Posts tagged as:

contact center

Brian

Follow-up Coaching: Making It Count for Your Rep’s Development

So we have been talking about the impact that live coaching with our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) has on the quality of calls they produce along with their initial productivity.

Some people just seem made for this job. They have the gift of gab, their words flow smoothly, and they just have a naturally keen ability to deal with people. Others need some encouragement and development to reach that status (and that is OK) – your job as a coach (more so as a leader) is to identify the good things your Conversational Marketing Expert (CME) does and foster a sense of collaboration and desire to keep improving.

In my opinion, one of the most crucial parts of coaching a Conversational Marketing Expert (CME) is following up with them and checking on what you asked them to improve on in your initial coaching session.

Here are some of my own methods that help me develop my Conversational Marketing Experts:

High-impact Follow-up Coaching Tips

  • At the end of your first coaching session, set a date and time to do a follow-up, and stick to it.
  • Ask your rep to take ownership of their areas that need work, and ask for a date by which you can expect improvement to have taken place. Remember to be reasonable and S.M.A.R.T about goal setting, and hold them to it on their coaching form.
  • Have a specific area of improvement that you are listening for based upon your initial coaching. Example: Second-attempting, rebutting, information verification, etc.
  • Reinforce the good things your rep already does in his or her calls.
  • Personally take a few calls for them, and have them listen to you doing what you want them to work on and how to do it correctly.
  • Begin to pinpoint specific areas that need to be improved upon by focusing on metrics that directly affect back-end performance.
  • Continue to listen in and do live monitoring specifically on actionable items that you and your rep have agreed needs improved on over the next day(s) following your follow-up.

There you have it. It is as easy as that. Coaching and training people to improve can be an expensive cost to any contact center, but what price do you put on creating high-quality calls? Do a majority of your reps make calls that you can show your clients without shame? If you want to be able to say yes to that question, consider how much of your coaching is actually followed up upon.

What are some ways that you make sure your reps are improving their call quality?

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bwells

Blood Donor Recruitment Tips: Follow-up Training

I have to clean my kitchen every day. If I forget, don’t have the time, or simply feel too lazy to do the work, my kitchen will continue to deteriorate to the point where it is no longer able to function with any efficiency. Employees, at any level, need constant maintenance just like kitchens.

Follow-up training for employees is just as important as the initial training (or new hire training) they receive. It is something often overlooked or dismissed due to cost. However, the investment in continued training will pay off in increased dividends in the bottom line, company growth, and reduced turnover.

There are three critical areas that are affected by follow-up training:

  1. Customer Service - New ideas and technology lead to constantly changing tactics. Keeping your employees well-trained and well-equipped provides competitiveness and strength. Re-teaching customer service techniques also helps to keep ideas fresh and employees ready.
  2. Product Knowledge - Your employees are better able to assist donors by improving efficiency and building a reputation for quality. Employee morale will also increase due to this reputation, building your employee satisfaction and loyalty.
  3. Employee productivity - Employees can often be stressed by the thought of trying new ideas or tactics due to fear of making a mistake. Employees may fear being fired for these mistakes, breaking expensive technology, or simply failing in front of their colleges. Training provides a safe place to make mistakes with little or no consequences, which allows us to step outside of our comfort zone and ultimately improve our skills.

Continued or ongoing training provides several advantages to both your company’s front-end numbers (in increased sales and profits), as well as your company‘s back-end numbers (in increased employee satisfaction and reduced turnover).

Try it and watch your results increase!

Image credit: http://rjvictoria.wordpress.com/training/

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rweiand

How to Develop the Most Effective Conversational Quality Process

Recently we talked with Josette Schneider, Incept’s Conversational Quality Manager, to discuss  monitoring our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) and conversational quality. Below Josette provides some insight on developing the most effective conversational quality process.

A new program is brought to the Conversational Quality Department. What are the steps to determine the conversational quality process?

