The 2.0 Lead Generation Call Center Technology | Webinar

A LeadsCouncil Leadership Series web discussion on how forward-thinking lead generation call center services increase key efficiencies.

Convoso CEO Nima Hakimi joined two lead gen call center ops experts to share insights about “The 2.0 Lead Generation Call Center.”

Kyle Andersson, Director of Operations at Digital Market Media, and Michael Velardi, SVP at Resource Marketing Corp have both really pushed the envelope in managing their remote call centers for efficiency and profitability.

Watch the video, hosted by LeadsCouncil Executive Director Rob Seaver, to pick up experience-driven advice on how to maximize your Agent Efficiency, Lead Efficiency, and Manager Efficiency while staying compliant. Be a next gen call center.

DISCLAIMER: The information on this page, and related links, is provided for general education purposes only and is not legal advice. Convoso does not guarantee the accuracy or appropriateness of this information to your situation. You are solely responsible for using Convoso’s services in a legally compliant way and should consult your legal counsel for compliance advice. Any quotes are solely the views of the quoted person and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Convoso.

Rob Seaver
There's a lot of activity right now that impacts the quality of leads from a compliance standpoint...In the STIR/SHAKEN side of things, we’re now seeing the telco companies being forced by the FCC to block some of these calls.

There are a couple of other things impacting the industry. As it relates to call center fraudulent submissions and forms, there are people who you get on the phone and you hear that dreaded, ‘I did not sign up,’ which is impacting TCPA because if they did not fill out the form, or they were not the owner of the phone number that they submitted the form with, you possibly could be looking at a TCPA violation.

Nima Hakimi

With STIR/SHAKEN, Telco carriers are being mandated to implement it by June of 2021. It’s basically Caller ID authentication, which helps the telecom carriers detect the legitimacy of a caller through a token. So you cannot spoof through Caller ID.

When your caller IDs are getting flagged, that will decrease your lead generation contact center rates. Calling excessively is just a recipe for disaster.

In the big picture, that is actually a good thing, right? Because the bad actors are the ones typically spoofing the Caller IDs and using Caller ID's that are not valid. So you cannot get back to them. My prediction is that once it goes into place, call volumes will go down considerably, but the businesses that are doing it legitimately will thrive.

There's a lot of pressure that's being put on, and the FCC is really going to start regulating these things.

Kyle Andersson

A lot of it starts pre-call – we are hyper-focused on TCPA compliance with data before it even hits the dialer. The ideal lead...has intent for the product or industry that you're selling...So, for us, it's all about having high intent users, not just pure volume.

We scrub our leads vigorously. And then within Convoso, there's a lot of great things such as automatic DID reputation checks. So you're not having to worry about if your DID is becoming potential spam.

And then regulating your redials, not hammering one number 30 times in a day, maybe eight times back over a course of three weeks...There's little things that you can do to continuously armor yourself to make sure that you're of the highest quality.

Michael Velardi
I never want to call somebody who goes, ‘Who are you? Why are you calling? Where did you get my number?’ Because that's the worst thing you ever hear in our business [which is why] my data is source-reliable, opt-in-only, Jornaya lead ID.

Nima
AI in terms of quality control is really going to play a huge role in that regard for better conversations, more compliant conversations, and just ultimately, increased results in the agent performance… For example, there’s an integration we have that will coach and listen to your agents in real time, and let them know if they're off script or not, or if they're using the right rebuttals or not... Are they talking too fast?

You need to have AI incorporated in one way or another if you want to go remote and grow it and scale it, in full compliance.

Kyle
When you talk about call center quality assurance—the traditional listening to calls, scoring calls and making sure that they're compliant, they're quality, they're getting through the qualification questions that you need from your clients—this is all streamlined with AI because it's not a person or managers listening to calls, it's the systems listening to every call.

And you have statistics on every single call, all of the details, everything that you want to see in calls or don't want to see. It's very scalable. So, that's one huge thing that AI will play into remote or in-house call centers.

It's all about being proactive instead of reactive, which is what [AI and streamlining] will help with.

