Author Archives: 123outsource

Having stunning photos in your feed will boost Twitter followers!

January 7, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Leave a comment

Do you run a Twitter profile? Do you like it? Me too! But, getting new followers is not always as straight forward as the how to articles on blogs might lead you to presume. There are various ways to attract new visitors to your Twitter profile. Converting visitors to followers is a separate issue!

Attracting new visitors
If you get favorited, commented on or retweeted, you will attract visitors to your posts and to your profile. People will see your posts on other people’s profiles which is what you want! You can also attract visitors by following hundreds of people very day. The next thing that happens is that those appreciators of your posts might visit your profile page. That is where things can really go wrong.

When they visit your page pop up
The first thing people might see when they click on your profile name is your last four tweets — not your retweets. They will see content that you published including comments on other people’s profiles, your “thanks for following xoxo” notes, etc. If your last comment was something meaningless such as, “nice photo” or “huh?” then you can be assured you will not get any new followers. However, if your last comment was a classy joke, or a meaningful posts that got favorited by a few people, then you might attract people to view your whole page on a full screen which will show the retweets and your bio, etc.

hen they visit your full page
Once your visitor is on your full page, they will see your pinned post, your retweets, as well as your tweets all in one feed. Now, let’s assume that your last two posts were retweets of breathtaking photos, or meaningful industry specific posts with great graphics. If so, you will have a higher visitor : follower ratio. However, if you have boring photos, or no photos, posts that nobody liked, and a lot of off topic posts, plus meaningless dialogue with others such as, “you betcha” or “I liked that too.” then your visitor : follower rate will be bad — very very bad.

How do you master the art of choosing photos?
You need to study what your crowd likes. When you post retweets, which ones get interactions and which are ignored. If you can master the art of choosing content that people like, and get rid of the content they don’t, you will have a winning Twitter profile. I often will post the same popular retweets every several days assuming they continue to be systematically popular! Why not recycle a good idea?

Good luck
I hope you too master the art of Twitter. Twitter is fun, meaningful and can do SEO miracles for your blog and web site!

Do you tell the applicant what they can get from the job?

January 7, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Hiring & Firing | Leave a comment

Job interviews can be very useless if you don’t do them right. The interviewer asks some questions and the applicant tells the interviewer what he thinks the interviewer wants to hear. It is all so worthless. But, you can ask personality and thinking questions where there is no right answer. I find that interviews do not tell me which candidate will do well in the end, although it tells me who I like and who communicates well.

But, most bosses fail to understand the art of attracting good workers. Large companies succeed where many small companies fail because people might feel that they have a good future at a large company. Many feel that at a tiny company, there is nowhere to grow. This is not always true, but it is about the impression you make and not about reality.

A smart boss lets the prospective worker know what they can expect to get from the job, and what they can learn from it too. This way the applicant feels that they will develop their career at the job and that it will lead somewhere. Most applicants want to go in a direction, and if they can’t see that direction clearly, they might take a job from somewhere else which pays a lot less.

Another factor not to ignore is asking the prospective employee where they want to go with their career. If your offering somewhat matches where they want to go, you might have a match. The important thing is that a job is not just about the money. It is about the experience, who you will meet, what the office looks like, and what can be learned. If your interview doesn’t focus on all of that juicy stuff, you are missing the point.

Building your drive is the single most critical factor for your success.

January 7, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Motivation | Leave a comment

After talking to numerous business mentors, one thought stuck in my head. The difference between a company that does well and one that doesn’t has more to do with drive than skills, although you need both. I once compared my friend’s business to a delivery truck with a rick shaw engine. With such a small engine, you just can’t grow — and his company doesn’t. The question is, how do you hire people with drive? How do you even find them?

But, as an individual, whether you work for yourself or someone else, one of the most important aspects of your success has to do with your drive. There are people who are in the habit of sitting around. Some sit around and complain while others just sit around and gossip or watch television. To be successful you need to have a sense of purpose and drive. If you decide to manage your time in such a way that you work less hours, that is okay if you do it for a strategic reason. But, laziness is never an acceptable reason.

