When communicating with the members of your organisation or association it’s important to make every interaction effective. Every opportunity you have to talk with your members is an opportunity to learn more about them and improve your services, which should never go unmissed.
At Optimum Contact we are passionate about helping associations better connect with their members and achieve the results they desire. Therefore, today, we’re taking you through 4 of our biggest pointers to crafting a winning script to use when communicating with your members.
1. Create “talking points” rather than a “script”
One of the first and most important points to cover is what a “script” is in terms of communicating with members. When talking about call scripts, it’s important to reshape the initial thought of a script essentially meaning a pre-prepared speech or spiel. Instead, it’s important to create script that is a series of talking points that allow you to cover the necessary topics with room for a conversation to flow naturally. For example, you might note down a series of four or five talking points which are all going to help you achieve what you want the outcome of the conversation to be.
While you might list these talking points in an order, it’s important that they are crafted in a way that the communicator can jump between each one without the member noticing they’re working off a script. Depending on how the conversation flows the communicator might start on point three before moving to one, five and then ending on two and four. The idea is to guide an authentic conversation with your members that has real purpose.
2. Research the Association
Now that you have the skeleton for your winning script, the next step is to ensure that your call centre workers know the organisation like the back of their hand. Every time a new team member or client joins Optimum Contact we host training days where we sit down and start a fresh campaign for the client, going through every part of the association. Most of the time we gather information from what the client has told us, however we also do our own research on Facebook, every page of their website, their LinkedIn, YouTube and any other necessary platforms they’re active on.
This is particularly important if the client hasn’t provided a comprehensive brief, where we need to do much of our own research to fill in the gaps. In these situations, it’s important for us to create our own brief which is then confirmed with our clients so that the expectations are clear between the organisation and the call centre operators.
3. Listen to the Client Brief
Knowing the background of the association, the next thing to do is to dive deeper and pay close attention to the client brief. At Optimum Contact we pride ourselves on completely immersing ourselves in the associations we’re working for, being just as passionate about their service as they are. To do this our staff study the association carefully, learning everything from their tone of voice, values, language and more to be able to communicate just as their own staff would.
This ensures if our client gives us a specific brief, we have the background knowledge to be able to immerse ourselves in the task and deliver a great result. This method is so effective that often members don’t even realise they’re talking to someone outside of the association.
4. Choose the Right Staff
Most importantly it is paramount to hire the right staff to do the job. Too often call centres employ by the masses, not considering how good their candidates actually are at holding a purposeful conversation. While you can hire staff and train them to use a call script, they must already be a good conversationalist, having a sense of charisma and the ability to truly listen to the member. Having this natural ability, they can then be trained in the association’s practices and values, but initially having the ability to converse well over the phone is so important.
To learn more about what we do at Optimum Contact and the services we offer, visit the services page on our website and fill out the contact form. Alternatively, you can give us a call on 1300 017 293.