  1. We determine how long the test phase is going to be.
  2. Once the test phase has been completed but prior to rolling the program out to the room, the Contact Center Results (CCR) Team and the Conversational Quality (CQ) Team meet to discuss quality procedures and verifications, if any.
  3. Both teams establish the quality assurance processes, forms, and quality measures.
  4. Once these have been developed, they are submitted to the Client Results Representative for client approval.
  5. Once approved, the process is put into place.

How often is a CQ process evaluated to ensure it is continuing to find and improve quality in phone calls?

  • We don’t have a specific time period when we reevaluate processes. We determine this by program changes, big jumps in quality scores (both low and high), and even client complaints. We will run the current process along with a process that we are testing and determine which process truly reflects the Conversational Marketing™ Experts’ (CMEs’) performance and quality. There are times when an entirely new process is implemented and times when revisions are simply made to the current process.

What is the best number of calls/minutes to monitor to ensure the CME is doing everything right?

  • There really is no basis for the best number of calls or minutes a CME should be monitored. Each call center has their own way of determining this. Some use a number determined by management or past history. A percentage of companies determine this by statistics, and other companies use the number of calls available to be monitored. Incept uses a set number of calls per CME for some of our programs, a specific percentage of calls for other programs, and all CME statistics are looked at when CQ-ing.

If a CQ is not good, what is the best way to evaluate it to improve the CME?

  • If a CME receives a low score or even several deductions for the same infraction, a consultation is scheduled right away with the CME. During this time, we try to get to the root of the problem. Is the CME just not following the process or were they unsure of how to handle that situation. The CME listens to their calls that were evaluated and they are discussed between CME, CCR rep, and CQ rep. Once the calls have been listened to, either the CME’s supervisor or a CQ rep will complete a detailed coaching on the CME. The coaching will be reviewed with the CME and another CQ will be completed. Depending on the CME’s quality score or infractions, the number of times the CME is coached and reevaluated may differ. We also use role playing wherein the CME will listen to someone in management make the calls to get a better feel for how they should be handling different situations.

The quality of phone calls is so important to any campaign. What are the steps your company uses to develop an effective conversational quality process?

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Brian

What Defines Us: A Look At Voice Inflection


How does voice inflection paint a mental picture?

A Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME) at Incept will use their voice every week to have hundreds of productive conversations that are aimed to produce results in the form of blood donations for our clients. The voice in this type of work serves as our most essential tool in the contact center. It is not only a big part of what defines us on a humanistic level, but when it is used as a tool, the efforts to get people to donate become personal too.

Do I really sound like that? Did I pronounce this the right way? Does my voice sound assumptive and confident? All of these are questions I have heard from new Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs). You might have even heard some of these questions from your own organization’s representatives. I’m going to give you a few bullet points on easy ways to make sure you are maximizing the impact that you, as a person, have with your point of contact just by allowing your voice to develop on the phone.

Stretching Your Vocal Chords for Success on the Phone Lines

  • There is a fine line between “game show host” and sounding enthusiastic. It is OK to sound excited about what you are trying to pitch. In our case, it is awesome and encouraging to hear newer Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) sound enthusiastic about donating when talking to donors. We want that. We want our CMEs to sound interesting, exciting, and motivating when it comes to the donation process. However, you don’t want to have so much voice inflection or sound so overzealous that you come across like a radio disk jockey or game show host. Such an approach can be off-putting. When you sound “overproduced”, you don’t sound personal or natural. Ultimately, donors won’t take you seriously when you’re trying to recruit them to donate. Keep in mind you want confidence to show through in what you are saying, not misguided exuberance.
  • Get them on your side by emphasizing the donor’s previous donations. More often than not in the industry of tele-recruitment for blood donors, the call center that is making the outbound calls will typically have some type of donation history available within the scheduler to assist in the recruitment process. At Incept, we are able to see how many times a person has donated, where they like to donate, and even their blood type. This gives us the chance to personalize our pitch to them. Half of the battle with recruitment-type calling is making the point of contact (donor) feel they are doing a good thing and build enough positive rapport with them to make them want to continue. When you can effectively convey how important a donor is to their respective program, it makes it so much easier to deliver a solid, assumptive trial close to your pitch. Focus on the good and emphasize the good your donor is doing before you initially ask them to donate to reap the benefits of this technique.
  • Volume and speed indicate more to a donor than you think. It’s not what you say, but how you say it. When I sound excited about a subject, I usually speak about that subject in a faster and more enthusiastic way. If I am bored with a topic in a discussion, I most likely speak slower and am less enthralled overall. These type of things can show through if you allow them to. They can either help you or hurt you. When you are excited about something and sound excited in your pitch, the donor is not only going to listen more, but your interaction with that donor is going to be much more fluid in your call flow. The opposite can be said for a recruiter that sounds dull. Sometimes it isn’t about what you are saying in your pitch, but how you are saying it that will determine the outcome! Keep that in mind!

