May16

Response Rate and You

What is response rate, you ask?

Response rate is a measurement used in many forms of marketing. It is used to determine the success or failure of many campaigns, of many different varieties. It measures the responses to surveys, direct mail, website traffic, and most importantly telecommunication campaigns. I am going to attempt to make this varied, potentially complex, and useful metric straightforward, simple, and still useful. To do this, I will be focusing primarily on the telecommunications side of it.

Response rate is pretty well self-explanatory in its meaning. It is the rate at which contacts respond compared to those who do not. It is most often measured in a percent of “yes” compared to the sum of “yes” and “no.” Sometimes it is measured regardless of opportunity, so any record or call that gets connected, gets measured. Sometimes it is just a measure of certain responses. Sometimes it is a combination of factors, but, alas, I drift from simple. So for the sake of the rest of this, we are comparing Closes to RPCs (Right Party Contact/Decision Maker), as that is the response rate I have the most familiarity with.

If we use the same example from my prior entry (10 contacts an hour in a program, and a 30% conversion rate on those contacts), this works out to be 3 “yes” answers and 7 “no” answers per hour, or 3 closes per hour. Now to determine if this is a good response rate, we need a proper number to compare it against. If we compare this against direct mail, or websites, both of which average less than 2%, then we are winning. But if the list we have and the room is doing 55%, then 30% is significantly less positive.

So let’s get a baseline. If I am the one making the calls, my baseline is determined by the room, or goals that have been set by for the campaign. I want this number as high as possible, because that would mean in the example above, if I increased my response rate to 35%, I would be getting 3.5 closes per hour or an extra close every 2 hours. This is a great way to increase my performance, while still driving results, helping the company and the client and making my own ego bigger. The increase in response rate, in this case, is a great metric for my job, and the higher my response rate gets, the higher my baseline gets.

Now that is all well and good for the person making the calls, but what about the person making the target baseline for a job. How are they to decide what is good and what is not?  Without stepping into things that start getting very complex, this is figured out most simply by considering one of two motivations: need or money. When dealing with needs, it is done based on what the company needs to do to hit client goals, when dealing with the money, it is based on what the company needs to do to not lose money based on money invested into the campaign and labor, while delivering against an anticipated ROI. An example would be if I have a list of 1,000 people and my client needs 200 closes. Assuming I am only going to get a hold of 50% of the contacts, I would need a response rate of 40% to accomplish client need. In the same scenario, I paid $400 for the list and am paying someone $100 to call it. If I make $100 off of each close, at a 1% response rate I will break even, so whatever my target is, it needs to be above that.

That pretty much sums up response rate, how it can impact your success, and how it can fast become an important metric for success.

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Adam Critchfield Author: Adam Critchfield View Comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
 

May14

HOW TO Handle A Difficult Employee Situation

We’ve all had challenging situations with employees, some that have gone well and others that have provided great learning opportunities. In a Conversational Marketing™ firm with around 225 employees, I have seen my fair share of these instances, and learned a bit about how the handle them. Here are some highlights to keep in mind the next time you have a challenging employee situation.

1.) Listen first. Many times a disgruntled employee is that way because their opinion simply has not been heard. Maybe they are challenging a specific policy or a disciplinary action (and maybe they should) and want to be sure their side of the case is heard. Give them this opportunity. It almost always diffuses the situation.

Keys: Say things like, “Help me understand why you’re so upset”, or “What is it that’s bothering you?”

2.) Ask for understanding. Once someone has vented, attempt to summarize their concern back to them in a simplified way. “So you’re upset because you were disciplined according to the attendance policy, and you disagree that you violated it? Is that correct?”

Keys: The challenge in this phase is not to be placating or condescending. It is critical to communicate your understanding back with real empathy. If you aren’t truly trying to understand their concern, it will be apparent to them.

In most cases, I have found that disgruntled employees are powered by an underlying issue that comes out in the Listening phase of the exchange. They are having trouble with a relationship outside of work, financial challenges, etc. I don’t typically include that as part of the summary, but take special notice of it as it may influence the tone of your response.

