International Conference on Call Center

The International Contact Center Conference & Expo was held in the Philippines recently. The conference was one of the many steps that the country has taken in the recent months to promote themselves as the epicenter of call center activity. The conference was scheduled to help the country and the participating BPO companies to fight the challenges that the business process outsourcing community was facing in the recent times. With the rise of the profit line in the country, it was time for the call center services units to brace themselves for greater profits in the second quarter of the year. The emergence of new technology in the BPO service was another point of discussion.

Such conferences that bring the telemarketing business firms together are very important in chalking something out for the future. The Philippines was the ideal destination for such a call center seminar because the country is finally in the running to beat other destinations as the hub of BPO activity. This was an opportunity for the delegates of business process outsourcing units all over the world to gather and discuss their business on the sidelines. Such conferences are also ideal for lead generation for BPO service firms. They can contact business heads and clients and show them what sort of telemarketing services projects they are capable of handling.

BPO Business Booms in Philippines

The BPO business in the Philippines is seeing some great days now. After successfully challenging the growth percentage of the BPO giant India and beating their growth rate convincingly, the call center industry in this country can only get better. The support of the government and the constant faith of them in the capabilities of their telemarketing manpower to generate enough business are the pillars of their progress. The telemarketing services of the country see their delegations as part of every major business process outsourcing conference. They like to place themselves in the thick of things. These representatives are also not wary of taking on the political legislations of a country like USA.

For those not in the loop, the BPO experts of the Philippines were in USA a couple of months back to protest against the anti-offshore call center outsourcing bill of New York Senator Charles E. Schumer. The delegates told the Senator that they expected better steps from an economic super power like USA because such legislations affected the economies of countries like theirs. Their argument was to allow telemarketing outsourcing to their country as usual. If there was something to be done, they requested for higher tax cuts. It remains to be seen if their efforts actually stalls the bill, but not every government would go to that extent to nurture the business process outsourcing industry.

Call Center for Overseas Workers

The Indonesian government has set up a call center to tend to the needs of the overseas workers. Indonesia, especially Jakarta, is a preferred destination for many overseas workers. Some of them also look for employment in the BPO sector. They rely on dubious sources for their information about the country and the employment scenario. The call center services will be able to guide them get through to the right employment pockets. Countries across the world are relying on these answering service units to bail them out of issues that need a knowledge sharing process. Such cases are best handled by the phone answering units. That is why governments build up an inbound call center desk or simply outsource the work to a BPO service unit.

This initiative will address a serious issue that prevalent among the overseas workers in the country. It is also a move that will make the country more suited to attract quality manpower. The BPO sector in the country is still in its nascent stages. They still have a long way to go in call center work before they can match up to The Philippines. The infrastructure and other facilities may not be looking good at the present for the country to do some world-class work, but if they can push their efforts, they can be right up there.

Auto Dialers Save Lead Generation Resources

Despite the amount of flak that the robotic lead generation calls have received in the recent times, there is a steady demand for call centers that take to auto dialers with enthusiasm. Auto dialers help the outbound call center teams in a big way. With the help of this software, a high number of numbers can be dialed automatically. The call center agents need not sit at their desk and spend time dialing the numbers. The software dials the numbers of their behalf and also keeps a close tab on the agents who are busy on calls and those that are free. The calls are passed to the free agents as soon as the receiver receives the call. The receivers cannot make out that they have been auto-dialed. So they don’t complain about this sales lead generation process.

Auto dialing methods save time at the lead generation campaign. Because the whole process of dialing numbers is done by the software, a lot of time is saved in the process. The outbound call center agents have a tighter schedule as well. There is no problem of checking the numbers and then dialing them. Moreover, the auto dials are able to check the availability of the receivers. If the receiving doesn’t take the call, the call center agent need not attend on it. There are no false alarms as such and agents are only put on calls that have found a voice at the other end.