When thinking about good voice inflection, think about reading a children’s book. Sure, the words might be few and simple, but the way you read them is what makes the story interesting and paints a mental picture.

What do your representatives do to makes sure their voice inflection helps in their efforts to boost results?

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alegg

Blood Donor Recruitment: Analyzing your Call List to Increase Results

In order to set up your donor base calling in a way that maximizes your results, it’s important to begin with a proven strategy to ensure you are getting the most out of your work. Setting up your list of donors and calling straight through will not give you enough results to justify the work. Taking some time to analyze and prioritize your list will yield much better outcomes.

Firstly, you must determine your needs:

  • What blood types and/or donation types are most needed right now?
  • What recruitment difficulties do you run into on a regular basis?
  • What are the center’s long-term and expected blood needs?

Establishing your needs will help you to ensure that all of your subsequent decisions are working in the right direction: to fulfill the actual needs of the blood center.

Secondly, divide your list into categories to better understand the calling universe:

  • How many current, lapsed, and super-lapsed donors are available?
  • How many whole blood and automated donors are available?

You may be surprised at how many resources you have in each category once you look at them. You may find that some categories need to be bolstered, while others may need whittled down in order to get the right donations from the right donors.

Thirdly, match up your short-term needs with your donor segments:

  • Is your immediate need a large quantity of red cells? Try focusing on both automated donors and O- donors to get the volume you need in the area you need it in.
  • If your immediate need is platelets, try focusing on all previous platelet donors, donors that tested high for platelets during a whole blood donation, or those of A/B blood types.
  • If you find that your current donor base for automated donations does not meet your current need for blood products, try supplementing your calling by working to convert all donors of a necessary blood type to do that donation or increase your volume of donors that have lapsed in the past.

Once you have determined your needs and categorized (or segmented) your donors, you will be able to determine which segments will best fulfill your many needs at one time. You will also be able to prioritize the time you want to spend strengthening or cutting down your segments based on the size and importance of each segment.

Now that you know what donor segment you need to focus on in order to meet your current needs, it’s time to focus on meeting your center’s long-term blood needs:

  • The best way to take care of your donor base and ensure that your needs are met long-term is to keep in regular contact with your donors, and let them know that they are appreciated.
    • Keep in contact with current, lapsed, and even super-lapsed donors regularly
    • Do not attempt to call a donor more than 3 times in one week
    • Wait at least 3 weeks after speaking with a donor before calling them again.
    • Follow a consistent contact schedule to ensure that donors are contacted throughout their donation cycle
      • Recruitment calls
      • Reminder call one day before appointment
      • Thank-you call one day after appointment
      • Educational information in between donations
  • Use various contact methods, such as direct mail, email, social media, and text messaging to reach all donor types.

While meeting your short-term needs is valuable, it is vital to ensure you are actively building relationships with your donor base and educating them on why they are so important. The more time that is spent nurturing your donors throughout the year, the less often critical times will come up and cause you to make a change in strategy.

Following the strategy above when setting up your donor recruitment calling is essential to both protecting your donor base in the long term and to getting the most out of your efforts every day.

