Like most areas of business, telemarketing has experienced a lot of changes due to the pandemic. For one, call volumes have significantly increased. There’s a need for better tools, especially because many are working from home.
Due to the fact that telemarketing representatives are not prepared for the rise in demand for their services, coupled with the fact that they lack the necessary technological solutions for automation, a huge increase in escalations is inevitable.
This is not acceptable. Thus we see a shift in telemarketing from being a people-driven business to one that utilizes technology more. For instance, where it was required to employ 100 people to find phone leads, only 10 or so are needed now to accomplish the same number of leads thanks to innovations like AI and chatbots.
Here are some of the key telemarketing trends to dominate 2022:
Higher Expectations in Customer Experience
Lead generation and appointment setting will continue to be the bread and butter of telemarketing. However, brands will demand 24/7 customer support, which will be achievable only by using advanced technologies.
Artificial intelligence and chatbots are two such technologies that will enable businesses to automate customer support. They will be able to answer questions with a high level of accuracy, thus eliminating the need to hire more call center agents.
AI-driven call center software like Corvese will be able to intelligently predict the questions of the customer, thus dramatically reducing the number of escalations.
New and Better Innovations
The trend will be for telemarketers to opt for tools that are adaptive and responsive to the needs of the business. Modern tools will be capable of reprogramming themselves to suit the ever-changing needs of the business.
For instance, it will be able to detect when the business is in high demand and automatically scale up. Likewise, when the demand goes down, the need for the tool will reduce and the cost of operation will go down.
Boosting Agent Performance Through Advanced Coaching
Improvement in agent performance will be a key factor in achieving optimal company results. Executives will have to put extra effort into training and developing the skills of their agents to ensure that callers are satisfied with the services and have no reason to escalate the call to a higher authority.
Remote Telemarketing Teams
The trend in recruiting agents will be to choose candidates that are available to work remotely. The need to hire in-office workers will decrease as businesses will be able to take advantage of the worldwide availability of talent.
This is a significant change because global expansion is not a problem anymore. Businesses will be able to achieve low-cost, high-quality talent who will work from home in lieu of expensive offices and real estate.
Telemarketing and CRM Combined
The trend will be for telemarketers to combine CRM and telemarketing to achieve greater results. It will be easier for the CRM team to understand the needs of the customers, and for the telemarketing team to deliver the right experience to the customer.
Conclusion
As you can see, while the field of telemarketing is not going anywhere, it is changing. It’s changing because there is a need for change. In the first place, it was designed to be a people-driven industry, and now technology is creating new opportunities.
WhoKnows offers innovative tools and solutions for telemarketing, lead generation, and more. Get in touch with us to know more about our services!
