pricing information
*Entice prospects by telling them the benefits of the pitched product or service

P: Part – Close the call
*Ask the prospect about taking advantage of the product or service today
*Close the call. Make the sale. If you fail to close it, at least you have a potential lead.

Be careful not to annoy potential customers too much. Some people give up too early in the sales process every time they hear a few “no’s” and decide to turn their attention elsewhere (that’s where your soft skills and sales training come into play). It is the responsibility of the agents to convince the potential customers to make a decision. They cannot expect them to make the decision of getting the product or service on their own.

Next article: Call Center Guerrilla 3: Survival Guide for Outbound Agents.

Call Center Guerrilla 1: Inbound Call Handling Tactics

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by Arthur Kevin Rabago

After rebooting your résumé (finally getting the attention of the call centers) and surviving the interview process, you have finally landed a call center job. Then what?

In this installment, we will discuss and simplify the call handling process if you are assigned to the service that handles inbound calls.

How you handle these calls spells a difference between an irate and a satisfied caller.  In this article, we will discuss the WASP method in handling inbound calls.

WASP stands for:

W – Welcome, A- Ask, S – Supply, and P –Part. Here’s how you do it:

W = Welcome
*Greet the caller properly
*Introduce yourself

A- Ask = Collect Information
*Ask questions
*Probe on what the caller needs
*Observe the caller’s reaction

S – Supply = Give Information
*Give the appropriate response (based on the established call flow procedure)
*Try to answer the caller’s concerns
*Provide the information the caller needs
*Empathize with the caller (if necessary)
*Escalate the call, if you cannot resolve the issue in your own

P -Part – Close the call
*Ask the caller if you have resolved his/her query
*Inquire if he/she needs anything else
*Close the call- confident that you have made another caller happy

Hope this helps.

Stay tuned, the next installment will be “A Survival Guide for the Outbound Call Center Agent“

Dissecting the Call Center Job Ad

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by Arthur Kevin Rabago

Some job seekers think that they meet the minimum requirements for the job. The reality is – They may need some improvement in some areas. In this installment, we will analyze a typical call center job ad and discuss what call centers are looking for in candidates. Let’s look at a typical ad:

Call Center Agent

Requirements:
Excellent command of the English language
Aggressive or strong personality
Strong tolerance to stress and pressure
Flexible in terms of work schedule

Now, let us discuss what kind of message the call centers want to convey in the ad:

1) “Excellent command of the English language” – Call centers are not just looking for candidates who can speak and write English. They are looking for people who have great verbal and written english communication skills. Job seekers must have excellent grammar, great voice quality, impeccable spelling skills, as well as the ability to convey their thoughts articulately (both verbally, and in writing).

Knowing how to speak in English is not enough. Candidates must show language mastery.

2) “Aggressive or strong personality”  – Call centers are all about KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and KRAs (Key Result Areas). Your targets may be based on sales, average call handling time, accuracy of information among other things. Successful call center professionals have that go-getter attitude. They walk the extra mile and have a “never say die” attitude when it comes to accomplishing their tasks.

Aggressive call center professionals push themselves to the limit. They exert their best effort all the time.

3) “Strong tolerance to stress and pressure” – A call center career is not for the faint of heart. There will be instances in the day when they encounter rude and unreasonable callers. If one wants to be a great call center professional, he or she must have a strong tolerance to stress, maintain their cool and composure amidst a pressure, and to meet their targets in spite of these obstacles.

4) “Flexible in terms of work schedule” – Working in a call center is not a bed of roses. Not everyone is cut-out to become one. It might even require work during weekends or holidays, and on shifting schedules. Believe it or not: Some people prefer this setup. As long as the candidate is open minded, and can adapt quickly to flexible work schedules, then there is a bright future ahead of him or her in this field.

Sometimes, it pays to do research, and read between the lines when looking at the job ads. They will help you find the best match for your skills and preferences, ensuring a successful career in the call center industry.

Call Center Lessons: Constant Career Changes

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by Arthur Kevin Rabago

In the fast moving world of the call center industry – many agents now have a fear that their constant hopping from one call center to another call center may affect their chances of career growth based on the employers’ opinions regarding career “butterflies.”

The truth of the matter is – not everyone is lucky enough to land their “perfect job” on the first try. It is a matter of luck – and a period of trial and error before you can land a career that best fits your skills and interests.

There are two schools of thought on this issue. On the one hand, some employers view candidates who frequently change jobs as an indicator of a candidate’s instability or incompetence. On the other hand, frequent job changes can also demonstrate ambition and achievement (the person is so good that he got “pirated” by the competition).

In my opinion, it is important for all call center professionals who experienced this to take a step back and look at whether each job change in their call center career indicate they are becoming better or have sought out greater challenges.

Companies often do a background check on their candidates’ past companies, contributions and performance level – to shed light on an applicant’s potential value to their company (who is planning to take the risk of hiring a potentially unstable candidate).

The other side of the coin shows the many reasons that could motivate an individual to change call center jobs, some of which are beyond their control (company closed down, expectations were mismanaged, zero growth, etc).

In addition, longevity in a company does not always equate to stability and competence (i.e. employee Y has stayed with company X for a period of 5 years but has shown no growth, or contributed anything to the organization during that time).

In the end, don’t let constant career moves dampen your enthusiasm. Call center careers can be comparable to relationships – it’s not a matter of who you met first but a matter of finding the right one for you.

Call Center Lessons: The Tools of the Trade

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by Arthur Kevin Rabago

Two woodcutters happened to be working near each other in the forest one day.

While they were both about the same age, one woodcutter was much smaller than the other one. But they both were strong and experienced.

In between, they took a 15-minute break for every two hours they worked.

As the sun was setting and the day’s work was nearing an end, the bigger woodcutter noticed that the smaller woodcutter had chopped more wood than he did.

Bewildered, the bigger woodcutter exclaimed “I’m bigger than you, and we worked in the same amount of time – how come you have accomplished a lot more work than I did?”

“Simple,” said the smaller woodcutter. “Whenever I rest, I take the time to sharpen my axe.”

This story conveys the message that we can never expect to perform at our peak level, day after day, year after year, without honing our personal and business axes and saws on a regular basis.

If we continue cutting the wood of life day after day without sharpening our skills, someone else or some other company will outperform us.

The work in an inbound and outbound call center is evolving. Continuous Improvement is the name of the game if we want to be “cutting edge” in everything we do. Let us keep our saws and axes sharp at all times.