I was talking to a friend who just got his MBA. He wanted to start an HR agency, and also wanted to sell apps. He had a technical background, but I wasn’t sure what his specialty was in. He was waiting on a visa to start working in America. I told him not to waste time and to start creating apps right away. Then, I found out his background was in networking, and not in programming. But, the fact remains that he was frittering his time away instead of building something and building himself. Even if what he built was useless, he would have maintained and developed his drive.

The same goes for hiring people. If you aren’t sure which person to hire, see which one is willing to stay overtime and which one sticks with something until they get it right. Lazy people will drag your company down. You need someone who pulls you forward!

Simple Thoughts + Efforts = One Happy Organization

January 6, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Management | Tagged | Leave a comment

Organizations seek to maximize their profits and increase the productivity of their employees and employees seek to achieve satisfaction at work. Most of the time the challenge remains the same, how synchronized an organization and their employees are to each other’s success?

We are different individuals and with that difference we have different outlook, skill level, needs and expectations. In my quest to set employee engagement ideas, I decided to sit down one day and just talk. Started with general issues and came across to their engagement in the organization. Their expectations are different and given an effort can be taken care but the question is will that affect the productivity? If No, I don’t see a challenge saying YES to them and if it does affect the productivity then what is a way to work it around other than saying NO to them. We started prioritizing the expectations and improvising where we can fit them in our policies within a perameter. We do keep a buffer element in our policies so we can change a bit and make it more employee centric (within the parameter).

One important thought: Policies are made for people and NOT vice versa.
When we hire a candidate we put them on three day buffer from day 1. Come to office, sit, work and see if you can fit in our culture. Yes, before they leave for the day; we talk one on one with them to understand if they are going to fit in our culture or not.

Our exit interviews, we have renamed as “Last Casual Time” and here DO NOT discuss about theoretical questions which we find in almost every exit interviews. We keep it completely casual and try to understand the reason/reasons for their exit.

We do conduct anonymous surveys within our organization to understand how well are we doing as a team and we focus on every outcome of the survey and not just the majority. Surveys are conducted based on the analysis of exit interviews.
Few learning I have gathered with time:

1. Value your employees, they earn and you earn way more

2. Know them better, know their stories. It bonds really great

3. Emphasize on positive aspects of your employees and provide practical feedback

4. And above all, set your middle management strong and keep the hierarchy short

Picking a 4000 foot BPO office before you have the clients!

January 6, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO | Tagged | Leave a comment

Yes, one of my clients on 123outsource.net did exactly this. He was an American who never expected that he would end up in the Call Center business. He went to India and he just knew that if he got a large call center, the customers would come. His attitude was just like in Dubai: build it and they will come. Come they did, but not at the rate that he expected. His philosophy changed. Now he believes you should have the customers first and then get a large office. But, that is not so easy either.

It’s either too big or too small
No office is just right. It is either too big or too small, unless your office is made of rubber. If you are lucky, you can rent a trailer and create office spaces in those. That way you can rent by the week when you need elasticity. Or you can outsource to people who work at home. In India, they prefer squeezing people. Indians are born in cramped compartments. In actuality, if you had a huge room and twenty Indians, they will likely all put their desks crammed together in one corner of the room rather than spreading out. It is habitually engrained in their culture. Even with web forms, Indian programmers make the boxes two inches wide — it is so small, you can’t even see what you wrote in the box!

Being versatile
But, if you can be versatile and adaptable, you can deal with changing office situations more easily. If you had a team of twenty, and all of the team works from home one day a week, if you run out of space, just have everyone work from home two days a week! Or have everyone squeeze. On the other hand, you could have people work different shifts so you are not all on top of each other. In call center work, people are expected to be in the office, but some people do work from home if their home is quiet enough.

