Devoted to the call center industry, the agents on the phones, and their managers

When you walk into an outbound call center, you feel the energy instantly.  You hear applause, constant chatter (but louder), team leaders announcing sales, team meetings in a corner, whiteboards showing tallies of sales and hear music being played in pocket areas.  It is a world on its own.

Outbound is synonymous to telemarketing.  You see agents either manually dialing phone numbers or a predictive dialer in place to dial it for them automatically.  You see a script in front of them that is interactive enough to switch through each page, depending on what the prospect’s response would be.  Wow, that sounds really easy.  Not really.

If you are a born marketer, it might be a breeze.  But, competition is tough during any shift and you will feel it instantaneously.  I mentioned about tallies and this is both a motivational and pressure tool for agents.  A quota is expected to be reached everyday and hoping to get more contacts but more closed sales or appointments.

To cope up with the stress, agents have their own style and technique to close a sale.  Some would rather stand up while trying to close because they feel they are in control.  Others would bring lucky charms and can’t work without it.  Some would rather use the phone handset and pick the same station everyday, believing it is going to help them in their job.

The profile is different than inbound and one thing is for sure – you can’t mix these guys up or else expect friction from the groups.