Outsourcing your telesales or telemarketing activities is an important decision. When considering potential partners for the task, you will undoubtedly take into account their price, whether they have relevant experience in your industry, their IT capabilities and their reputation.
Sometimes overlooked, how well they will comply with privacy policies and data protection is however critical. Not only could your company be in breach of the law, but you won’t ingratiate yourself with prospects either if they are called when they have expressly declined being contacted.
The provenance of the call list data will make a difference in how the matter should be approached. If they are your own contacts, it is likely that you will have collected their details through previous orders or communications, and that they have agreed to being approached in the future. If you are providing your entire database, including customers who at some point opted out of being contacted, you need to agree with the call centre that the calling agents will leave those out.
When calling, agents should also double-check that the person they are talking to is still happy to be contacted, and if not, amend the database accordingly. If the call centre is providing the data, or if you are buying it from a third party, then you will need to agree on stricter terms.
Your main concern will be to ensure that this list contains details of people who agreed to be called for marketing purposes. Hopefully, you will have already ascertained that those contacts are suitable for your company and your proposed campaign, but you may want to clarify which criteria were applied to select a particular list of prospects (age group, income range, interests, familial circumstances, etc…) and that the phone calls made on your behalf are relevant to the callers.
You should also have a say in how the calls are handled, for example which information will be provided to your customers at the beginning of the call, as it is a requirement for agents to identify themselves as early as possible, or at what times they will be making calls.
Outsourcing to a call center is an important decision for the business, so you want to get it right. Choosing a call centre company who is fairly local is a good idea, as it will allow you to visit them on a regular basis and monitor how the agents are handling your calls, and that the call centre is following best practices at all time.
