How to run effective call center campaigns (types, pros)

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While handling numerous calls and improving customer service continuously sounds like a good call center strategy, it lacks a definitive goal.

That’s why you need call center campaigns that help you conduct focused activities based on defined milestones. 

In this article, we’ll cover what call center campaigns are, their two types, and their key benefits. We’ll also go over seven effective tips to help you run a campaign with ease.

This article contains:

(click on the links to jump to a specific section)

• What are Call Center Campaigns?
• Two Types of Call Center Campaigns
• How to Run an Excellent Call Center Campaign
• Why Call Center Campaigns Are Important 

Let’s get started.

What are call center campaigns?

Call center campaigns are focused efforts to drive business results. Agents either proactively make outbound sales calls or increase incoming calls through advertising.

You can use call center campaigns to meet key business goals, like increased client sales, enhanced customer service, or optimized resource utilization.

How is a campaign different from making regular sales calls?

For example, let’s say you’re running a food delivery service.

A good call center campaign could involve agents collecting data based on the cuisine preference. You can then make calls to potential customers, informing them about your services, delivery time, discount offers, and more. 

Similarly, you can make calls to a previous client to gather positive reviews and referrals. This can help you drive incoming calls from potential customers.

Two types of call center campaigns

Let’s learn about the different types of call center campaigns: 

1. Outbound campaigns

An outbound calling campaign is sales-driven and focuses on selling a product or service to prospects and leads. 

The list of prospects and leads is generally segmented to provide personalized service. The categories can be:

• Location
• Demographic
• Shopping preference, and more.

Usually, outbound call centers use a predictive dialer to call as many contacts as possible, eliminating manual dialing.

Let’s take a look at four common types of outbound call center campaigns:

A. Telemarketing

A telemarketing campaign is a one-on-one activity to market products and services. 

A call center agent either calls an existing customer or cold calls a prospect from a targeted audience list. 

They try to create interest in the product or service by:

• Gauging the person’s needs and interest levels.
• Telling them about the product or service.
• Appointment setting to have a focused discussion. 

They pass on this information to the sales team, who then focus on converting qualified sales leads into customers.

B. Telesales

Telesales, a part of telemarketing, is an effort made by the call center to reach out to warm leads or existing customers. 

The aim is to build repeat business through excellent customer relations. 

Sales campaign agents contact leads and brief them about the product or service they intend to sell. From there, a skilled sales agent takes over and tries to close the outbound sales. These marketers are usually patient, persuasive, and persistent.

C. Debt collection

Debt collection plays an important role in improving a company’s cash flow. 

If the amount of collectibles is too large, the company might find it difficult to pay off its obligations.

That’s why the collection of money is one of the most frequent activities of outbound calling campaigns. Agents call people and provide information about their payment obligations, timely payment information, and help in debt payments. 

D. Surveys

Outbound call centers carry out surveys to analyze customer needs and preferences.

This outbound campaign aims to obtain customers’ feedback, research their preferences, and enhance the call center services to fulfill customer needs — ultimately generating profits. 

They can collect data on topics like:

• Customer journey.
• User preferences.
• Consumer behavior.
• Impact of advertising campaigns.

This helps companies, who requested this information, identify potential customers and creating a more effective marketing and product development strategy.

2. Inbound campaigns

An inbound campaign is service-based. It focuses on improving customer satisfaction, revenue, or customer retention rates.

Inbound call center agents receive calls from customers and help them with their concerns.

Here are three common types of inbound call center campaigns:

A. Customer service

Customer service campaigns focus on resolving inbound questions and concerns from customers. 

The main goal is to provide the best customer experience. 

To do so, you can focus on optimizing call center KPI targets like:

• Wait time.
• First-call resolution.
• Abandoned calls rate.
• Customer satisfaction.

B. Technical support

Unlike general customer support, technical support consists of dealing with more complex issues.

A technical support agent should solve the problem by thoroughly examining the issue. 

They also ensure that they’re following the script even if the customer is angry. This can be overwhelming for a new agent as it requires a balance between patience and technical knowledge.

That’s why this inbound call center campaign focuses on improving underlying business operations like call routing. 

Configuring call routing based on skills can connect an inbound call to the best-suited agent, increasing the probability of issue resolution. This enhances the performance of the customer service team — resulting in satisfied customers. 

And happy customers translate to positive feedback, creating better sales opportunities.

C. Order taking

Order-taking service helps customers place orders directly through calls.

During the call, a live agent can clear doubts regarding that particular product and process the order if the customer buys it. 

Call center workers can use these inbound calls to convince customers who have second thoughts about the product. They can also interact naturally to make the customer feel valued and heard.

This creates business opportunities to increase the sales of the product as well as increase customer satisfaction.

How to run an excellent call center campaign

Here are a few tips for easy campaign management:

1. Set clear objectives

The first thing you need to do is to set objectives for your campaign.

You can answer questions like:

• What do you want from your campaign?
• Will your campaign benefit your customer?
• Are your objectives profitable?
• What are the achievable conversion rates?

Clear communication of the objectives for every campaign provides a better picture to your agents. This enables them to provide better service to customers.