Call Center for Entrepreneurs

Sensing that India continues to be the trusted choice of entrepreneurs when it comes to hiring call center services, the Ministry has decided to do something about it. The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) board has decided to kick-start a BPO service that goes by the name ‘Udyami Helpline’. The purpose of this initiative is to provide entrepreneurs with an option to choose from the registered call centers across India. This will be a toll free answering service that the business heads can use at their convenience. They can compare and avail BPO service without having to scourge around for a suitable phone answering network. Such initiatives help the business process outsourcing sector as a whole. The country has to make certain allowances to woo investors into investing in the industries of the country.

The Udyami Helpline is the first of many initiatives that related ministries will take to bolster the BPO sector in the country. It would be no surprise if they have been inspired by the government back-up that the call center sector receives in countries like The Philippines. Though India has a long way to go when it comes to government initiatives to promote a particular industry, BPO or otherwise, the country continues to grab those cherry telemarketing projects. The Helpline is a good step forward. Entrepreneurs will be interested only if they find convenience. And such answering service can only mean that investors will know the ground reality of BPO service in India.

Politicians Not Telemarketing Agents!

Politicians in the USA are entitled to call numbers registered on the Do Not Call (DNC) list. These calls do not come under the violation of the telemarketing laws. The laws restrict the calls made by call center agents who are selling some product/service. Politicians and charity institutions do not fall under this law. Several citizens in the USA are pestered by the BPO agents who call to convince the citizens to vote for one candidate or the other. Generally hardcore supporters of one party issue complaints against the other for breach of privacy. But there are no laws to condemn the call centers making these calls. Insiders are happy that it is so, or fake complaints would have flooded the guardian body, Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Very recently, the FTC had slotted advisors and counselors under the telemarketing laws. If they call their clients at times of the day when the telemarketing services law prohibits them, they will be fined. Moreover, the FTC also made it clear that call center agents cannot ask the customers to pay for services that they have not rendered. This is particularly true for the debt recovery BPO agents. They demand payment even before the customer has been relieved of his debt. Their fake call center services add to the debt of the customer instead of relieving him! The question about the politicians calling for votes has been part of the American electoral process for decades.

Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation

B2B lead generation is different from the other processes in this genre. Here the call centers have to deal with the business heads of firms that your client wants to do business with. A new way to approach them is through professional networks like LinkedIn. Creating a profile and interacting with the entrepreneurs through such networks builds up a professional attitude. BPO firms that have quality B2B projects are sizing up their option more than ever. Let’s find out how call center agents can do a good job on LinkedIn. Step 1 would be to create a profile. Experts suggest that you spend considerable time on this. Key in authentic information and try to cover all the fields. Your profile is going to be a sort of a CV for your business. Do it with the due diligence.

Call centers need to take care in providing easily accessible means of contacting the inbound call center desk. Provide phone numbers, IMs, blog and website links. If the call center agents are using emails to communicate, make sure they have the right signature line with the same information. No entrepreneur has the time to hunt out a contact address or email id from the website. The BPO agents have to ensure that they have access to contact data at their finger-tips. Finally, try to talk to the entrepreneurs through emails and LinkedIn mails. Unless you network actively, you are not going to achieve much.

Advertisers Come Under Lead Generation Law

Advertisers who make calls to customers will come under the lead generation laws, according to a new directive from the Canadian telecom authority. The rules mention that advertisers making telemarketing calls have to register themselves with the government as telemarketers and they will be legally subjected to the same laws as a telemarketing services firm. The new rule was necessary because many advertisers was making use of this loophole to contact prospective customers as call center agents are more likely to do. Their violations of the laws were being held against the BPO sector.

As a matter of fact, several call centers have been fined by the Canadian government for violating the telemarketing laws. However, because of any teeth in the law, the authorities were not able to realize any payment. The BPO units are still withholding the fines that they are supposed to pay. Insiders of the business process outsourcing industry feel that it’s important for the authorities to ensure that the guilty firms pay the fine. Without a proper procedure to get these fines extracted, the telemarketing services sector will not pay heed to the laws. That, in turn, would harm other BPO service units in their drive to offer only industry-recommended lead generation procedures.

