26th Telemarketing Lead - Basic Principles

There are two major categories of telemarketing: Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer.

Within these two categories are two other broad divisions: Lead Generation, where the objective is to obtain information and Sales, where the object is to get someone to buy something.

Within these two categories, there are two other broad categories: Outbound and Inbound. Outbound telemarketing efforts are proactive, with the marketing person making phone calls to prospects or existing customers. Inbound telemarketing efforts are reactive, where the agent processes requests for information or takes orders. The demand is generally created by advertising, publicity or the efforts of outside salespeople.

Types of calls are often divided into outbound and inbound calls. Inbound calls are calls that are made by the consumer to obtain information, report a malfunction, or ask for help. These calls are substantially different from outbound calls, where agents place calls to potential customers mostly with intentions of selling or service to the individual.

There are many standard traffic measurements that can be performed on a call centre to determine its performance levels. However, the most important performance measures are:

* The average delay a telemarketing operator may experience whilst waiting in a queue
* The mean conversation time of the telemarketer, otherwise referred to as Average Talk Time
* The mean dealing time, otherwise referred to as Average Handling Time
* The percentage of calls answered within a determined time frame
* The percentage of calls which completely resolve the customer's issue (if the customer does not call back about the same problem for a certain period of time, it is considered a successful resolution).