For those working at an outbound call center, the idea of connecting on a personal level with the people you contact might seem foreign. So many contact center employees are taught to make quick connections and quicker sales, keeping things moving at a blinding pace. They are instructed to rely on scripting and ideal timetables to meet their metrics every day. The pressure from these rules results in the stiff tone that telemarketers and debt collectors are known - and loathed - for.

Don’t let this happen to your center! Learn the value of taking a few extra seconds per call to invest in relationship building between agents and call center prospects. Give your clients and customers a reason to trust you before you make your pitch. Make friends with your prospects.

After all, just because you’re technically cold-calling your call center prospects doesn’t mean your conversations have to be cold!

Understand the Importance of Scripting - Then Break the Rules

While scripting can be the worst enemy of agents who want to genuinely connect with the call center prospects, its value should not be overlooked. One of the reasons scripting exists is to help agents who otherwise might have difficulty knowing what to say and when to say it to have exchanges with consumers that actually accomplish their company’s goals. This is important because it creates a guideline for newer or less assured agents to learn from so that they can gain experience and build their confidence.

Once that confidence and familiarity with the core content are in place, though, it is a good idea to encourage agents to bend the rules and branch out to create more natural conversations. Remaining rigidly faithful to scripting can create exchanges that are unnatural in tone - and customers will catch on. This is the kind of conversation that makes people dislike receiving calls from an outbound center and the kind of thing your center needs to change if you want to be a top-performing facility.

Creating Organic Conversation

With that in mind, how can your agents create organic conversations with your leads? How can you ensure that every exchange with your call center prospects is one that delivers an authentic, engaging experience - and has a higher likelihood of ending in a sale or closed deal?

The first steps are planning and preparation. Yes, you need to organically engage with your prospects, but to do that you may need some practice.

This is especially true for agents who have limited experience. Younger, newer, or less confident agents who might otherwise cling to scripting might be intimidated by the thought of going “off book” when engaging with customers and clients. Plan and prepare for success for these agents by offering training opportunities and rehearsal sessions with fellow agents. Before long, your team will all be small talk experts.

Next, know how to engage your prospects on a genuine level. This is when having some background information about each client or consumer can come in handy. If you know something about each person, you can use that information to create an exchange that is tailored to their individual interests and concerns. This makes it more like that they will listen and feel valued - and more likely that they will be receptive to what you are saying or selling!

The Benefits of Befriending Your Call Center Prospects

Why put so much effort into befriending your call center prospects? If things have always worked well enough the way you’ve done them before, why not continue with scripted conversations and insanely tight deadlines?

Change doesn’t always happen because things aren’t working. Often, change happens because there are better ways realized for things to work. This is certainly the case with improving conversations between your agents and consumers. The benefits of befriending your call center prospects include:

• Fewer disconnected calls
• More receptive clients and consumers
• High sales numbers
• Better overall impression of your company on the part of consumers
• Higher customer satisfaction ratings and more

There are so many reasons to consider changing the way your agents speak to your prospects. It might seem like a small change at first blush, but it is one whose overall impact can change the way your company does business forever!

The Tools You Need to Succeed

As with most things in the world of the contact center, you can’t succeed in engaging your prospects properly without the right tools and technology. While the agent’s mind is the most important tool in creating great, natural-sounding conversations, there is no harm in relying on a few technological tricks to help.

Saving time between calls by streamlining the dialing and connection processes is a great way to keep things moving quickly without sacrificing the quality of calls you’re working to increase. Look for software that will give you an advantage in terms of trimming down the time between connections with clients and consumers and make dialing a simple, intuitive process.

Another great thing that the right technology can do to help your agents have more genuine connections with your prospects is providing information for your agents to utilize in creating the guidelines for conversation. There are numerous software programs available that offer your agents valuable information about their prospects before the connections are even made. This way, they know who they are talking to, about what, and some background information that can be used to make small talk, all before the person on the other end of the line even picks up the phone.

For everything you need to make more calls and streamline the process between engaging conversations with your call center prospects, trust the industry experts at ChaseData. We have the tools your agents need to make more calls and provide better service to your clients and customers. Give us a call today to learn more!