What would Google do?
Google invented a tiny work-pod. You get in and it is only a few feet wide, and circular of all shapes. You can space them out or squeeze them together. Many companies have workers work at huge tables in open workspaces that have no walls. Personally, I need my space and can’t stand noise, so that business model is out for me. But, others thrive in this environment. Having an overflow strategy is critical. If you can get some space in the building next door when you need it, that is perfect. Then, there are places that rent office spaces by the week as well. Renting a cubicle by the week is a great way to meet new and exciting people. I actually rented an office space by the afternoon twice and loved it. But, I went during the weekend when it was quiet which I loved all the more!

My advice?
Think positively in your business. Assume you’ll grow even if you have no reason to assume that. Our thoughts seem to precede reality according to the yogis, and I have found this to be true. However, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Perhaps get an office that is 25% more than what you need. If your business is slow, then you will have comfort, if you grow, you will have a year or so to find some extra space or move the entire operation. The trick is to have the exact amount of extra margin — know where to draw the line! Or you could visit Japan and see how cramped their life is. Once you return to your country, however much space you have will seem like an unheard of luxury.

Other than that, have fun and enjoy your work!

Hiring celebrity sound alikes to work at your call center

January 6, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Humor | Leave a comment

Working at a call center can be really fun or dismally boring depending on what you make of it. Fun call centers have competitions, fun staff, and fun activities. But, what if you went a step further and hired celebrity sound alikes?

It’s Elvis on the phone for you!
Imagine getting a call from Elvis Presley that your phone bill was overdue, or have Steve Jobs help you with your software problem. Imagine that Jennifer Lopez helps you return a product or the Barack Obama worked for a company doing medical process outsourcing! To me it sounds like good fun and possibly profitable as well.

British Accents
Many call centers try to hire people with really convincing British accents from the upper class. That is a quick way to add some class to your call center. Many folks in India have mastered British English, but they always seem to slip back into their Indian English after a few sentences. It might be expensive to hire the real thing, but it might be worth it for your bigger accounts at least as an option! Or if you have an account that needs someone more romantic, perhaps hiring a French, Italian or Argentinian might be the perfect choice. You could pick people to set the mood for any type of product or service if the client is willing to pay for it. But, why not? It would be much more fun for the end users and more fun for management too!

Hiring Real Celebrities
If you had a really good budget, you might even hire a real celebrity for an afternoon to make calls. People might get really excited. They could even send autographs out to callers. It’s too bad Elvis isn’t alive anymore, but there are many impersonators who still are. I remember seeing the Thai Elvis in Thai-town signing classic songs from way back. Unfortunately he got cancer and had to go back to Thailand, but he was famous in Los Angeles for more than a decade!

Splicing Real Celebrity Voices
The next option may or may not be legal, but you could have splices of words that celebrities have said on television and put them together to make a message that you send out by auto-dial at your call center. You might get in a lot of trouble, but you will have a lot of fun doing it, and that will really sound authentic.

In the meantime, I have to go back to the White House for some briefings!

A call center that can break up with your boyfriend for you

January 6, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Humor | Leave a comment

Think about it. This is very practical. People break up with their boyfriends all the time and its not easy to do. Some girls get so mad, they pay someone to beat up their boyfriend if he cheated on them. My opinion is that if you don’t like cheaters, stay away from them. They’re usually easy to spot based on their behavior.

These days, guys like Jimmy Fallon have people tweet the ways they broke up with their boyfriend. One guy was devastated because his girlfriend ended their relationship — with a text! Another guy broke up with his girlfriend on a ski-lift, and then the ski-lift got stuck for thirty minutes — awkward! But, imagine if you break up with your boyfriend by hiring a call center to do it for you?

AGENT: Hello, this is Sujata, may I speak to Jesse please?

JESSE: Hello, this is Jesse.

AGENT: I regret to inform you that your girlfriend wishes to break up with you.

JESSE: She what? I can’t believe this! I thought we were getting along so well. And I took her to the Paladium last week. She loved that.

AGENT: I see. Well, she probably did love that. As a matter of fact, let me check her notes here. Um, yes, she did mention something positive about the Paladium. Apparently that was something you did to make up for a list of 23 things you did which she did not care for.

