In 1881, a German baker named Kranler decided to start offering his products to his customers through the phone. The result of this novel and unknown technique was not only to double his sales, but also to attract and retain new customers. At that time, the baker did not know that his method would become what we know nowadays as telemarketing.
Although the origins of this practice can be traced back to this Berlin bakery, it was not until 1962 that the first telephone sales campaign was developed. The manager of the Ford car company, Lee Lacocca, commissioned a campaign in which 20 million people needed to be contacted with the aim that each of his 23,000 salesmen got at least two interviews a day. The result, as with the bakery, was a significant increase in the company’s sales.
Telemarketing is therefore a technique in which a consultant uses the telephone to automatically contact existing or potential customers. The data is obtained through previous contacts with our company, such as Internet subscriptions, purchase history…
Currently, technological advances have allowed this activity to be developed through more sophisticated means, even using Artificial Intelligence systems in the process. However, like all other techniques that we can carry out within the field of marketing, you need to know its possible uses and all the tools you have available to develop its full potential. Therefore, we have prepared this guide with everything you need to know to carry out your telemarketing campaign successfully.
Advantages of telemarketing
In addition to the possibility of offering our products and services to a potential customer, telemarketing can bring many other benefits to our company:
- Immediate and quantifiable results: as it is a dynamic and direct way of contacting customers, we will obtain all the information about the status of the interaction. That is, if the user has answered, if they have contracted or are thinking of doing so, if the contact has not been satisfactory… Thus, we can measure the results at the end of the campaign to know the aspects that are working correctly and the ones we can improve.
- Access to a large amount of information: by directly contacting the potential customer, we have an opportunity to get to know them better, interacting with them and learning about their tastes and needs. In this way, with telemarketing we will obtain more information than with other techniques.
- Can be done from anywhere: until some years ago, telemarketing campaigns were conducted in a physical call center. That is, agents were located in a space, usually in an office, where they had a telephone to make and receive calls. Fortunately, nowadays, with the advances in new technologies, it is no longer necessary to be in a specific place to receive calls. Thanks to the development of IP telephony and protocols such as WebRTC, it is possible to do so from anywhere in the world and from any device, be it a computer, mobile or tablet, as long as it is connected to the Internet.
- It brings us efficiency: telemarketing is carried out through specialised softwares that achieves a high level of automation. This is done, as we will see below, through automatic diallers that allow a large number of calls to be made in a short time without having to manually dial the different telephone numbers from the database.
- Specialisation: one of the most outstanding advantages of telemarketing is that it allows customer segmentation. In other words, it is possible to focus on a specific type of potential contacts, grouping them according to their needs and characteristics. Thus, a larger number of people can be reached and we can adapt easily to their needs, having the possibility of highlighting the features that best fit what they really expect from our product or even offering them new ones that may be of their interest.
What are the uses of telemarketing?
When we talk about a telemarketing campaign we always think of typical sales calls. It is true that this is one of the main uses of a telemarketing software, and since the beginning, it is practically what it has been used for. However, with them we can carry out different actions:
- For broadcasting announcements: we can call all of our contacts to transmit announcements efficiently. In addition, we can automate the information message to achieve the desired result in the shortest possible time.
- Confirm or remind appointments to your customers: you can schedule and customise automatic outbound calls, with or without human intervention, so that your customers don’t forget important appointments with your company.
- Satisfaction surveys: once the interaction with the customer has been completed, you can use the software to conduct satisfaction surveys efficiently, being all the information recorded in the system.
- Quality calls: you can build customer loyalty and ensure that your service meets their needs by automating these types of outgoing calls. In order for them to be carried out efficiently, you can combine virtual agents with human attention.
- Collections: in addition to carrying out these actions by uploading a database to the platform, you will be able to collect payments directly on the call through the integration of the system with your virtual POS.
How to run a telemarketing campaign?
Now that you know the advantages of telemarketing campaigns, you may be wondering how you can carry it out.
The first thing you should do is to create a database with all the potential customers you want to contact. This should obviously include the telephone number, but you can also add any additional information you consider relevant, which the agents can update during and after the call has been made.
The next step is therefore to access your telemarketing software. These systems allow the integration with other tools in your company, such as a CRM. Therefore, you do not need to create the list from the beginning, but to select it directly from your customer management software and upload all the data. This way, all the information will be centralised and you will be able to start configuring and customising the parameters of your campaign. You will have the possibility to choose, among other options, the automatic dialler that best suits your needs, the call distribution options, schedules, transition time between calls made, retries…
Finally, the software will automatically send the calls and your agents will only have to answer them. With the integration between the software and the CRM, the customer’s file will appear automatically so that the agents have all the information before picking up the call and can modify it from the platform itself during the course of the call.
What is an automatic dialler?
As mentioned above, one of the elements you will need to set up before starting your campaign will be an auto-dialer. But what is it?
An automatic dialler is a tool associated with the call center software or the virtual PBX. It automates the process of dialling telephone numbers so that a large amount of calls can be made in a short period of time. It allows agents to concentrate on other tasks, such as providing personalised service, as they no longer have to spend time manually dialling telephone numbers.
These diallers determine the right time to contact the customer based on the customer’s data, and also allow to transfer to the agent only the calls that have been answered. This way, we will optimise the performance of our telemarketing campaign and obtain much more satisfactory results.
There are four types of automatic diallers from which we can choose according to our needs:
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- Progressive dialler: calls a single telephone number for each available agent. In addition, it distinguishes and discriminates between non-existent or busy numbers and detects voicemails.
- Predictive dialler: in this case, calls are made to several phone numbers simultaneously through an algorithm, delivering the call to an available agent only when the receiver has answered.
- Preview mode: the agent has the possibility to decide whether to make the call or not, so the agent manually triggers the action, although the dialler will still dial the numbers.
- Robot call: by combining a progressive or predictive dialler and these systems you can launch calls automatically without human intervention.
What Fonvirtual’s telemarketing software offers you
Now that we have seen what telemarketing can do for you, the next step is to find the right tools to suit your business and campaign needs.
With the telemarketing software that we offer at Fonvirtual, besides having the possibility to customize your campaign and choose the automatic dialer that suits your needs, you will be able to record the calls, get the transcripts and have a real-time listening system. Once the campaign is over, you will be able to obtain a detailed report about the campaign to analyse its results.
Our mass call software is equipped with artificial intelligence and has the ability to detect if the call ends up in a voicemail. In these cases, the system filters these calls and does not leave it to any agent, which increases efficiency and allows them to focus only on calls that have been answered.
Finally, the telemarketing software we offer can be integrated with your company’s tools, such as CRM or your virtual POS so that you can collect payments without leaving the call and load the results of the calls on the same platform. Thus, all the information will be centralised and you will be able to receive, consult and modify the data you need without leaving the call.
If you want to know everything you can automate to make your telemarketing campaign a success, do not hesitate to contact us. Our team will advise you and be with you throughout the process to help in everything you need.