3.) Educate. Help them understand the deeper reasons why that policy/procedure/process/measurement exists. It is often difficult to see situations through other people’s eyes, or consider all sides of any individual situation. As a manager, your role is to help educate why decisions are made at a higher level and, ideally, why they benefit the employee.

For example: “I understand as one individual person it doesn’t feel like your absence makes a big difference, but in the relationship with our client, we are making commitments about the amount of customers we will service, and the exact days/times in which we will do it. The purpose of the attendance policy is to ensure we provide great service to our clients, and make sure our employees’ jobs stay secure.”

Education is NOT saying, “Well, that’s the policy.” As a front-line employee this may be one of the most degrading management phrases of all time. It reminds us of our childhood, and our parents saying “Because I said so.” Every company has bad policies. Look at an employee’s complaint as an excellent opportunity to reevaluate them.

4.) Define next steps, specifically and with a time frame attached. Many times this process draws out new actions on both sides of the conversation. There is additional research to do, or a claim to be looked into. Clarify these, in writing, and set a day and time to reconvene, ideally less than a week later. If there is any risk of missing that meeting, notify the employee in advance. By documenting the next steps (and keeping them) you are reestablishing the trust that may have been lost when the discussion arose. By setting a specific time frame, you are increasing the likeliness that the challenging situation will stay calm until you are able to resolve it.

Image Credit: http://www.michaelnichols.org/page/3/

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Author: Sam Falletta View Comments | Tags: , , , , , ,
 

May08

Call Monitoring to Ensure The Shoe Fits

Let’s face the facts: we didn’t get to the positions we are in now by not having exceptional motivational and persuasion skills.

Granted, it takes far more than great conversational skills and influence to have a successful career in management. However, those two skills can greatly influence a potential new hire to accept a position that just may not be for them. Every time you persuade or “sell” someone on a position that is just not in their wheelhouse, you increase your cost per graduate and dilute the effectiveness of your training program for those candidates for whom that the position is a perfect fit.

Oftentimes, recruiters get excited about being able to “sell” the job to a candidate or convince someone to give it a try. This likely comes from a previous position where they had to use these same sales skills to be number one or always be in the spotlight. Now that they have been promoted to a recruiting position, those skills may just turn out to be one of your most costly avenues for adding post-graduate employees to your team.

In addition to a set interview process with consistent questions for every candidate, I believe in having the potential new hire monitor calls in the specific program or industry for which you are interested in hiring them. This is where you and the candidate really find out if the shoe is going to fit. I like to explain to my interviewee that this is as much of an interview for them as it is for me. Meaning, I want them to interview me too. It’s critical that our company and position are going to be a good fit for them. It’s also critical that they believe in the cause and feel comfortable having conversations about it every day. Nearly anyone can talk a position or a cause up so much that it would be extremely difficult for anyone to say no to the opportunity.

When you allow your candidate to listen to live calls, from your contact center, seated in the booth with an actual Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME), they get to see it and hear it first hand. There is no opportunity to screen for only the best and most heartwarming customers. You can’t predict if you are going to get a do-not-call request or an irate customer/donor. You may get a customer/donor that is so happy with the conversation they just had that they ask to speak with a supervisor, simply to compliment our Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME). You never know for sure what is going to happen during that live monitoring session, but you know it will be real, and it will be representative of what the potential new hire will encounter on a daily basis.

It’s important to allow the candidate some space or freedom when in the contact center listening to calls. Let them talk to your CME. Let them ask some questions. If your CME is trained well enough and the proper incentives are in place, you don’t need to worry too much about their numbers slipping during this process because they manage themselves even closer than you manage them.

If at all possible, ask the CME for their opinion of the candidate or if the candidate asked them questions or did anything that they felt was a red flag or maybe a sign of excellence. It’s also critical to ask the candidate, “What did you learn from listening to (CME Name)? Do you think this is something that you could do every day?” If they say yes, ask a follow-up question, “What makes you feel that way?” Ask the candidate what they noticed or learned about the system we are working in or the screens that the CME was navigating through. Try to find out if they are intimidated by them or excited about them. Talk about the environment and the diversity of the team. Try to get a feel for how well this candidate will work in an environment like that or how comfortable they are with it. There are lots of different questions or tactics you can use after live, desk-side call monitoring, but I’m sure you get the point. It’s a great screening tool for you and for your potential new hire!

