Recently we were in the closing stages of an agreement with a small hotel chain. They loved LogMyCalls. They loved the sales performance benefits via call recording. They loved how simple and elegant LogMyCall is. They wanted to use LogMyCalls to listen to incoming calls and then determine how well their front desk staff and call center agents answered calls.
But at the last second they backed out of the agreement.
Why?
Well, they said their employees were not comfortable with their calls being recorded. Their employees were asking too many questions, were too uncomfortable, and it was too much hassle to explain the rationale behind call recording to them. So, they backed out of the agreement.
Now, obviously there are a lot of industries that want the marketing ROI benefits of call tracking, but want call recording turned off–dentists, doctors, etc. These businesses want to prove their marketing ROI, but they don’t want call recording so we turn it off.
Hotels, though, are different.
We work with A LOT of hotels. And their main interest is in call recording. They want to be able to hear employees on the phone, score employees on the phone, and determine where their sales training efforts should be focused. Call recording is the reason they were interested in LogMyCalls to begin with. They wanted to hold their employees accountable.
But, their employees were too scared of call recording to allow it in their business. Eventually they whined enough and the bosses caved. No call recording.
So, why shouldn’t employees be afraid of call recording?
First, if you are a customer-facing employee at a hotel, or any other business, you should want to improve.
One of the things that call recording can tell you is your close rate. That is, it can tell you if 15% of the people you talk to turn into customers, or if 85% of the people you talk to on the phone turn into customers.
If you were the employee with a 15% close rate, wouldn’t you want to do better? Wouldn’t you want to hear how you could improve?
Call recording and call scoring can help you improve faster than almost any other single tactic. Don’t view call recording as a big scary tool designed to ruin your life. Instead, view call recording as a great tool that will help you get better at your job.
Second, most companies we work with actually use call recording to incentivize rewards for employee performance. Specifically, they will throw parties, give raises, send employees on trips or vacations if they score over a certain threshold.
Call recording actually works to your benefit as an employee. The cream rises.
Third, employees shouldn’t be embarassed by call recordings. A lot of our clients will actually play call recordings in meetings or even distribute call recordings via internal email to highlight especially good or bad calls.
Don’t be embarassed by this. Learn from it.
Call recording is a tool you can use to improve your sales skills. Don’t be afraid of it.
Fourth, marketers use data to improve. Why should sales be any different?
Marketers are evaluated with and by data for everything they do. Marketers are obsessed with data. Ultimately every marketer keeps his job, gets his raise, or gets fired based SOLELY off of metrics.
For example, if a marketer produces leads that are $75 CPL and the industry average is $43 CPL, that marketer will get fired. Or, if a marketer is promoting a landing page that routinely has under a 20% conversion rate, that marketer will adjust and make changes until the conversion rates are well over 40%.
The point is this: other people in your organization are judged based on numbers. Why should a frontline employee that answer the phone, be it in a call center or at a front desk, be any different.
Sales skills should be no different. You should be evaluated based on call scoring and call recording. If your close rate is 15%, wouldn’t you want data that shows you where to improve? Or, if it remains at 15% for 10 months or so, don’t you deserve to lose your job (especially if other people have close rates that are much higher)?
Metrics are valuable. Call recording can provide those metrics to you.
So, the bottom line here is simple: don’t be afraid of call recording and the metrics it can provide.
