Tips and tricks from one of the largest European call center and growing

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June 22, 2015 - PRLog -- Created 15 years ago, this company has seen a constant growth at all levels. Despite the lack of marketing communication, it raised from 80 to almost 400 telephone operators only in a few years.

Our conversation with the call center director starts on a painful fact: Rare are the people who want to sell by phone because of the difficulty of the work and of its bad image… Whatever the reasons, very often candidates applying in call centers hope to operate in the helpdesk part (inbound calls) rather than in the sales department (outbound calls).

However, contractors who use our call centers are applicants for both inbound and outbound calls. And this at the “best value for money”. This is why the company we interviewed this week has decided to first become an outbound communications specialist. The director explains the reasons of this strategic choice and reveals some of its secrets for success.

Two difficult but different trades

Making sales calls, appointments or polls is very different than to take calls for delivery, customer service, product orders, etc... The company specializes in outbound calls because, according to its leaders, it is the most difficult side of the profession. It is therefore, according to them, easier to adapt afterwards for inbound calls.
The director explains; "When we specialized in outgoing calls we asked ourselves the questions of “how to find the right people?”, those who want to make the sales, I emphasize the" want "part and then “how to keep these people in the long run?” Because you can easily find 5 super sales call center agents but finding 100, 200 or 300 that's another story. "

During the selection, the company selects specific profiles : In addition to announcing a job dealing only with outbound calls the company looks preferably for operators without call center experience, speaking perfectly one national language and capable to reproduce what you teach them and to adapt. No need for overqualified or multilingual people.

The boss then adds “We don’t want a bunch of opportunists and neither engineers. We are looking for persons capable to adapt to diverse sales situations and to use the arguments we give them. If a candidate asks if there is possibility to evolve, we simply say NO! And if he/she still wants to work here then he/she is the perfect candidate. "

A constant control and they know it !

As in all call centers, conversations are recorded by the Nixxis Contact Suite. This for various reasons (legal proof, operator training, customer history, etc...).
These records are also used to evaluate operators on some random conversations and verify their level of training, the quality of the conversations, the quality of information provided by the operator ... The Director then specifies that it is essential to avoid giving training on Friday because your agents will be stressed for the weekend and arrive exhausted to begin on Monday!

Here, an assessment is made not every month or every week, but every day. Indeed, every day the agents are heard by a coach who manages up to 8 people. Its role is to help and listen to the agents. He listens on average to 10% of the conversations of each agent.
“We evaluate our operators on many communications. This is very easy with our software, Nixxis Contact Suite. When an agent has not done his/her job, we first make him listen to his/her records before any discussions. This allows him to question him/herself and realize the mistakes he/she made. "

When a good element is found, the director asks him/her to analyze its own recordings. If he/she is able to step back, find mistakes and to propose solutions, then we offer him/her to be a coach.
This is a reporting team that is in charge of taking some recordings here and there. It is also responsible for training, briefing, reports, etc...

In this business, all positions are designed to be varied and motivating. Nobody should make repetitive task like listening to calls all day. Moreover, when the company director says being specialized in outbound calls, it does obviously not exclude inbound. This is also with the right mix of these activities (inbound and outbound) and thanks to the efficient blending solution Nixxis Contact Suite (http://www.nixxis.com/) that he can obtain such incredible SLA's.

The CEO runs his business like a big family. It is therefore essential for him that everyone communicates and helps each other. It is to establish these values that, for example, he seriously penalizes coaches if they make a derogatory remark to a colleague on their recording. "If you want to maintain a family of this size, you have to be respectful and trustful" he added.

The center must sometimes cope with competitors who come to poach his recruits. It has often happened that employees have left for competitors and come back here for the family atmosphere. In fact, the company could be proud about its personnel churn that does not exceed 10%! However, the director takes this in its stride. It's a mindset he says. "Here we only hire people who fit the profile we seek. We do not hire in a hurry to fill for an extra workload. It is necessary to choose between quality and control or quantity. With the workload we have, we could easily double the number of operators, but I don’t want to do this because I want to keep an eye on almost everything. I actually prefer to refuse a client. ".

Indeed, thanks to its powerful software (http://www.nixxis.com/) and his very specific management, the director of the call center is not afraid to send customers to competitors so they can compare with their own performances.

http://www.nixxis.com/blog/summer-reading-nixxis-tips-and...

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Tags:Call Center, Contact Center, Crm, Customer Experience, Outbound Calls
Industry:Software, Telecom
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