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rweiand

Conversational Marketing vs. Traditional Telemarketing

Recently we talked with Billie Johnson, Incept’s Vice President of Client Results, to discuss conversational marketing™ versus traditional telemarketing.  Below Billie explains what the different is and how Incept uses it in our blood donor recruitment strategies.

Explain conversational marketing™: Conversational marketing™ is a fundamental philosophy that revolves around using your marketing touchpoints to have true, meaningful conversations with your donors to communicate your mission and build a partnership for the patients and hospitals you serve – not just for today, but for years to come.

Why is Incept different than your traditional telemarketing firm? Traditional telemarketing often focuses on the outcome of a phone call. The more “yeses” today, the more success. The Incept difference is that we believe our conversations secure relationships for the future. Our objective in every call is to make sure that the relationship between our blood center client and their donors is stronger and healthier than before our call. It’s a cohesive, long-term strategy, not a one-time campaign, that develops lifelong commitments and loyalty.

Why is it important to build a relationship with the donor when you are on the phone with them, even if the end results is ‘no’? Not everyone is going to say “yes” every time, but each person we call has made the commitment to donate in the past. We want all donors to continue that commitment. Keep in mind, even if now is not a good time, perhaps the next time we call they will be in a position to help. If we alienate even a single donor, that donor could mean all the difference to someone in need in the future.

What is the difference between talking with the donor and talking at the donor? The key here actually has nothing at all to do with talking. The difference is listening. Nearly anyone can begin reciting a script when a donor says “hello”, but listening for key indicators that help guide the talk track is imperative if you truly care about your relationship with your donors. It’s the key to putting the donor’s needs first.

Scripts are important, but why should a Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME) add their own personality into the phone call? Incept believes that guidelines are very important to communicating the right message and preserving a blood center’s brand. However, equally as important is allowing our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) to have true two-way conversations by using their personality to build a rapport. People build relationships, not scripts.

How can you implement conversational marketing™ into your blood donor recruitment strategy to not only increase results, but also build strong relationships with your donors?

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Brian

Put Me In Coach, I’m Ready to Play: Analyzing The Concept of Teams in Telecommunications

What is a company, but a large group of like-minded individuals working towards a common goal?

At Incept over the last few months we have formed groups of competitive teams amongst our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs). In the industry of telecommunications, success is usually something that every firm out there wants to taste immediately through the attainment of high front-end statistics. The sad thing is most of these companies, in wake of their initial achievements, fail to recognize the importance and cost-saving measures of analyzing the whole picture of their client’s goals and available statistics.  Sure, your reps might be running above goal, but could they be doing better collectively? Is the idea of creating small, competitive teams of reps a cost-saving and performance-boosting plan for you contact center?

How Creating Teams of Representatives for Your Company Can Lead to Further Success

Have you ever heard of the saying, “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”? That might hold true to us at Incept, if one of our core values wasn’t being never satisfied.

I’m a huge fan of Mad Men since I work in the office world. I can’t help but to think of Don Draper when I enter through Incept’s doors. He is a character that is not satisfied with just doing good; he wants the highest level of performance he can get for his advertising firm and will fine-tune the way things are run at his company until that golden level of homeostasis is won.

At Incept we formed teams amongst our Conversational Marketing Experts (CMEs) for a variety of different reasons. Here are a few of those reasons and the benefits that we as a company have reaped from this type of employee management.

  • It further solidifies our family like company culture.

One of the biggest things we pride ourselves on at Incept is being a workplace that people truly can form friendships at. We support this notion fully. It is rewarding to win as a company, but to win as a family of friends who happen to work at the same company can taste even sweeter. Our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) form relationships with each other creating camaraderie, helpfulness on the floor, self-governing employee accountability, and even a little bit of friendly competition between fellow teams.

  • It allows us to focus on individual performance attributes.