JESSE: 23 things? I thought it was just my bad breath, and now it’s 23 things?

AGENT: Yes, you see, thing #6 is acting surprised when she tells you something that she has told you umteen times before. I’m not sure exactly what umteen means, but I imagine it is a mathematical figure indicating multiplicity.

JESSE: Yeah, something like that — whatever you said.

AGENT: Yes, and kindly listen to thing #4 which is that you get very upset whenever someone tells you something bad, and it comes as a surprise to you.

JESSE: Kind of like I’m acting now?

AGENT: Well, that is for you to decide.

JESSE: I should have taken her to the Paladium more often… and brushed my teeth too. Come to think of it, I should have created a database of things that were wrong with me on my iPhone so that I could fix them one by one.

AGENT: Yes, we recommend that with relationships, you should try to be in tune with the other person as much as possible and take notes. Listening is also on our list of vigilant practices.

JESSE: So, what do you do about issues with your boyfriend?

AGENT: Well, my husband gets cross with me if I repeat back what he said in a sarcastic tone of voice, so I have learned not to do this. Additionally, when my chapatis are not completely round, he gets all bent out of shape. I tried telling him that it will taste the same once ingested, but he wants them round — so round, they shall be.

JESSE: Chapatis? I’m not sure what that is, but he sounds like a picky dude.

AGENT: Thankfully, we have learned to live together. Perhaps you will find someone who you are able to live with as well. Now, it is time for our survey. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate this call.

JESSE: A survey? Okay 7…. No… 23.

AGENT: I’ll indicate that as 7. On a scale of one to ten, did I answer all of your questions to your satisfaction in clear and understandable English?

JESSE: The “mathematical figure indicating multiplicity” response really threw me. I’ll have to go with a 4 on that one.

AGENT: Well that is just as well as I’m asking you a quantity of questions which also seem to have multiplicity.

JESSE: Yeah, putting it in context really helps. But, I’m sad now, and don’t want to answer this survey.

AGENT: Oh, it won’t take long, there are only another… let me count… 23 questions.. oh, that’s your unlucky number.

JESSE: Yeah, you can say that again.

AGENT: Okay, well I’ll just put down that you politely refrained from responding to our excessively discursive questions.

JESSE: Okay, I’m going to mope now. Have a nice day, and tell your husband to enjoy his pachatis.

AGENT: I’ll do that!

.

Circular spaces create amazing interaction and business!

January 6, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Of Interest | Leave a comment

Most of us do not ponder the world around us enough. We see square office buildings, square people, and square lunches — especially if you eat Bento boxes in Japan. Squares are used in society because they are easy to use. You just stack one square on the other. You can make square city blocks, square buildings, square rooms, and square brains are sure to result from all of this squareness. However, squares are not an optimal shape for interaction. Additionally squares are not found in the cosmos.

Squares do not exist in nature except on planet of the squares
Look at nature. Do you see any squares? Are trees square? How about drops of water? Does grass grow in a square way? How about the shape of leaves? Do planets move in a square path? No! Planetary paths are eliptical. Energy flows around planets are circular. The earth goes around in a circle every 24 hours (which incidentally is not a square number) and the moon goes around the earth. The craters in the moon are circular, and the path of the earth around the sun is an elipse. So, squares do not occur in nature. Perhaps mankind is out of sinc with nature with all of these squares.

What about circles?
I studied feng-shui in a traditional school. Most people think that feng-shui is purely about moving your furniture around and buying silly looking coins and ducks to put in your bathroom. This is a simplification. Feng-shui is the study of how the energies around us affect our health, finances and more. We learned the circular rooms lead to more stimulating discussions. Additionally, circular rooms have better energy flow as the energy can bound around more freely and evenly than in a rigid square or rectangular room. However, I suddenly noticed that in my neighborhood we have three areas where the road is circular. Within these circles which are about 300 feet wide, amazing social events happen daily. People get together with their children, lovers, and friends. They socialize, play games and entertain in these circles. One circle has a place you can barbecue, exercise or just walk around. They even show films in that circle. In another circle there is a cafe with the most friendly staff and customers you can imagine. There is a conversation almost every time and lots of people of all ages around. The last circle has yet another cafe nearby, but not in the actual circle. This circle attracts many people who take walks, and kids play nearby as well. Families have picnics on the picnic tables as well. So, the whole circles in garden design theory seems to lead to amazing socialization.

