Elder,
That's really a good question! I've checked various industry sites,
including the
American Teleservices Association
http://www.ataconnect.org/
and can't really find any formal policy written out. This really isn't
surprising as you'll see below. So, if you don't mind, I'll answer
from my personal knowledge. I've been a manager of an outbound call
center, have worked with several telemarketing firms, and had several
telemarketing centers under my direction over the years. So I feel
qualified to answer from personal experience.
There are really two sets of measurements telemarketing companies use
to measure success - internal and for clients.
Internal - A TM firm gauges success among its outbound call-center
employees by what they are expected to achieve during the call.
*If they make cold calls for lead generation, for example, they will
be gauged by how many calls they make an hour as well as how many
leads they generate.
*If they are expected to close a sale, they are gauged on the dollar
volume of their sales
The single primary criterion for telemarketer success is calls per
hour. This will vary from 2 to 20. If he's making cold calls, his
quota may be to make 20 dials and 10 contacts an hour. For the
telemarketing firm, it's all about productivity and multiple income
streams.
For clients - A telemarketing firm will work out the success criteria
on an individual basis with each client. Typically, the first step is
a test period during which the client pays either a fixed amount, or a
fixed hourly rate, for the telemarketers' time. This way there is no
risk for the telemarketing firm and they can gauge how successful
their callers are going to be. At that point, they can go back to the
client and usually one of the options below is presented:
* Success is X number of leads generated per hour or per number of
phone calls. Client generally pays per lead, or occasionally per hour.
*Success is X number of decision-maker contacts per hour. Client pays
per call/hour.
*Success is $X of sales per hour. Client pays a percentage commission.
However, there are as many variations on these themes as there are
clients.
To specifically answer your question, no, to my knowledge there are no
standards for attempt rates or file penetration, or any other
definition of success for this industry. Each situation is unique and
calls for different standards. It's hard to find a common statistical
ground between selling credit card machines, setting appointments for
rug cleaners, and asking for donations to the policeman's ball. Each
firm may specify standards for a specific type of call, but these will
very from firm to firm.
Setting standards for success in telemarketing is truly a science, and
only senior managers of telemarketing firms define these parameters
for each client. In my opinion, clients should evaluate these
standards very carefully. A telemarketing firm is going to weigh the
definition of success in their favor for a variety of reasons. The
client must hold the firm's feet to the fire and demand a
difficult-to-achieve definition of success. Negotiating with a
telemarketing firm is not for the feint-of-heart in my opinion. :)
Elder, I hope this information clarifies things for you. If you need
any additional clarification, just post a response and I'll try to
help. Thanks!
Prof |
Clarification of Answer by
prof-ga
on
11 Jul 2002 11:28 PDT
Hi elder,
I did make a phone call to a friend of mine who is currently involved
in telemarketing. He tells me that most certainly these per-hour
caller quotas are still used.
The current legal trends in telemarketing have a great deal to do with
making calls to inappropriate people at inappropriate times. However,
I know of no pending or completed legislation that attempts to control
internal quotas within the telemarketing industry.
Robot callers and "tele-zappers" are really not true telemarketing in
the traditional sense.
For background, there is a great deal of turnover among telemarketers.
In most shops, managers supervise a caller's work in the following
ways:
* Listen in on their phone conversations
* Examine closing or sales statistics
* Keep track of the pre-defined number of average dials/contacts per
hour for that client.
Since this latter can be calculated at a glance, this figure is widely
used as a benchmark for performance. Frankly, I don't see that
changing in the near future.
Hope this answers your question! Thanks, and good luck.
Prof
|
Clarification of Answer by
prof-ga
on
16 Jul 2002 06:22 PDT
Elder,
These figures have already taken call-screening, etc. into
consideration and have not changed much. Caller ID has been around a
few years, but even so have never affected telemarketers to any great
degree. I for example have caller ID and still pick up on numbers I
don't recognize or that say "caller unknown". Telemarketing firms use
equipment that blocks their name and sometimes their number.
Two sets of numbers are traditionally used. One is the number of dials
per hour. Even with the widespread use of answering machines, this
number has changed little. If you're not home you're not home. And
with business-to-business calls, of course this isn't a factor. So
historically the number of dials figure has not changed much.
The greater factor for telemarketers has been the increased difficulty
in reaching decision-makers -the other statistic watched closely by
management. This is obviously a major productivity indicator. It may
be that the number of dials has had to increase slightly to maintain a
certain number of decision-maker contacts in the b2b environment. This
is because executives have become harder to reach, with their
well-trained gate-keepers. Even so, the individual telemarketers'
quotas have not changed much. They just have to work harder and be
better at getting through.
Hope this answers your question!
Prof
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