Outbound Calling: It's Not a Numbers Game

By Peter DeHaan

September 24, 2008

Although my writing about inbound call centers tends to be encouraging and instructive, my words for outbound operations skew towards the critical and condemning.  Sadly, there is ample justification for this.  Just remember, if I didn't care, I wouldn't bother.

Although the stats vary by industry, campaign, and offer, call center results may look something like this: We place 100 calls, reach 50 contacts, verify five prospects, and make one sale.  At this point you have a formula and calling becomes a numbers game.  To sell more, you make more calls.  You have two options: increase the efficiency of existing staff, or throw more people into the calling pool.  In either case the result is decreased efficacy - because the quality of the calls invariably decreases.

Consider a comparable formula for the motion picture industry.  Since I have no idea of actual numbers, I'm just guessing, but it might look something like: Make ten movies, five lose money, and one becomes a hit.  Now they have a formula.  Do they reason, "Let's crank out as many flicks as we can, as fast as possible to more quickly reach that predictable blockbuster?  Hardly.  Any movie executive that advocated such a move would quickly become unemployed.  Instead they focus on quality.  No self-respecting studio sets out to make average movies or cheap productions.  Instead, they strive to make each movie be the best that they can (given the parameters they have to work with).

I'm reminded of Will Smith's movie, "The Pursuit of Happyness."  Smith plays down-and-out Chris Gardner, a homeless single parent working at a payless stockbroker internship.  He's competing with 19 others for one possible job.  They're tasked with making cold calls, trained to work up a company's organizational structure to eventually reach the top and make the big sale - which seldom happens.  Gardner's personal situation prevents him from working as many hours as the others vying for the position, so he begins working smarter rather than harder.  Instead of his peers' numbers focus, he adopts a quality perspective, giving his all to close the top man on his list - and succeeds.  Quality trumps quantity.

Without exception, the calls I receive indicate a quantity over quality mentality, giving me a front row seat to a sad ending to the "numbers game."  These call centers are seemingly increasing the number of calls by pursuing the dual strategy of rushing new people online - as evidence by appallingly poor training outcomes - and pushing staff to do more, faster.  Here's what I experience:

• The dialing rate is too high, and I hear dead air - or am disconnected.

• The agent can't pronounce my name.

• They request "the person in charge of…"

• They read a script with no enthusiasm, devoid of personality.

• They talk too fast.

• They mumble their name and company.

• There is often a tumultuous roar in the background.  (If inbound operations can keep call center noise off the phone, why can't outbound operations?)

• The connection quality is often poor (which is seldom an inbound issue).

Before you pat yourself on the back and say, "We don't do these things; we focus on quality," I challenge you to make a thorough investigation - because if you're innocent of these infractions, you've certainly not been calling me.