So many contact centers think success lies in front-end stats, but in all reality for Incept, we look at the whole picture. We keep track of each Conversational Marketing™ Expert’s (CME’s) personal statistics for their outbound goals, update times between calls, schedule-to-date appointments, and even personal variance. All of these personal stats get taken into account for each team’s success. When these stats are all kept in mind, we are able to effectively see where the CME might need help in a certain area and give them positive reinforcement and education on what they are doing good at and how they can do better. This idea gives the CME personal accountability for their own performance and actions as their success can only further their team’s success. Creating friendly competition is a good thing!

  • It places emphasis on goals that are important to our clients that determine our own success.

Our own President, Sam Falletta, has made it personally clear at multiple Employee of the Month meetings within the company that Incept operates with our clients in mind first, then Incept’s goals next, following with the employee. When we take a concept such as creating teams amongst the CMEs and setting those client goals as a precursor to our own success, then we have literally created an employee that understands why we are doing what we are doing and takes those client goals into consideration as their own through their personal performance. It really is that simple.

Does your company have teams of employees striving towards the same goals? What are some more benefits behind this technique of community management?

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rweiand

Study Shows: Incentives Bring in More Blood Donors

Here is some good information on how you can improve your blood donor recruitment strategy!

In a recent post by Brian, he talks the benefits of a donor loyalty program and providing incentives to blood donors. Everyone loves rewards; they make us feel important and special, but let’s take a look at the numbers to see if they really help you bring in more blood donors. In a recent study done by the University of Toronto, it was discovered that 15-20% of people are more adept to donate if they receive something for doing so.

The numbers speak for themselves! The study was completed on 500,000 individuals (and donors) through 14,000 blood drives across the U.S.

What incentives do you provide your blood donors? What kind of donor loyalty program are you using to help bring in more blood donors?

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jhodgson

HOW TO Show Compassion in Your Blood Donor Recruitment Calls

If you work for Incept then you already know that compassion is one of our core values. There are many situations in which compassion is key to having a productive conversation, and I would like to share with you a few ways you can show compassion in your blood donor recruitment calls.

The first thing you must do to have a compassionate call is listen actively. Listening actively means that the blood donor you are talking to has your undivided attention and that you are not thinking about something else – even if it’s what you plan to say next. Not only do you have to listen to the words coming out of their mouth, but you have to pay attention to the tone they are using.

Listening actively will allow you to use empathy. Empathy is the ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Think of everything your blood donor just told you, and ask yourself, “What would I want someone to say to me if I were in this same situation?”

Next acknowledge the blood donor or customer by saying, “I’m sorry to hear that!” or “I understand.” This will let them know that you were listening actively, and you would like to help them. Then proceed by giving a statement that will make them feel better. For example, “I’m so to hear that you are ill. I hope feel better soon.” This will leave the donor with a positive impression and encourage them to donate with us in the future.

There are so many ways to show compassion in your calls, and keep in mind that recruiting blood donors is a compassionate act in itself, so thank you for what you do every day!

Image Credit: http://www.savvydaddy.com/content/site/savvypack/00282/raising-kids-strong-character-compassion

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rweiand

Having Your Blood Drawn, Painlessly? It Could Happen As Early As Next Year!

Touch-Activated Phlemotomy

Using a microneedle, Seventh Sense Biosystems is developing a blood-draw device that will make getting patient’s blood a lot easier, as it is painless touch-activated phlebotomy (TAP). The device “penetrates the uppermost layers of the skin, along with a proprietary microfluidic extraction mechanism that draws blood in a painless, one-step process and leaves a mosquito bite-sized impression in the skin.”

This device can be used anywhere – at hospitals, in clinics and even at home! With so many blood tests being used now to help with diagnosing patients, along with new tests being discovered, a device like this will be used quite frequently!

What about using a device like this for donating blood? Having a donor’s blood drawn painlessly will make more donors open to donating more and should also bring in new donors who may have a fear of needles or don’t like the pain associated with donating. Nothing has been mentioned yet about using something like this for collecting blood donations, but with the development of  TAP there is a good possibility we can expect something similar in the Blood Donor Recruitment field in the near future!

Image Credit: http://www.medcitynews.com/2012/04/painless-blood-draw-device-using-microneedles-could-be-available-in-2013/

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