Advantages of Cross Selling in Lead Generation

The lead generation processes of many call centers revolve around cross selling. This is the procedure of offering the existing consumers some related products/services. This sales lead generation process has numerous advantages, both for the call center as well as for the consumer. To begin with, the telemarketing agents can sell products/services to existing customers. This is like tapping the same consumer base and coming up with a fresh set of revenue earnings. Cross selling works particularly well in the retail sector. Telemarketing services receive a considerable boost when the BPO unit tries out the process of cross selling.

From the perspective of the consumer, cross selling works well because the lead generation agents tap into their latent demands. They may not be aware of certain products/services that can make life easier. It’s the job of the telemarketing agent to poke at that demand and offer them something that they need but didn’t realize that. Sales lead generation, in this case, acts in favor of the consumer as well. Clients, who have a chain of products, often ask BPO units to help them out with cross selling. It’s a nice way to have revenues coming in from your existing group of customers. There is a little risk as well. If the new product doesn’t live up to what the consumer expects, it reflects badly on the brand identity of the client.

Call Center Employees Go Cheap

Call center employees in the USA are ready to work at slashed pays. The percentage of unemployment is so high that the BPO agents who have been given the pink slip during the recession sees no other option but to take up a job with whatever pay they get. Call centers in the country cannot afford to pay them high wages because they have to contend with the BPO service units of the developing countries. If the domestic telemarketing units cannot keep their prices low, they will lose their projects to the offshore business process outsourcing destinations. They have to keep their prices at par with the global rate. Hitting that rate despite being in an expensive economy is not working out for them, yet they have no choice.

The situation is not too bleak as well. There are high chances that the domestic call centers will gain from the model of cutting down on prices. Call center units in developing countries brought down their prices to get more projects. It worked for them. Business firms, just out of recession, decided to try cheaper BPO units because they couldn’t afford the expensive ones. The quality of these call center services has become infinitely better because of all the training and quality control that is being done these days. The pay cuts of the employees are just a fall-out of their attempt to bring down the cost of production so that they meet the price tags that are globally accepted.

Call Center Monitoring

Call center firms are guarded in their approach these days. Reports and online alerts keep telling us about incidents involving data theft and other malpractices in the BPO firms. That makes you be careful about your agents and the processes at all times. You must have an integrated monitoring system that keeps a close tab on your call center services, your telemarketing agents who make and receive calls and also on the use of resources. The monitoring system isn’t something that makes the employees claustrophobic or keeps things too tight. It’s just that you must have it in place to prevent any misuse of your call centers. You have a reputation to protect in the business process outsourcing sector.

In your answering service department, you must have some monitoring going on as well. You need to have technology to keep track on all the calls that are being made or received in the call center. Sometimes you can have BPO supervisors listening on the calls while they are in progress. If the floor agent is not getting something right, the supervisor can whisper in some words of advice. It’s entirely on how you take the call center services monitoring. If you take a positive view of it, there’s nothing better. And if you feel that it chokes innovation, then it will only be a fallacy in thinking so.

Converting Online Traffic to Lead Generation

Many call centers are now relying on websites for lead generation. Web 2.0 tools are great to get some quality leads into the kitty. However, you have to be careful about converting the traffic that comes to the client websites into leads that make money. Search engine optimization (SEO) methods can get you the traffic. But to convert them into sales lead generation, you need more than a website. The BPO web designers have to build up a website that has easy navigation and also makes the flow of traffic easier from the home page to the internal pages. The easier it is for the users to use the website, the better chances you have of making a sale.



Another way to boost lead generation through websites is to keep the information form easy and simple. Users don’t like it when you hold out a form that requires inane data and is unusually long. Sales lead generation cannot work out if the users get turned off by the forms that you have on the website. A good idea would be to keep other options for the users to sign up. Users may want to contact you through email or leave a comment. The inbound call center agents can process those emails and see if they can use them for telemarketing. There must always be this synergy between the telemarketing services team and the web marketing department. That’s how the BPO firm can have the best of both worlds.