Once you have completed that part of the interview, then move on to the rest of your standard interview and use all of the info to make an informed decision and ask that your candidate do the same. At the end of the process, everyone really just wants to know if the job is right for all parties. In other words, does the shoe fit?

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Dave Walter Author: Dave Walter View Comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
 

May04

HOW TO Improve Efficiency in Your Phone Calls

Former NBA coach Pat Riley once said, “A particular shot or way of moving the ball can be a player’s personal signature, but efficiency of performance is what wins the game for the team.”

The message here can be applied to many facets of life, both at home and at work, but for now we will focus on work. Particularly, we will focus on work at a contact center, and even more specifically contact center work at the Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME) level and how minor gains in efficiency can lead to larger wins for your team.

One of the easiest places to increase efficiency in telecommunications is to decrease the average handle time (AHT) of the calls; this can be applied to both inbound and outbound calls. By doing this, you will be able to increase the number of calls you (as a person or a group) can handle. We will get into the numbers in a bit. By increasing the number of calls, you increase your contacts, and with more contacts come more closes!

The first step in decreasing AHT is to understand the basic components of AHT. It is often looked at as the total of the time spent talking to a connected call, and the time spent after that call is disconnected until you are ready to take your next call. The first part is referred to as Talk Time (time talking), while the second half is your Update Time (time updating a record – sometimes called After Call Work, or ACW). The sum of these numbers is our Handle Time, the average of our Handle Time, is our…wait for it…average handle time.

So if we spend 5 minutes talking to a customer, and 2 minutes updating the record, we have a Handle time of 7 minutes. If we make 6 calls, and they have a handle time of 7, 5, 8, 10, 4, and 6 minutes each, then our AHT is about 6 minutes and 45 seconds, or 400 seconds.

The quickest place to make changes to this is in the update time. Changes in the update time should have little impact in the quality of the conversation, so they should have little to no impact on the conversion rate. Let’s take a look at how lowering your after-call work can benefit you as well as your team.

Consider that you are averaging 10 contacts an hour in a program, with a 30% conversion rate on those contacts.  Your average talk time is 5 minutes, and the average update time is 1 minute. In a 6-hour shift you are spending an average of 1 hour updating records. If you can reduce your update time to 30 seconds, you can increase your contacts by almost a whole contact per hour. At that 30% conversion rate, you would average 1.5 more closes than you would have otherwise – all without sacrificing quality of the phone call.

Now, 1.5 closes in a 6-hour period may not sound like a lot – and individually I would agree – but it is still more without increasing the actual time put into the work. Also, if looked at on the team level, if we apply those same numbers across the board for a team of 25, we see an additional 37.5 closes, all with just a minor increase in efficiency.

We still want to make sure that we are having productive conversations, that we are not removing our players’ signature shots. And that can be done. If we work on updating records while we are having our conversations, this can be accomplished with relative ease. Start looking at what gets updated after the call is ended; look to see what can get updated while still on the call; work with your supervisors; or if you are a supervisor, work with your people to identify where these changes can be made.

This one small change can help your team score more points, and win more games.

Image Credit: http://rudyvidal.net/2009/04/average-handle-time-a-good-metric-for-whom/

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Adam Critchfield Author: Adam Critchfield View Comments | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
 

May02

Training is an Investment, Not a Screening Tool

If you want your training program to truly Talk Results, make the necessary investments in the training curriculum to focus the entire process on development, not screening.

Candidate screening should be conducted prior to a position being offered. I bring this point up, because all too often I interview people who tell me about their horrible experiences at a former employer or another potential employer. I hear about the 5-minute application process, the few moments of questioning that is considered the interview – if they even do that much – and then the candidate is scheduled for “training.” In most of these stories, “training” consists of an hour or two in a room with a few others that were just dragged through the same experience, lectured about the highlights of the program they are about to call, and then they are thrown to the sharks to either sink or swim.

