I’m sure if you see how packs of leads fall into trash, and it’s harder to wait for approval than real innovations in iPhones, then you conclude that call center employees are crooked stutterers who can’t sell anything to your hot leads.
Of course, this is often the case. But not always. Quite often, an advertiser, an affiliate program or any other structure that controls a call center does not understand how to properly build telephony. And managers just can’t get through to leads.
Telephony is perhaps the most underestimated link in the funnel. It can double the conversion, or it can lower it below the floor. However, I’m sure that most readers don’t attach due importance to telephony.
The consequences of poor telephony work:
- Numbers from which operators call are included in spam filter databases.
- People receive a call along with a warning and are initially alert.
- Call center operators are unable to reach potential customers.
- Conversion to sales collapses.
- Everyone loses profit: from affiliates to advertisers.
How to build processes correctly?
Option №1. SIP Trunk
In this format, numbers for outgoing calls are taken from the telephony operator. Through SIP Trunk technology, the numbers are connected to the internal infrastructure. As a result, you can automatically make calls and collect statistics. The vast majority of call centers work through SIP Trunk. And it is they who have the biggest problems with dialing, subscriber loyalty and, as a result, with the conversion.
The problem is that the numbers allocated by the operator for the call center are not issued new and clean, they are not issued to one person, but are used by several clients. These customers can be anyone, sell anything and in any way. As a result, such numbers quickly fall into the database marked as “Spam” or something like that. And then spam filters give out alarms when you call. And what are the chances after that that a person will pick up the phone? And if he does, what are the manager’s chances of successfully completing the deal? Near-zero.
In order to fix the problem with some level of success when working with SIP Trunk, you need to use 4 rules:
- Request from the operator a list of numbers allocated for the company. Run the list through various spam filter databases and delete marked numbers.
- Maintain your own analytics of the percentage of dials by numbers. Delete rating outsiders from the database.
- Keep 30-60 numbers for each GEO, so as not to quickly kill them yourself, as people file complaints, and the numbers get into the spam filter databases. The required number of SIM cards can be calculated using the formula: number of operators * 2.
- Test the option to communicate with the client via the messenger.
This approach will not solve the problem with dialing completely. But without him, everything is guaranteed to be sad.
Option №2. GSM gateways
For some reason, few people use this simple, convenient, profitable and hassle-free format of work. Maybe they just didn’t know about it? Didn’t think? Did just like everyone else does? Don’t know. But now you definitely won’t be able to, as you are already reading the necessary information.
It’s about making calls from your SIMs with the same ease of use as through SIP Trunk. That is, to throw the trunk not to a third-party provider, but to your own gateway.
To organize your farm you need:
- Rent a mini-office/warehouse/apartment on the territory of the required GEO. Some kind of room that is locked with a key, where there are sockets, stable Internet and a good telephone network.
- Hire a sysadmin at minimum wage, who will come every couple of days and spend 15 minutes on system maintenance: drink coffee, pet the
catserver, brush off the dust. - Buy a pack of SIM cards. Maybe a hundred at once. A smaller number will be used at the moment, but it is cheaper in bulk, and in the process of spamming numbers they will need to be replaced.
- Buy GSM gateways for 30-60 SIM cards (twice as many as operators, the formula has not changed). Install, enable, configure. This will be done by the same system administrator at the minimum.
- Buy a VOIP server that will link the gateways and call center infrastructure. Install, enable, configure. This will also be done by the system administrator at the minimum wage. Sometimes this is not required and GSM gateways issue a channel for connecting directly to your PBX without any problems.
- Perform the same actions from the block above to check numbers for spamming. When the dead numbers are found, we send the system administrator to replace the SIM cards.
Such an infrastructure has many important advantages:
- Economy. The whole thing, together with the rent of a small room, the purchase of equipment, SIM cards, payment of tariffs, the salary of a system administrator in the medium term, will be cheaper than renting rooms from operators.
- Strongly high dial-up and conversion rates. Clean fresh numbers are cool!
- Total control. Number prefixes indicating regions, mobile operators, number base and the ability to replace them. All this is under complete control.
- In the same office, you can supply equipment for a proxy farm and use spammed SIM cards for these purposes. You can use it yourself, you can sell your mobile proxies and recoup the cost of a GSM gateway farm.
There is only one drawback to this magnificence:
- Such cells need to be made for each country with which the call center works. Accordingly, each country needs a person who organizes all this. This may be the same sysadmin at the minimum.
Conclusion
The advertiser and affiliate network should pay attention to the operation of telephony in the call center. Approach the issue seriously. If you want to make money, of course.
The arbitrator has almost no control over this process. But if you choose between two conditionally identical advertisers, specify how the call center is built. Suddenly someone will tell you. If their telephony works through GSM gateways, run there, you won’t lose. The guys who are confused with telephony most likely hire adequate operators with sales skills.