Handling Robo-diallers And Script Readers
Flies On The Windshield
By Paul Grimsley
I am not sure how much time I spend fallen in the Uncanny Valley that some of the more effective Robo-diallers lure me into, but it gets a little frustrating. Woe betide anyone that has a voice that sounds like a robot — they are likely to get a frosty reception.
Likewise, people who operate off of scripts and seem to be more interested in hitting their quota of calls, rather than actually talking to someone, annoy. It is rude and counter-intuitive to observe no etiquette at all on a call. Does this approach really work? Fling enough crap at the wall and some of it sticks? That seems like an approach more guaranteed to alienate than inspire any appreciation.
Everything that we do at our company is designed to foster more communication and better understanding of our customers, so engaging in anything like the practices that these companies feel OK to have as their operating procedure for their frontline communication team would run totally counter to that.
Talking at someone is not communicating with them. A robot is not having a conversation with the person who picks up the phone — no matter how convincing the pauses and imitated conversational tics. Nothing substitutes for actually speaking to someone.
It’s strange that selling is seen as such a difficult thing, when the real problem is people are trying to shortcut the whole process. Making friends and creating relationships with the people that you want to work with is the thing you need to concentrate on. A lot of advice tells you to pretty much forget you are dealing with human beings and to just expect them to be herded like cattle from point a to point b, until they become low hanging or windfall fruit for people wanting a lay down sale.
Phone skills are not the same as being able to rattle out a script. A script is not the same as being able to have a conversation. Do you know your products and services well enough to be able to think on your feet, or are you having to find the right paragraph in your script in order to answer the question? People notice.
Also, if you treat the person answering the phone like they are unimportant because they aren’t the decision maker you are making the mistake of not realizing that this person could get you in touch with the decision maker.
Listen to these people for long enough and you start to form firm positions on what you yourself are willing or unwilling to do. if you want to help people you have to help individuals, and you have to stop thinking of them as a herd. You have to hear, not herd.
Quality over quantity should be the idea, because those quality conversations will turn into quality relationships, and if your prospective client likes you it is almost as if you don’t have to sell them on the idea of working with you. Why? Because they know that you care.
A lot of call centers start out wrong because they have an ethos that tells the call center operator that they are just a bum on the seat, and it doesn’t matter if they last or not, because someone will step in to fill the breach. How can you shape salesmen that are intent on building relationships when they are just hamsters in wheels? They are just factory workers at a conveyor belt doing a robotic task. It encourages you to become mechanical and to switch off to some degree. Volume is the key, but quality isn’t. If anyone thinks that doesn’t communicate through the phone to the prospect just think back to the last call you received like that.
It isn’t hard to stop doing these things. Do you care about people, and do you want to help them? Good. Then burn your script. Flip the switch on the robo-dialer. Engage.
