Calling customers on their clock: time zones and the callback ladder

A trader in Dubai sells to India, Africa, Central Asia and Europe. "Call me tomorrow at eleven" is a promise made in the customer's time zone, and a desk that keeps it in its own time zone has broken it. Multiply that by a few hundred customers and a sales team that works Sunday to Thursday, and callbacks become the thing that quietly never happens.

Every card has a clock

The desk puts the customer's local time on every card, taken from their address or, when there is no address, from the country code of their phone. Every time on screen says whose clock it is, ours or theirs, so nobody has to do the arithmetic in their head before picking up the phone.

Only inside their working day

The outbound queue rings only between 08:00 and 18:00 where the customer is, with a short grace period for a call that is owed. A callback promised for a particular time is booked at that time on their clock; one promised without a time goes in at ten in the morning, theirs. The time the customer named on the call is taken from the call summary itself, so nobody has to type it in.

The callback ladder

A queue that gives up after one missed call loses customers; one that never gives up annoys them. The desk climbs a fixed ladder:

1. No answer: try again ten minutes later, and ten minutes after that.
2. Still nothing: call at nine the next morning, their time.
3. Once more an hour later.
4. Then stop: the lead moves to Contact not working, and a person decides what happens next.

A dial the network could not place is not a no-answer and does not count as an attempt. After three such failures in a row, your team is told, because that's a problem with the line, not with the customer.

Control from the board

A salesperson can move a lead to the front of the queue, call it next, or call it off, from the lead's card. When the agent will not ring a lead, the card says why: outside their hours, on the do-not-call list, or waiting for its next rung on the ladder.

Where it does not call

Do-not-call is checked by the server before every dial, for the company and for the person, not by somebody remembering. Outside your office hours the queue waits, and a person pressing Dial after hours is asked to confirm first.

A callback that happens on time is the cheapest sale you will make.

What to measure

• Callbacks made at the hour promised, as a share of callbacks promised.
• Leads that reached Contact not working, and why.
• Calls placed outside a customer's working day: the answer should be none.

After hours

When your office closes, the queue stops dialling and follow-up e-mails are held until the morning. A customer who calls in meanwhile hears your answering message in the agent's voice, and up to two minutes of what they say is recorded, transcribed and summarised like any other call, so it is on the desk when your team walks in.

The systems: TERRA-106 DIAL, TERRA-407 CLOCK, TERRA-408 DNC and TERRA-105 HOURS.

Questions