What about the BPO business? Can circles help?
Google+ believes in circles and they did okay in business. However, it might be hard to find an office building in the shape of a circle unless you build it yourself. But, imagine how offices would be if they were built by extra-terrestrials. I bet they would look very cosmic and be huge circles connected to each other by passovers and walkways. Nobody builds buildings like this now, but if someone starts a trend, it might catch on. I believe you would do better in business if you had a circular office — and I can prove that using circular logic! But, don’t believe me — keep your eyes out for circles in your life and how they affect those around them or within them!

A call center that helps you with getting more followers on Facebook

January 6, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Call Center | Tagged , | Leave a comment

There are call centers that remind you that your medical bills are due. Then, there are technical support and appointment setting call centers. The Philippines seems to dominate the industry, but many other countries like India are in on the game too. But, what about a call centre that helps you with the most pressing frustrations in your life? Let’s think about it. What types of things bother you the most? How to get a date with the guy or girl you like but are afraid to approach and how to get more followers on Facebook.

CLIENT: Hi, this is John — from Albany, NY. There is this girl I have been wanting to ask out for a long time. I am just not sure of the approach.

SUJATA: Well, according to my manual here, you should ideally start with an opener

CLIENT: An opener? You mean like a can opener?

SUJATA: No, I mean an opener line.

CLIENT: Oh, an opening line. Like what?

SUJATA: I have a whole online dictionary of all sorts of picking up phrases. Let me pick up a phrase right now. Let me see… here we go na? So, do you come here a lot?

CLIENT: Well, you see the girl goes to my school. So, I know that she goes there a lot.

SUJATA: Okay okay okay. So, we’ll use this one. Is there a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me.

CLIENT: I think that is a line for women to say hi to men in a riskee way, not for men to use on girls.

SUJATA: Oh, I see I see I see I see I see. Okay, I have another one na!

CLIENT: Na? What is na?

SUJATA: Oh, it is just something we say. Perhaps you should use that in your pick up line na?

CLIENT: This is not working. I have one other problem. I need to get more followers on Facebook. I have been on it for three years and only have 126 followers including my mom, sister, and cat.

SUJATA: Oh, that is not bad. Does your cat interact with you a lot on Facebook and share things?

CLIENT: Well, she shared a photo of a dead mouse, and shared my picture of her.

SUJATA: Oh, so sweet. Yes, according to our stats, photos of animals do quite well in Facebook as do photos of food, outerspace, and beautiful natural settings. It is the photos that make you go “awe” that will get shared the most. Perhaps you could have your cat do a selfie with a background of a Nebula or something like this na?

CLIENT: Let me try this. Okay, I’m going to do it with you on the phone. I have photo shop. Fluffie, and now… adding the Orion Nebula… When Santa’s helpers did a selfie, it was more of an “elfie…”

SUJATA: Oh, so you are a comedian too? Okay, I see the photo. I am going to share your photo with my followers. All 200,426 which includes most of my village in Karnataka, half of the computer literate folks in my part of Juhu Beach in Mumbai, and my clients in the United States.

CLIENT: This is amazing. My followers went up from 126 to 2126 in just ten minutes. You are amazing! You are the best Facebook helper I have ever met. As far as the dating tips — uh, maybe not. So, how do you do dating in your country just out of curiousity?

SUJATA: Oh, it is much easier. There are no pick up lines at all. Aunty or mom just meet other aunties, discuss if they have a son. We make sure they are from our subcaste first of course.

CLIENT: Of course! You gotta be from the same subcaste. That goes without saying. And then what?

SUJATA: Then, we learn what the boy’s father’s job is, and how old he is, and what the boy is doing for work etc. We make sure he has a suitable job. Whether we like each other is not part of the equation at all.