However, an objective is incomplete without a strategy to execute them. 

Your campaign strategy should prioritize customers’ needs, facilitate honest communication, and ensure that you deliver what you promised.

2. Update contact list regularly

A contact list is a digital record that contains the phone numbers and additional details of potential customers. 

Most call campaigns fail due to the wrong list of customers. The list includes contacts that are either obsolete or not based on proper research. 

As a result, the calls don’t connect or lead to uninterested customers.

This leads to wasted time and efforts of agents, which in turn translates to monetary loss.

To avoid this, your center agents should dynamically update the list so that each new center agent can tell who are fresh prospects and who have been approached before. 

You can also use dedicated call center software to automate this business process and save time.

3. Create a call script

A call script is vital for running a successful call center campaign. 

If you know your prospect’s needs and have structured and clear messages, you are more likely to close the sale.

Similarly, if you’re prepared with a list of common questions from customers and answers to those questions, you can provide swift service.

An effective call script should:

• Clearly define the objective of the call.
• Be short and concise.
• Contain variations to target different buyer personas.
• Provide the next best step after the call has ended.

Read more about effective call center scripts.

4. Choose the benchmarks correctly

A high benchmark will not necessarily deliver quality results. But on the other hand, low benchmarks can stifle your call center’s potential. 

That’s why you need to be careful about what standards you’ll use to measure your campaign’s success. 

Firstly, to achieve the desired results, you need to consider your workforce strength and the efficiency of your agents.

You also need to consider other important factors like:

• Contact list quality: An erroneous contact list will result in higher call abandonment rates. 
• Average talk time: Talk time differs for each type of campaign.
• Dialing logic: The dialing logic settings influence the time your agents spend talking and waiting for a call. 
• Call center environment: Background disturbances and agent efficiency can affect the duration of calls.

You should keep in mind all such factors while determining the call center KPIs and campaign benchmarks.

5. Automate basic processes

Automation uses call center technology to perform repetitive tasks.

For example, you can use an auto dialer in your outbound call center campaigns.

What’s an auto dialer?

An auto dialer is an outbound call center solution that automatically makes calls to existing customers and potential customers.

It also allows agents to skip over an answering machine or voicemail inbox, making your outbound campaigns more efficient. 

Additionally, automation technology can help you:

• Collect and segment data based on call type.
• Record inbound as well as outbound calls for future use. 
• Automate sales tasks like sending post-sale emails.

You can also automate a follow-up reminder for your agent to call clients after a specific amount of time. A scheduled follow-up within a short period can lead to a higher chance of business success.  

Learn more about call center automation here.

6. Conduct testing

Whether it’s call center, social media, email, or any other digital campaign, testing is crucial. 

Every call center needs to identify what works the best for them, based on their goals, customer geographics, and demographics.

Testing provides actionable insights that can help optimize the campaigns for better performance. For example, testing might help you learn which dialing mode is best for outbound call center campaigns.  

7. Motivate agents to perform well

Underperforming agents won’t help you realize your marketing campaign goals. 

Campaign calls require excellent verbal communication skills in persuasion and sales.

As a team leader, you should appreciate your agents’ efforts and reward their achievements. You can also offer timely perks, paid leaves, and incentives for excellent agent performance. 

This will help improve agent productivity, motivate them to work harder, and drive more prospects into clients. 

Why call center campaigns are important

Let’s take a look at three key benefits of successful call center campaigns:

1. Helps understand audience preferences

The more you know your target audience, the better you’ll be able to market to them. 

Call center campaigns allow you to learn target audience behaviors and needs through customer interactions. As a result, it helps you gain deeper insights into individual customers that might not be obvious in large-scale surveys or market research.

You can use these insights to improve sales and marketing workflows and your product/service offerings.  

Additionally, phone conversations are typically a more personal interaction when compared to other outreach communication methods. It allows customers to connect with your brand emotionally that other digital methods like email don’t usually provide.

2. Improves sales

Phone calls are a crucial lead generation tool. 

It allows the conversation to flow naturally and directly address the needs of prospects. Moreover, it establishes an emotional connection with the customer service agent, which can significantly help generate a lead. 

And once a prospect becomes a lead, the goal of an outbound calling campaign shifts to sell the product.

At this point, an experienced telesales agent can take over and persuade the lead based on the data collected throughout the sales lifecycle.

3. Keeps sales database updated

It’s essential to have the correct names, phone numbers, email addresses, and more in your database. 

A call center campaign helps gather the most recent customer information and ensure that the sales database is accurate. 

An accurate sales database not only saves time spent on calling outdated numbers but also allows agents to make an informed pitch to prospects. Moreover, it provides the sales team with current customer information to develop an effective sales pitch. 

Wrapping up

Call center campaigns play an important role in business growth.

Agents interact with potential and existing customers to increase sales and revenue and boost customer satisfaction.

However, regardless of the campaign you conduct, it’s vital to plan them in advance. You should also have an excellent strategy in place to ensure that your campaigns run smoothly.

Go through the tips mentioned above to create an effective call center campaign!