Despite the heavy use of the Internet by consumers and businesses alike, speaking to a live person on the telephone is still a major aspect of making sales and establishing connections with customers, clients, business partners, and more. Speaking over the phone may be “old-fashioned” in some sense, but phone conversations have retained much of their power for business purposes. Today, customer service jobs require conversational skills over the phone and with headsets, and inbound sales call centers and outbound call centers alike are where an employee may make use of these skills. Statistics show that good customer service and advertising over the phone is a major part of business today, and the options are more varied than they were in years past. Now, anyone working over the phone may try telemarketing from home, and telemarketing from home offers some perks over working at a large sales call center. An employee make work from home as an insurance agent, for example, explaining insurance policies to customers over the phone. An independent contractor may also choose telemarketing from home in many cases.
Marketing and the Human Element
Some trends have suggested that technology is drawing people apart, and that daily lives are more impersonal than ever. This may be true in some arenas, but it is safe to say that many adult customers today still care very much how they are treated by others, and this is certainly true in sales calls and customer service. No one likes to be treated badly, and a sales call employee with a poor attitude or clumsy sales techniques may not get far. In fact, statistics show that customers largely base their spending habits and brands of choice based on how they are treated on the phone. To this effect, customers who had the best past experiences with a given company spend 140% more than those who had the worst past experiences, and 86% of customers overall will pay more for a better customer experience, such as over the phone. Conversely, 78% of consumers will cancel a purchase or decide not to make one at all based on poor service over the phone.
Business managers also understand the power of phone conversations, and they are aware of how customers think when dealing with employees over the phone or on live web chat. This may be partly because in general, businesses that boost their customer retention rates as little as 5% or so may see profit increases ranging from 25-95%, which can be significant. Overall, whether by phone or live web chat or another medium, it has been found that keeping a current customer is more more price-efficient than bringing on a new one. New customers cost a lot to get, so treating current customers very well is vital. A company may lose a lot of money if it keeps losing customers and has to spend a lot to get new ones repeatedly. New and returning customers alike must be treated just right.
Work at Home
Many sales associates are working over the phone with their clients and customers, but a crowded sales call center may be noisy, and this can lower the quality of a given conversation. Customers may be unhappy if they can’t hear the sales call employee of the noise, or vice versa, so remote working can help with this. In many contexts, employees of all kinds sometimes opt to work from the privacy and quiet of their own homes, a controlled environment. There, employees have a quiet and low-stress environment where they can conduct phone calls and live web chat, whether with consumers or business partners and clients. It should be noted that telemarketing from home like this is effective not only for sales associates, but working at home is beneficial for many employees. Working at home means cutting out commute time from their schedule, opening up potentially as much as an extra hour for work. Modern IT solutions such as data Cloud storage and hybrid integration, along with live video chat with co-workers, ensure that a remote employee isn’t missing anything. Similarly, employees may get a lot of work done while traveling for business on board a private jet, another quiet and controlled environment.