Holiday Incentive for Telemarketing Agents

Motivation is a prime mover for any employee, be it from the call center or elsewhere. The BPO units these days are offering holiday packages to its employees who do exceedingly well. Many call centers have adopted this model of rewarding the best telemarketing agent or employee with an all expenses paid trip to a holiday destination of their choice. No wonder then that there is some serious competition on the telemarketing services floor! It’s good for the firm in a number of ways. They have a dedicated and now motivated team of BPO service agents and that’s something that is must-have for progress.


However, it’s a challenge for the call center to keep the focus on healthy competition. When the incentives are this rewarding, it’s obvious that the BPO agents would just about do anything to grab the opportunity. To keep the focus on work and not on the incentive, the employers of the call centers have to maintain a transparent policy to select the winner. Arbitrary decisions can do a lot of harm to the morale of the employees and ruin the work environment. As a matter of fact, the whole purpose of providing this incentive can backfire on the telemarketing company. Even then, it’s definitely a move that will push for better telemarketing services in the future.

Basic Skills for Telemarketing

The telemarketing sector doesn’t need any high-octane qualifications to see you through. All you need are some basic skills to make it good at the telemarketing services desk. The call center units are recruiting agents who are good at the practical aspects of the job rather than someone who knows the protocol and the practices well but weak in application. To be a successful BPO agent, all you need to do is the love for communicating with people and the persuasive skills of a good salesperson. If you are good at talking to people and convincing them about your point of view, you have earned yourself the degree that is most needed in BPO service! You don’t need to back it up with a fancy college degree.



The telemarketing sector has employed many from other industries even when they had no prior experience of working in a telemarketing services unit. And these new call center recruits could work well and adapt themselves quickly because the work is not complicated. Call center services need a sharp mind and plenty of common sense. Any new recruit having these basic skills can do well in the BPO service unit. The training provided by the business process outsourcing units is also a major reason why the new recruits are able to adapt themselves quickly and settle down with the job on hand.

Payment Discrimination in BPO

Payment discriminations have dotted the history of industrialization. It began with racial issues and shifted to gender bias. No matter what the industry experts tell us, there still exists a disparity in the income of the man and the woman. However, things are refreshingly different in a BPO. Here, the women have an equal opportunity not just in matters of pay, but also in terms of progress and promotion in a call center. The doors of being promoted to a higher position than the current one, is as near to the woman than to the man. In fact, the woman has a better scope of working as a telemarketing professional because they are naturally inclined to be patient with customers.

















In terms of pay, the women make as much money in a BPO unit. There is no separate pay slot for the women, as you may find in various other industries. The call centers are known for being the arenas of equal opportunity. The call center services also provide employment to women who cannot come to the office for various reasons. It could be that the commuting to the call center is a problem for someone. Several BPO service firms allow working from home as an option, where you get the usual pay. You can coordinate with your superiors in the office through the internet. Such convenience can only be had in the business process outsourcing sector!

Disadvantages of In-house Call Center

Several business firms are considering the idea of moving their call center unit in-house. While this may seem like a convenient option for them, the convenience is only apparent. There are several advantages of hiring a BPO and not getting your in-house team to do the work. The main disadvantage is the lack of trained expertise. Call centers have trained agents carrying out lead generation, answering service and telemarketing. To set up an in-house team, you will have to hire and train employees. That will be a time-consuming effort. Moreover, before your trained employees can take the floor and start off work, you will have lost a lot of time that could have been advantageous for call center services.

Call center agents have the knowledge of the market and what BPO process will be best suited for the needs of the hour. To get the kind of knowledge base that you can have at your disposal in call centers, you will need to be in the telemarketing sector for some time. Since that is not something with these business firms, they are at a disadvantage. It is important to be adept in the art of supporting a business firm through call center services. It ensures that the business firm gets the required back-up to take giant leaps in the sales department. Blend the BPO service with the business processes and ethics of the firm you tie up with.