This approach is a screening tactic where only the most experienced or fastest to adapt have a chance of meeting what is then considered the standard to stay employed. This creates a bad experience for the new hire, the customers they speak with during this sink or swim process, the client they are calling on behalf of, and, in most cases, the company using this tactic.

At Incept, we believe in screening potential new Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) during the new-hire process and only selecting the best of the best. Once that selection process has been executed, then it’s time to really invest in our new family members! Training starts by setting expectations for the new member of our family. Expectations of what they can count on from our trainers, as well as what the company and the trainer will expect from them. They learn the history of Incept, the history of the client and industry they will be having conversations for, the internal workings of our company, and then the client-specific/program-specific knowledge.

We don’t focus only on the “necessary” parts of the knowledge. We make sure each and every Conversational Marketing™Expert (CME) is just that – an expert – by the time they are done with training. After all, if we expect people to have good conversations on behalf of our clients, they are going to need ALL of the info and be capable of having a true conversation – that can’t always be scripted.

Training consists of a nice mix of lectures, interactive styles, role playing, job shadowing, navigating screens and systems, call monitoring, and group coaching sessions, just to name a few. In addition to these tactics, we have some secret ingredients as well, and just like KFC, we can’t give up all of our secrets… : )

When a new Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME) joins the ranks at Incept, they get a minimum of two full weeks of training. For some of our conversations, you may feel that is a bit of overkill. We respectfully disagree. We work very hard to find exceptional people and then even harder to keep them! Training is the first step to building a solid relationship with your new team member. And it’s a relationship that is started on a foundation of knowledge, support, information, and encouragement, all designed to create world-class performance for our clients, our company, and our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs)! Short learning curves lead to early success, and early success leads to massive reductions in turn over and even larger increases in morale.

If you want your training to Talk Results, make the investment! You won’t be sorry.

Image Credit: http://www.marines.mil/unit/hqmc/hr/Pages/EEO_Training.aspx

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Dave Walter Author: Dave Walter View Comments | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
 

May01

Why Should Your Company Be Using Instagram?

Starbucks is using it! So are Pepsi and CNN. But should you?

Since Facebook purchased Instagram, a lot more attention has been focused on it. Should you join the crowd? Here are some reasons why your company/brand should be using Instagram:

Use Instagram to Create Conversations

Developing a new product? Have a big event coming up? Tell your story through pictures, and watch the conversations sparked by them. Show your customers what is going on behind the scenes as things develop!

Use Instagram to Educate About Your Company

Want your customers to have a better idea of who you are? Tell them with pictures! Show them what makes your company unique, fun, different, etc. This also brings a more humanized element to your company, which is always a bonus as people like to interact with people! That is what social networking is all about anyways!

Use Instagram to Tell Your Story

Where did your company start? Use photos to explain that story. Share photos from the first year your company started through today. Show where you came from and how you got to where you are. In addition, encourage your followers, employees, etc. to do the same. Ask them to share their photos of your company/brand!

Image Credit: http://allthingsd.com/20120409/breaking-facebook-to-acquire-instagram-for-1-billion/

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Becky Weiand Author: Becky Weiand View Comments | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
 

Apr27

HOW TO Improve Your Organizational Speed

Much like driving a winding road at night our current economic conditions are uncertain and, it’s challenging to know what’s around the next corner.

Yet, we are all being pressured to increase our organizational speed or we’ll be passed by other companies traveling the same road. One question that leaves many of us with is, how do I speed up without wrecking?

Here are a few options:

  • Know where the guardrails are. By defining the specific metrics where you know you may be in danger, and communicating those within the organization you’ll have a clearer sense of how much road you have to work with
  • Increase your sight distance. If you can see further down the road, you can increase speed without fear of losing control. Using a Board of Directors, peer network of CEOs or joining a Vistage group all provide extra vision into the future
  • Increase speed when the road’s straight. Sometimes you have the luxury of catching a straight-away. Hit the gas. It’s been challenging to get a clear picture of the future and those that take advantage of that can make up a lot of ground on those that don’t.

