At 2am there is a segment of the population that wants better skincare, a better cleaning system or flatter abs. Funnily enough, at 11am there is another segment wanting the same thing as well as the latest diets, next generation cookware and revolutionary shampoo. It’s direct response television and it’s a multi-billion dollar business that is dependent on the effectiveness of the inbound call centre for sales.

For many in the direct response television business, outsourcing the crucial call centre component to Australian outsourcer, Teleconnexions, has delivered against both customer service and profitability objectives.

Teleconnexions is a privately owned, 100 seat contact centre outsourcing company. They have built a specialist capability in managing direct response television campaigns for some of the leading direct response television companies. 

The nature of direct response television makes it one of the hardest and toughest types of businesses to make profitable because:

• It requires multi million dollar advertising spend up front – you’d better have a good ad and a saleable product (there’s a reason why infomercials are so spell-binding)
• The advertising can be pulled at the last minute if the television company gets a better offer - and guess who pays for unused agent time…not the direct response television company.
• When the ad goes to air you can get hundreds of callers in seconds wanting to buy right now so rostering the right number of agents to handle the call volume is paramount..  
• The loss of any call is equivalent to a lost sale so abandon rates are not acceptable.

‘It sounds a bit like an impossible task but with clever technology and our experience we successfully deliver great results for our clients every day,’ said Mark Jones, Operations Director at Teleconnexions.   

According to Jones, success relies on doing the basics well; citing clear processes, great team leaders, effective training, smart utilisation of agents and campaigns, and IPscape’s hosted call centre technology as the Teleconnexions ‘success’ basics.

Each week a clear outline of the planned advertising campaigns and broadcast date and time are provided. Using the outline as guidance, Jones and the Teleconnexions team leaders roster agents according to utilisation targets with the objective that all calls can be answered live.  

‘We know the approximate expected call volumes for each campaign, date and time combination because of extensive testing with the direct response television company which is crucial to utilisation planning,’ said Jones.

But for all the campaign testing, the notification of actual broadcast of the advertisements is somewhat simplistic. 

‘Watching television in the call centre is the most efficient notification system,’ said Jones. ‘Luckily with the IPscape system even five seconds notice is enough time for the call centre to be ready for when the wallboards show inbound calls in queue.’

Presets in the IPscape system determine agent actions based on call volume. Once high call levels are reached the team leader switches the system from sales mode to ‘name and number’ mode. Agents are trained to react immediately and request the callers name and phone number if not already presented by the computer telephony integration (CTI) system. Each name and number is recorded in the IPscape system and flagged as responses to the current advertisement. Once name and number is captured, the next call is presented until the call volume subsides as the advertisement ends.

With the falling call volume the team leader instigates outbound call mode, starting the automated dialer on the recorded numbers so the agents can close the sale. 

‘There is a critical time period after the inbound call to close the sale,’ stated Jones. ‘Speed and reliability is paramount as is customer confidence in the credit card security measures we have in place through IPscape.’

New security features of the IPscape solution include a private IVR-style touch tone facility so the customer can enter credit card details through the telephone keypad.

‘The private keypad is built into the workflow so while the agent starts the keypad process, the only information they see or hear is the result of the credit card transaction,’ stated Jones. ‘With customers increasingly concerned about credit card security, this new feature provides greater reassurance and confidence.’ 

Teleconnexions has managed to fine-tune their business model to achieve great success for themselves as well as their clients, including:

• Quadrupling revenue in 12 months with the addition of six new direct response television clients;
• Controlling costs by aligning telco and software costs to revenue with no upfront capex and  pay-as-you-use charging. As IPscape queues calls in the cloud and only sends a call to Teleconnexions when an agent is available, Teleconnexions only needs bandwidth for available agents, again saving on telco bandwidth charges;
• Using agents@home for those pesky advertisements that go to air at 3am – tapping into a new labour force happy to work from home at weird hours
• Using a single report to monitor and measure inbound and outbound performance in real time so instant decisions can be made on accurate data.

Who would have thought transforming inbound to outbound would be so beneficial?

Video: Hear Teleconnexions talk about their experience with IPscape

By Anna Kay

Anna is the editor of the breaklines mini-mag. Contact Anna with any feedback or comments on breaklines at anna.kay@ipscape.com.au