An appointment setter is a valuable asset to any business, whether you’re in the private sector or public sector. If you don’t have one, chances are that your customers or prospects won’t be able to place orders with you. For sure, appointment setting can be quite a complex task that requires professional assistance.
They’ll either have to call you or go through a system designed to connect them with a sales representative. It doesn’t help when the person who’s supposed to answer the calls and take orders doesn’t show up.
The same goes for leads who show up but can’t be explained away by the company. An appointment setting script is a set of instructions that will be used by agents and receptionists to deal with prospects.
There are many ways to arrange callers and setters and these vary according to size, location, and business model. Some appointment setters are web-based and can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection, while others are hard-wired.
Some will work for small insurance businesses, while others are designed for medium and large companies. As an insurance agent or broker, you may have dozens or even hundreds of prospects coming in and contacting you at once.
You may have to assign different representatives to handle calls regarding health, life, auto, home, renters, commercial, and education policies. These are just some of the policy areas that you may want to consider as you consider hiring an appointment setter.
You may want to set up multiple levels of accountants or telephone reporters so you can handle incoming calls with ease. It might be difficult to hire someone in-house because you’re already paying so much overhead and training costs.
This is especially true if you have a small staff on a national level. With a smaller staff, you’ll also need to hire receptionists or other support personnel to deal with appointments.
Then there’s the accounting department to handle all the payable and non-repayable bills. You need someone who can take charge and handle all of the calls for your company, no matter what area they come from.
With a dedicated appointment setter, you’ll be able to concentrate on handling client calls instead of trying to keep up with the accounting department. When you hire an appointment setter, you’ll be able to control the speed at which appointments are handled.
You can set appointments to be answered by specific representatives. Or you can have call blocks that use specific names or keywords to redirect calls to someone that’s available to take them.
You can also choose to have call setters answer calls from all of the departments of your business rather than having only one person to take them. Many of these appointment setting setters offer several different options for answering calls.
If you’re using automated answering systems for most calls, you can have these setters redirect calls to employees as needed. In addition, if you have live agents for most of the calls, you can also use voice broadcast technology that will allow the caller to listen to their message before being transferred to a live agent.
Most of the appointment setters that you find today offer the option of setting appointments for specific hours. This is especially useful for businesses that have clients who work all hours of the day or night.
They can set up appointments for specific times of the day, such as when the lunch break is beginning or ending. They can even set appointments for the entire workday.
This way, their agents won’t have to deal with busy signals and having to redirect calls to someone who’s available. This reduces the stress associated with their line of work and frees up their agents to do what they do best: taking calls.
Some offshore appointment setting companies offer services in additional languages as well. While English is the common language spoken around the world, there are always clients who want to talk with someone who speaks their language.
If you have staff that has difficulty understanding your staff on the telephone or has trouble hearing the accents of some of your own employees, outsourcing your telephone interpreting needs could be just the solution you need.
These types of services can save you a lot of money on travel and set up expenses, which is especially helpful during peak seasons. When you’re hiring people to handle your business’ telephone communications, this isn’t something you should ignore.