Rural Call Center Proves Lucrative

The rural BPO units are proving themselves to be ideal locations for a call center hub. The cost factor is a huge advantage that the investors of call centers can count on. This is especially true for cities in countries like India and the Philippines. The smaller cities of India, like Mysore and Jaipur have very supportive governments to help them bag telemarketing units. The administrators help the investors with tax cuts and other rebates. The less-expensive market of the smaller cities also acts as a bonus. The telemarketing services firms can establish an office space without having to shell out a fortune.

In business process outsourcing, you need to have a minimum amount of seats to make a telemarketing project economically viable. At times, the lack of the required number of call center agents jeopardizes a project. The call volume may be too high for the answering service agents to handle. Without space enough, you are barred from recruiting more on the inbound call center team. This issue is solved in smaller cities. The costs you save in infrastructure, tax cuts and establishment can be used to make expansions and innovations in the business.

Telemarketing Scams Target Mobile Phones

Phishing, that dreaded lead generation technique that is downright illegal, is now all over mobile phones. There are tons of telemarketing units out there that are using text messages to gather information about the consumers. The scam starts off with the text message that requests you to reply back with information about your personal details and often they are asking for financial ones as well. Once you reply to the text message with the required information, the telemarketing services units call you up and try to sell the product/service. The dangerous part is, sometimes there is actually nothing on them to sell! The call center agents just walk away with your money.

Such mobile phone scams have provoked the authorities to warn citizens about this telemarketing attack. The authorities have another cause for concern. Often, the call center agents use the name of a state office to collect funds! This is beneficial for the fraudulent telemarketing services agents because they are less likely to check up if the call was genuine. Moreover, they are more likely to pay because they feel they are obliged to do so as citizens. The call center scam earns rich money for those involved. Sometimes these call centers are based overseas as well, making it almost impossible for the authorities to nab them or force them into paying hefty fines.

Social Media for Call Center

The marketing scenario is fast changing. The monopoly enjoyed by voice calls from call center agents is being challenged by the social media and other online marketing tools. Among them social media marketing has emerged as the most talked about marketing vehicle for BPO firms. Call center services have integrated social media into their range of services, thereby paving the way for more use of Facebook, Twitter and others. The leverage provided by the social media networks have come in handy for call centers. They have been able to drive home targeted lead generation services through audience interactions and participation.

The biggest advantage of social media is that it is a public platform. When a call center agent makes a voice call, there is only one person who receives the message. However, if the BPO agent writes something on the prospective customer’s social media profile page, many can see it. The message becomes a sort of public broadcast for the call center. This helps in reaching out to larger sections of the target demographics. Moreover, if your customer base is happy with you, they will do a positive word-of-mouth publicity for you online. That, I assure you, will be better than any amount of telemarketing that you can do!

State Work Outsourced to Overseas Call Center

In a bizarre case of bureaucratic shortsightedness, the answering service work of Ohio’s appliance rebate program was found to have been outsourced to El Salvador! The rebate program is part of the stimulus package awarded to Ohio. The revelations came to the surface when someone called the program and asked the call center agent where he was located. The answer was so shocking for the caller that he registered a complaint with the Ohio state government. The Texas-based call center services unit never mentioned to the concerned department that they will be outsourcing their rebate program to an overseas BPO unit. It’s another matter that the department, on their part, never asked or clarified!

The Governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, is livid at the way things have turned out to be. He has ordered city council members to be particular about these details. A number of Republican congressmen opined that the call center work should never have been outsourced to overseas call centers. They have decided to make it a point not to award contracts to those BPO units that will outsource the work to overseas units. According to the stimulus package of Barack Obama to Ohio, $11m came in to offer rebates to consumers buying appliances that saved energy, like water heaters and dishwashers.