What is Account Management?
Account Management means that we manage your account for you with
the call center. In other words, we monitor the campaign, review
call center reports for unusual activity, assist you with making
changes to your program as needed, advise you on possible action to
be taken that may help to improve your campaign, and much more.
We conduct our activity as if we were a remote employee of your
company without actually being an employee. Put simply, you are the
boss and we are an extension of your company. You don’t need to
know anything about a call center. Our expertise is in call center
operations and we work for you.
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How do I know how many hours per month I will need?
We will evaluate your project with you. The more extensive and
complicated the program, the more hours you will need. Typically,
our clients only need 20 to 40 hours per month.
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What if I exceed the number per hours per month, how much will it
cost?
We have a standard fee that is billed for each extra hour over
your limit. However, we will notify you in advance if you are about
to reach your limit. If we fail to notify you in advance that you
are close to reaching your limit, we will not bill you for any extra
hours that may have been used prior to notifying you that you are
over your limit and we will add an extra two hours time to that at
no charge.
Please note that unusual or a high level of activity in a very
short time period may result in our being able to only being able to
provide 24 hours advance notice. In those cases, you will be allowed
to make a change to your service level prior to the next billing
cycle.
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What if I need to change the number of hours I use each month?
We have two options there. You can request a billing of every two
weeks or once a month. Since we implement changes based on the next
billing cycle, a two week billing cycle allows for a faster change
to the service level that will be provided.
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What is the minimum number of service hours that can be
purchased?
Again, you have two options. If you choose the two week billing
cycle, the minimum is 20 hours for two weeks. If you choose the
monthly billing option, it is 20 hours minimum for the month. In
both cases for the billing cycles, 20 hours is the minimum.
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What are your hours of operation?
We begin the day at 8 AM CST and the day ends at 8 PM CST Monday
through Friday. We are closed for all major holidays.
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What will be my upfront expenses for your service?
We only require a security deposit equivalent to one month’s
billing. This security deposit is held on file until the contract
for service is terminated. Upon termination of your contract for our
service, your security deposit is returned to you provided all
pending invoices are paid in full or you can opt to apply the
security deposit to any balance remaining on your final invoice. The
security deposit can only be applied to the final invoice and is not
applied to your account balance due on active accounts.
Once the security deposit is on file, we will setup your account
to bill you based on the two week or monthly billing cycle that you
have chosen. Service Invoices are due within ten days from the date
on the invoice.
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Why would I have trouble placing my call center project?
Many call centers will no longer do commission only programs
because they are taking on a financial risk if the program should
fail. More often than not, call centers will require a test program
that is billed by the hour so they can evaluate your project and see
if it is feasible.
In some cases, even the test is so small that the call center
will still not accept it even if you agree to pay a per hour rate.
Now, depending on your flexibility and our available resources, we
have been known to perform these smaller test campaigns on behalf of
our clients so they had something to provide to a call center as
documentation of the program’s ability to generate revenue.
For the purposes of billing, we will charge you the same rate as
we would as if you were using our account management services.
Another area you will have trouble is in placing a telemarketing
campaign where the call center must call on residential consumers.
Due to recent changes in federal laws, many outbound call centers
have dropped their services which allowed them to call on people in
their homes.
There are some who will still call on residential homes but they
require a fairly large program that is billed on a per hour basis
before they will accept that type of project.
We would be unable to assist our clients who wish to perform call
center campaign tests which require calls to residential homes. In
truth, we are not setup to comply with Federal law in order to
conduct a residential type of telemarketing campaign.
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I need a call center but I don’t need your services, can you
help?
Actually, we are not call center brokers. We would advise you to
contact a broker of call center services or contact the call centers
directly. Although we would like to help, we are being paid by our
clients to keep our focus on our clients who are in need of our
expertise and services.
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I work for a call center and I would like to pick up referrals
for our services, can you do that?
Again, we are not call center brokers. You are welcome to send us
information on your call center but ultimately, it is our client who
makes the final decision on which call center is to be used for
handling their call center campaign.
If you wish to be evaluated as a potential vendor for our
clients, your best bet is to send us specific information on the
types of projects your call center handles and some basic pricing
which specifies a monthly minimum so that we can determine if your
service level requirements are within the client’s budget and
campaign requirements.
Otherwise, you are wasting your time, our time, and the client’s
time.
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I have a call center and need an interim account manager, how
does that work?
Nothing really changes in our process. Even if you are a call
center, we can handle the account management of your programs on an
interim basis until you find someone who can be hired permanently.
It doesn’t matter if you have one or twenty accounts to be
serviced, we will still bill you based on the service level desired.
You can route incoming calls through your PBX system and point it
to a local number here or you can have your clients contact us
directly on our toll free line. If a client wants to conduct an
onsite visit to your company, we can be onsite for the meeting with
expenses paid or we can be available with being conferenced in for
the meeting.
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What other call center services do you provide?
Besides account management and client services, we conduct a
number of other call center activities such as customer service and
sales training, writing training manuals, program testing, and many
other important functions.
We are not limited to client services and account management.
Feel free to contact us about your next upcoming project and we can
discuss how we can help you.
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How are you different from other call center consultants and
experts?
First, most call center consultants work with a good number of
call center vendors or companies with large in-house call centers as
their clients. We usually work with people who need a call center
expert to help them work with a call center. In a sense, we have
turned the tables a bit.
We combine our expertise with your expertise in your industry to
help you give your call center campaign the highest chance at
success. Because we work with a number of clients who are not
experts in call centers, we have to help our clients learn and
understand our industry.
It isn’t the same thing as working with a call center as a
client who understands all that you are doing for them. For that
reason, we have to go that extra mile to assist our clients in
understanding not only our industry but our business and how it
impacts on them.
That isn’t to say that we don’t work with call center vendors
as clients because we do and have been for some time. But in
comparison to non call center clients, they would be a minority of
our overall client base.
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Why do you call your company The Call Center Mercenary?
First, the title of consultant and expert is far too common and
doesn’t really describe what we do for our clients. Not only do we
consult with our clients, we fight for what is in their best
interests.
Second, we are in the service of our clients, our clients are at
the top of the chain of command as Commander In Chief, and our
clients are the ones calling the shots. We are here to help our
clients accomplish a mission.
No. We don’t wear fatigues and combat boots either. We just act
like we do when we have a mission to accomplish for our clients.
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Doesn't a call center do what you do already?
That is just it. The call center doesn't do what we do. We manage
the entire call center project on your behalf with all your vendors
who are tied into your call center support operations, thus ensuring an
efficient implementation of your call center campaign. We keep
the lines of communication open so that all your vendors understand
what needs to be done at any given time as it applies to your call
center support. In addition, we monitor the activities and
performance of your account with the call center as an independent
third party. Because we have no affiliation or partnership with
another company, our only loyalty is to our clients and their
success.
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