Advantages of having blended agents

In the context of a call center, the term blended agents refers to the agents who manage both incoming and outgoing calls and applications as needed. Need is determined by contact center traffic levels. The blended agents in any call center are trained to handle both incoming and outgoing calls. This training generally involves:

i) Automatic call distribution system identifying a rise in incoming call volume a

ii) Switching outbound agents’ duties to handle the overflow.

As an alternative, inbound agents can be assigned to outbound calls when the incoming volume is low.

Blended agents
Blended agents

In a blended call environment, the managers can decide when more agents are required for as particular role and instruct them to swith. And all this can be done in the absence of an automated system. Having blended call agents at your call center has a number of advantages like:

i) Increased occupancy

ii) Promotion of short-term offerings

iii) Reduced queueing

iv) Greater staff satisfaction

Blended agents have a huge potential of adding value to a variety of contact centres, and are especially useful in centers with few seats. The reason for this is that small centres are vulnerable to low levels of occupancy which further leads to low efficiency, based on peaks and troughs in call volume. In centres where low occupancy is a major issue, adopting a blended approach can prove to be highly profitable. Instead of revisiting scheduling practices, this technique can act as an efficacious solution to such a problem of low occupancy. Moreover, blended agents can be used on a short-term basis to promote campaigns. Inbound agents can be trained against a simple script to make outbound calls for the duration of a promotion. Employing a blended environment in call centers can also help utilize the resources efficiently and effectively.

Blended environment
Blended environment

 

 

 

 

B2B Lead generation

B2B lead generation refers to the process of finding new business customers. It includes various stages such as determining suitable target companies, approaching new prospects and eventual conversion from lead to customers. However, you need to know that generating leads isn’t easy and trying to acquire leads in the B2B space makes it all that much more difficult. B2B lead generation inculcates the following terms:

B2B

Prospects: It is a marketing term used for describing a potential customer. In case of B2B a prospect is a company interested in your product, service or brand. A prospect may not necessarily be familiar with your company.

B2B prospects
B2B prospects

Lead:

It refers to a company which meets the criteria you define as being valuable to generate new business. Leads can be:

i) inbound – generated e.g. through form fills or direct calls made to inquiry about products.

ii) outbound – leads can be classified as ones which sales teams may categorize based on certain conversations they had.

 B2B leads
B2B leads

Customer: 

A customer is a lead that now uses your products or services.

Customers
Customers

Inbound marketing:

Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services with the help of content marketing, social media marketing and search engine optimization. Inbound marketing provides detailed information, an improved customer experience and builds trust by offering potential customers information they value through company sponsored newsletters, blogs and entries on social media platforms.

 Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing

Outbound Marketing:

Outbound marketing is a form of marketing where a company initiates the conversation and sends its message out to an audience. Rather than taking a passive approach, companies actively push their message to potential leads, whether or not these potential leads are actually looking for them at that time. Telemarketing is one such method whereby companies pro-actively call customers to offer their products or services.

Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing

Lead nurturing tactics: II

1. Build a retargeting audience:

Retargeting is a paid medium.  A retargeting audience may be built in any of the 4 following ways

i) Select marketing content – this is what will be displayed to your audience.

ii) Pixel based interactions – this audience is built by placing a pixel on your website that uses cookies to track online visitors, helping you remarket to them.

iii) Contact list segments – this audience is defined by a segmented contact list you already have in your database

iv) “look alike” contacts –  these are outside contacts who are similar to those who have engaged with you, offering a way to exponentially increase the numbers of impressions made.

 

Building retargeting audience
Building retargeting audience

2. Make timely, well-researched calls:

The best way to convert inbound leads into qualified sales opportunities is a timely followup email or a phone call. When you make a timely, well-researched call to an inbound lead, you know exactly what the prospect is researching based on his/her recent browsing behaviour and you also have enough information about the prospect to initialize a research about the organization they work for and their specific role within the company.

 Timely follow ups
Timely follow ups

3. Personalized email marketing:

You can further improve your lead nurturing strategy by personalizing your emails. You can send triggered emails when someone downloads your gated content, clicks on links in your emails, visits certain pages on your website, or when they demonstrate a high level of engagement in order to be in touch.

Personalized emails
Personalized emails

4. Offline marketing:

Offline marketing refers to strategies that utilize offline media channels to create awareness of a company’s products and services. These campaigns may include radio and print advertising – including billboards, signs and pamphlets,telemarketing, and television ads.

Offline marketing
Offline marketing

5. Lead scoring:

Lead scoring is a methodology used to rank prospects against a scale that represents the perceived value each lead represents to the organization. The resulting score is utilized to determine which leads a receiving function (e.g. sales, partners, tele-prospecting) will engage, as per the set priority. Lead Scoring allows a business to customize a prospect’s experience based on his or her buying stage and interest level

Image result for lead scoring