What other ways are you using to increase your organizational speed?

Image Credit: http://emjayandthem.com/2010/11/09/everyday-is-a-winding-road/

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Author: Sam Falletta View Comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
 

Apr25

Assumption Is NOT a Dirty Word, It’s An Attitude

Growing up, we generally view the term assumption as a negative. The truth is, when it comes to communicating to our customers what we are asking them to help us with, assumption can go a long way in making our work a little easier.

Assumption, at its core, can be a very effective tool in the art of persuasion. Simply put, to us, persuasion is motivating our clients to do something again (that they have done before) or to change their thinking about something to something else. When we approach our conversation with a client, with the attitude and belief that we are simply looking for the most convenient and easiest way to help our cause, we automatically make the process simpler and more effective.

The best way I can think of to illustrate assumption is to imagine the following scenario: You are working as an assistant for a powerful CEO and you are calling the assistant of another powerful CEO to schedule an important meeting. Try to think about how the conversation would start. The fact that the two CEOs were even going to meet would never be discussed, because that is the assumption for the call in the first place. Although I have never experienced this, I assume that the conversation would only center around the schedule of the two CEOs, what mutually agreed time would be best for both of them to meet, and the location that would be most convenient for both of them. In this conversation, the two assistants would never ask the closed-end question “Should our bosses meet?” because it is already implied that the meeting needs to take place.

Now, take this scenario, and apply it to yourself. The question being posed to our clients is not one of asking permission, but assuming that they will donate, stay on the service, etc. We are simply assisting them. In essence, we are packaging convenience for customers by doing to work for them and making the process as simple as we can. The key to assumption is to ask the questions that will get you better results and not the questions that have an easy out.

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Chris Paveloi Author: Chris Paveloi View Comments | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
 

Apr19

Building Positive Relationships in your Contact Center

Incept Supervisors and Coaches share some tips on ways to build positive relationships with your Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) within your Contact Center.

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Now we want to hear from you:

There are a variety of other ways to build positive relationships. What are you doing to build positive relationships within your contact center?

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Brian Dodson Author: Brian Dodson View Comments | Tags: , , , , ,
 

Apr18

Why Conversational Marketing is Effective with Social Media

Traditionally, marketing is focused on sales and numbers.

It can occasionally be a “let’s see how many people we can reach with this obtrusive billboard, and how many can we turn into customers” type of approach. This part of marketing sees selling as being the most integral part of business success. There is also another party in marketing – the relationship sellers – that have an entirely different view. They see the value in long-term customers and ongoing relationships. The communication between marketer and customer is much more focused and strategic in this relationship. It isn’t about bombarding messages, but about growing together and understanding one another.

Conversational Marketing™ takes the relationship selling view and uses the same principles of building quality relationships, but with a twist. In this day and age, you have to talk to the customer the way they want to be talked to. Many years ago that was through person-to-person communication, and then it gradually changed to phone conversations. Now customers want to be talked to via the internet, or more specifically, through social media.

Conversational Marketing™ is the most effective type of marketing because it takes the customer’s wants and needs into consideration. Instead of basing goals around numbers like sales and revenue, Conversational Marketing™ bases goals around building long-term and meaningful relationships. These relationships are built by sharing content through different social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The customer then has the choice of responding to this content or not, which helps to mitigate the feeling of being bombarded with unwanted advertisements.

If and when the customer does choose to respond to the shared content, the relationship between the company and customer can begin. Instead of taking a ‘sales, sales, sales’ approach, Conversational Marketing™ does as the title depicts, and encouraging one to simply talk to the customer without necessarily selling. This starts to build trust, and before you know it a quality, long-term relationship blooms. Because of this bond the company has built with the customer, customers are much more likely to buy their product or service in the future. This is something that traditional marketing lacks, proving that in this case it’s less effective than Conversational Marketing™.

How will you use Conversational Marketing™ to build relationships with your customers?

Image Credit:http://registry-cleaner-software.maxupdates.tv/choosing-the-best-software-registry-cleaner-notable-points/

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Author: Sarah Benjamin View Comments | Tags: , , ,