CLIENT: Oh, that makes it much easier. Because if you start out liking each other, that usually ends up with hate. Love turns to hate, at least in my dating relationships. If you start not liking each other, at least in the long run, there is a possibility that things could get better — so there would be hope.

SUJATA: Exactly. That is how we look at it too. We figure, that over the course of the marriage, we will eventually learn to love each other. It only took my parents fifteen years to learn to love each other.

CLIENT: Only fifteen years? Not bad.

SUJATA: Then, we invite the boy over and have chai. We decide within a time span of 20 minutes — the time it took me to get you 2000 additional followers on Facebook whether the marriage will work on not. Last, but not least then they ask me if I have an opinion.

CLIENT: So, what is the correct etiquette for you to say yes or no?

SUJATA: If I like the boy and feel he is a suitable match, I simply say yes.

CLIENT: And if you don’t like the boy?

SUJATA: Oh, that is quite straightforward as well. If I don’t like the boy I simply threaten to commit suicide by slitting my wrists with a dull and rusty razor blade if I am forced to marry the boy. That generally works with most Indian families.

CLIENT: Cool. I love it. I’m moving to India. Maybe I’ll have an easier time getting married over there. By the way, what caste would be considered over in your country?

SUJATA: Ummm. Let’s change the subject. Let’s talk about Facebook again. You see, you need to understand the algorithmic relationship between the photo and the line of text in any Facebook post. After a lengthy analysis of your posts, I have concluded that your main area of strength is that….

Taking your BPO to the next level

January 5, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO | Tagged , | Leave a comment

All of us in business dream of getting to the next level. It is a bit like a video game. We often think that one day something magical will happen and suddenly our number of customers will double and we will need a swanky office downtown with beautiful secretaries. But, in real life, how does it really work?

Growth is never on schedule.
Business is never predictable, especially the BPO business. You might get one or two huge clients overnight that could change everything. Suddenly your call center will go from 20 seats to 60 seats. You won’t have any idea of where those seats are going to go unless you have a way to get flexible office space. You could also lose a few big clients all of a sudden and be demoted back to level 1. Although we can never predict when we will be promoted to the next level, we can build a more solid foundation so we’ll be ready when the promotion comes.

It happened all at once for me.
I remember back in 2002 a psychic friend from meditation was all excited and she said I would have amazing luck with my business and that it would just get better and better. At that point, book sales started to go up, and we started selling a few thousand dollars per month in listings. The very next year in March, we started selling $30,000 a month in advertising and courses. Boy was I excited. I was so happy that I worked 70 hours a week until I burned out and got really tired. At that point, I hired more people to help me clean house and sell products.

Keeping mentally prepared
Some people don’t think big. According to yogic philosophy, everything starts with a thought. The universe started with a thought, airplanes started with a thought, and even lifting your finger starts with a thought. If you think small, or don’t dream about the bigger picture, it may never happen. You need to be mentally accustomed to the idea that you will grow big — it is just that the timing is unpredictable. Think about that car you’ll be driving. Think about how your office and dozens of employees will look. Think of how hard you’ll work and how tired you’ll be until you hire Prashant the trusty right hand man to be your VP. Keep that thought!

But, you also need to be tactically prepared.
If you get that new client who wants 100 seats, you need to know where you are going to put those seats. You need to have some idea of what type of contract you will have with him and how you will select agents. You need to have a lot of the variables worked out in your head. Additionally, day to day good technique and best practices need to be very polished in your business. That way you will know how to train your agents and attain perfect work every time as second nature. If you are in the call center business, you need to be an expert at metrics. If you are in programming, you need to keep an eye on your programmers and see if they finish tasks on time and see if their commenting is clear enough that a new programmer who has never seen the code will understand exactly what is going on. If you do e-marketing outsourcing, you need to be a master of all of the social networks so you can select, train and monitor your workers.