Nima

The biggest thing about lead efficiency is you need to look at your reporting to really understand what percentage of those leads pick up. How many of them are transferred, and what is the revenue out of those leads? You need to have real-time reporting that gives you that data, so you can see on an hourly basis, which agents are producing how much revenue? What is the actual ROI on it? Meaning what was the cost to convert those leads?

The agent's time is a hard cost; the cost of the dial is a hard cost. And so you need to be able to break that down on a lead source level to tell you specifically what the ROI is on an hourly basis by agent and by lead source. And if you do that, you'll be able to quickly optimize your call center.

Nima

Sometimes it's not your quality of leads that will have an impact. What is the dialing strategy? How are they working those leads? How are they recycling those leads?

Most people's dialers are not set up effectively to convert their leads.

You'll find that the contact rate does not improve after a certain [number of] call attempts. Now that doesn't mean that you should stop calling it altogether, but you need to have automation in place that will move that lead into another list and maybe call it back again in 30 days from now, and try it again at that point. And maybe then again, in 60 days from now.

Customers need the understanding, the mentality to stop buying so many leads. [Some call centers] are always thinking, ‘We want to buy more and more and more leads.’ Guess what? You'd hit the wall, you can't catch up with the new leads. Now those get stuck and you're just dialing the old ones. I mean, it's just a big mess….

You really have to shift your mindset if you want to do things right. And leads cost... it's one of your biggest expenses at the end of the day.

Kyle

Redialing strategy is huge, we spend a lot of time finding out the correct redial strategy schedule. By making sure that you have good lead providers as you continue to do these optimizations, you can actually scale back your lead buying because your contact rates are going up so much that you're able to convert just as many, if not more sales with fewer leads...You can actually spend less money and make more money.

Kyle
We use a lot of Convoso reports for data. And as long as you organize and separate your lists and your providers, and real time and all that inbound, you have all the reporting that you need. You have the contact rate by list. You can do it by date. You have the conversion and transfer of sale, you have the average duration of the call, abandoned... All of that stuff by list, by date.

We have so many different lead sources coming in everyday. So it's imperative that we have it set up, or organized, and we use those reports to ensure that we're not spending money on data that's not working, or [for example, finding out] we're re-allocating to one for the past month, and they're absolutely killing contact rates and conversions.

Nima

For companies that don't consider the value of remote] you're missing out on a huge opportunity, a huge talent pool to take your call center to the next level.

This pandemic has really forced call centers to look at the metrics, the numbers, the data. You really have to look at all the pieces of your call center in order to optimize it, and manage it in a profitable manner…

When we look at these efficiencies: call center lead management efficiency and agent efficiency, it’s really the combination of all three of them that will make your call center more profitable in a compliant manner. Because, especially now, if you want to go remote, if you don't have those processes in place across all three efficiencies, it won't work.

You have to have good accountability in place for the agents [especially as you grow and scale]...Having systems in place that will automatically have checks and balances in terms of productivity is absolutely key. Otherwise, there's just no way you can manage that process manually.

Michael

The 1.0 model was literally to shovel weeds in, beat them to death, call the new leads 12 times. And then give me more. Just, I killed them. They're dead. Give me more. And it never valued longevity.

Where 2.0 is, you're measuring the data and your agent's rest time, your live contact rates. And it's really allowing you to do more with less because your contact rates increased so much that it becomes a detriment if you buy too much new [data].

The days of too much new data is just as bad as, ‘Oh no. All we have is old data.’ Because, you have to use both, you can't have one without the other. And I've learned a much more manageable approach for the company based on data usage, data costs, and modeling. And we've reduced our outbound cost on data by 25%.

What most of these 2.0 things sum up is quick, actionable information...[with] movements such as agent efficiency, manager efficiency, dialer efficiency. I think what the focus and the shift has become is the data is so readily available [with real time metrics] that now I'm able to make a move—where I'm not post-Tuesday looking at what Monday's results were. So there's no, ‘Good morning, I couldn't save the game.’

DISCLAIMER: The information on this page, and related links, is provided for general education purposes only and is not legal advice. Convoso does not guarantee the accuracy or appropriateness of this information to your situation. You are solely responsible for using Convoso’s services in a legally compliant way and should consult your legal counsel for compliance advice. Any quotes are solely the views of the quoted person and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Convoso.