November 2008 | Volume 27 / Number 6
Publisher's Outlook
Call Centers Are Just What the Doctor Ordered for Today’s EconomyBy Nadji Tehrani
One of the things that separates the call center/contact center industry from other
industries is that call centers are basically labor intensive businesses. In spite of many
technological developments in the industry, the contact center industry has remained
labor intensive because all of the technologies are about increasing agent productivity.
And with all due respect to the automation for the inbound side of the business,
the outbound side is still labor intensive. In spite of the development of technologies
like IVR, the fact remains that even today, when it comes to purchasing a significant
product or getting full information about hardware or software that one might use,
the preferred choice is to have a person-to-person interactive communication, which
was one of the early definitions of telemarketing industry. Having said that, even at
the present time, the preferred choice, with all due respect to e-mail and IVR, etc., is
people-to-people connection.
Digital Lead Generation In traditional direct mail marketing lead generation, one had to select appropriate lists to be rented and then after several testing and spending tons of money, one would come up with a potential mailing list to market to. In all honesty, I have never been in favor of that kind of marketing simply because here at TMC, we hardly even got 1% response from the best lists ever used to generate subscribers for our many publications. I never liked that kind of system because 99% of every marketing piece ended up in the waste basket, which means money down the drain. As a sports fan, I always like to compare business performance with sports performance. Think of it this way, if you have a football coach that lost 99% of his games, how long do you think he would keep his job? I think the answer is obvious, and that is why I didn’t like direct mail. Fortunately, along came telemarketing and eventually, online marketing, I am happy to share with you that TMC has played a vital role in developing both methods. We all know that the development of the telemarketing/contact center industry has been legendary in terms of growth and we always were at the forefront of that industry. Once again, we are at the forefront of online marketing, namely, that TMC’s Web site www.tmcnet.com actually is receiving as many as 3 million unique visitors and 35 million page views per month. As such, TMCnet.com is in a class by itself. No other technology-focused B (News - Alert) -to-B Web site even comes close. And, as the leaders and pioneers of contact center/online marketing in B-to-B/technology areas, I continue to believe that the new process of effectively generating sales leads must be done digitally. A properly strategized digital lead generation strategy combined with the contributions of a teleservices company is the only effective way to generate qualified sales leads, period, end of story. Lead Generations Golden Triangle As Figure 1 indicates, it takes three elements to develop a quality lead generation strategy. The three elements, depicted in the triangle include: • Digital lead generation; • An effective call center; • Teleservices agencies know how It’s fair to say that by leveraging teleservices know-how, and applying it to digital lead generation, companies can achieve high levels of success. Furthermore, if you think about it, there is no shortcut to the above golden triangle formula. Contact Centers Play a Vital Role in the Slowing Economy The old sales philosophy stated that, “nothing happens until somebody sells something.” That is where call centers become a uniquely vital ingredient of any sales organization. Even if one produces digital lead generation, you still need a teleservices company’s know-how and a call center to qualify the leads. That is how businesses grow — by having new qualified sales leads to generate new business to replace the lost business. Having said all of that, I think that we have demonstrated that sales leads are created in the most effective way when contact centers and teleservices companies and digital lead generations are combined. However, the fact still remains that while one needs to depend heavily on digital marketing and sales lead generation, by the same token, we still need to heavily depend on the use of contact centers and teleservices companies in order to make everything happen the right way. In that manner, call centers will continue to grow at an unprecedented rate of 20–25% per year which means they are creating 20–25% more jobs on a regular basis. I hope by now we have clearly demonstrated that call centers are not only a main ingredient of lead generation and qualification, but also they are vitally important in job creation and job protection. Furthermore, call centers are just as valuable in keeping customers through CRM and customer satisfaction, customer care and associated technologies. In plain English, call centers are just what the doctor ordered for today’s economy. As always, I welcome your comments. Please email them to me at [email protected]. CIS Magazine Table of Contents |