Marketing
Going to the next level can happen in a moment, however the building up of your skill set happens gradually over time. It is good to always be trying to be at the top of your game. Knowing how to run a successful BPO is different from knowing how to market one. There are dozens of marketing techniques from networking to Linked In, online advertising and more to gaining new clients. If your interaction skills and management skills are top notch, you can attract and keep great clients. However, if your skills are lacking in any facet and you lose clients as fast as you get them, you’ll never make it to the next level. Knowing how to find the right people to help you in marketing and management is also critical. If you are always bogged down all the time with work, you won’t have time to go to the next level. So, think about all of this and then plan for how you will make it to level 2.

Applying “Divide and Conquer” to your business

January 5, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Success | Leave a comment

As business people, we can appreciate and learn from the great empires of all time. There were the ancient Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Ottomans, the Spanish, French, and finally the British. The British were famous for their simple yet effective strategy — divide and conquer! As business people, we need to study and learn from the great military minds of the past as their knowledge can sometimes cross-apply to our businesses.

How do you divide and conquer?
The more the world changes, the more it stays the same. Technology keeps changing, but human nature, good writing, and war strategy does not. Analytics provides a way to divide an industry or market into segments. A good marketer understands the different segments and also understands which ones he wants to target for profit. The difference between business and war is that you are not trying to defeat or divide your customers or the market. You are trying to do a siege of someone else’s customers by offering them something better. The dividing part is done by segmenting and using metrics. The conquering part happens when you woo them away from their existing business relationships.

Weakening your competition
If you are a cut throat business person, you will want to weaken your competition. You will want to render their advertising campaigns as useless. You will want to undercut their prices and out-do them on service. If you can cause disloyalty among their troops, all the better. Business is like war. How you play the game is up to you. Many people are quite civilized while others are very brutal and engage in lying, cheating, lawsuits, and more!

Undivide!
If you gradually create very strong bonds with valuable clients and suppliers, you are in a sense undividing yourself which is a key to success. Business is based on connections between people who can help each other, so the better you get at initiating and maintaining strong bonds, the better!

Making routine phone calls with fun & humor

January 4, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Call Center | Tagged | Leave a comment

In any business, you probably need to use the phone a lot. It is very boring and annoying talking to most customer service reps. Sometimes it is good to inject a little humor, at least with US clients. In India, humor might be taken as “unprofessional” or not understood as many people in India just don’t understand the concept of humor — at least not MY humor which involves play on words. Obviously, judge your audience to see if they like particular jokes or not.

I call many people daily for my Notary directory. Calls tend to be very dry and dull. I found a few ways to spice things up.

BEFORE: Hi, this is Jeremy from 123notary, we created a new listing for you and want to make sure the information is correct.
AFTER: Hi, this is Jeremy from 123notary. We created a new listing for you and are calling to verify that you are a real person.

Americans find this really funny. On the internet there are many profiles created by people misrepresenting themselves as someone else or by robots. I get a laugh almost every time from this type of verbiage.

BEFORE:
ME: How many loans have you signed in your career?
CUSTOMER: Oh Gosh, I don’t know.
ME: My form has room for numbers, not paragraphs.

AFTER:
ME: How many loans have you signed?
CUSTOMER: I have no idea.
ME: Well, I need a number to put in the box. A million?
CUSTOMER: Oh, no, not that many.
ME: Half a million?

The ridiculous over-estimate is funny to the clients.

BEFORE:
ME: Do you have a dual tray laser printer?
CUSTOMER: What are the trays for? I only have one tray.
ME: One for legal sized paper and another for letter sized paper.

AFTER:
ME: Do you have a single or dual tray laser printer.
CUSTOMER: Single
ME: Single and ready to mingle.
CUSTOMER: Actually, I have a dual tray at work.
ME: Dual and ready to duel. One tray for legal sized paper and the other tray for ILLEGAL sized paper!
CUSTOMER: Yeah, or perhaps for illegal sized Mortgage Brokers. I know a few!

Perhaps in your business you have some routine calls that you could spice up with humor. These days, life is so dull and unpleasant that a fun person to talk to about boring things with some humor interjected might be the perfect medicine!