Keep Your Call Center FULL!
In a separate article, I wrote that if you truly know your job, you probably are aware of 1,000 more things than somebody else, who doesn’t.
This definitely applies to managing call centers, and especially to overseeing telemarketing units.
For example, we know from experience:
(1) Louder voices sell better than softer ones.
(2) Callers are more robust, extroverted, and successful pitching from a bullpen than a private office.
(3) Informal leaders, usually your top reps or those with the longest tenure, will be more influential than the formal supervisors and managers in the phone unit.
(4) Scripts are inevitable, but to succeed they need to be enforced, strictly.
(5) Turnover is part of the telemarketing beast, that can be tamed, but usually isn’t.
If you want more information about these ideas, please see my articles that provide details.
In this piece, I want to bring up a sixth piece of knowledge: If you want peak performance from your telemarketers, keep every seat in your center occupied.
A full room is necessary for these reasons:
(1) Voices are louder and the collective loudness emboldens every individual in the group, creating peer pressures to perform.
(2) A full room means you can and will replace every vacant seat, immediately. Nobody’s seat is sacred. Only performance will secure it for the occupant.
(3) This is a desirable job, and there’s competition to come aboard.
(4) If you like the people around you, and want them to make it, help them whenever you can.
(5) Per capita achievement is raised in a full room; you’ll get disproportionately more sales than when fewer seats are occupied.
So, keep recruiting until you reach 100% capacity, and keep recruiting after that, to maintain it, dropping the worst achiever when you need a desk.
Anything less than 100% occupancy means you’re not doing your job as a manager!
Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone®, You Can Sell Anything By Telephone! and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.
