A CALL CENTER often plays the most important yet least appreciated role in the success of a direct response campaign. Maybe that’s why choosing a call center is rarely easy. Some telesales companies will tell you they are the best choice because their cost per call is lowest, their conversion rate is the highest or their consultants are the best.

These factors may have their place, but the real question is what will bring in the most revenue for your media dollar. It’s a simple question, but the answer sometimes requires a bit of legwork. If you’re testing two call centers, follow these rules to get an accurate picture of what is going to make you more money in the long run.

1. Eliminate media bias

   If you give one set of media buys to one call center and a different set to another, it’s difficult to compare the results. Not only will the number of calls vary, but so will the quality of those calls. Cable will perform better than broadcast; mornings, evenings and late night can differ dramatically. Even the same media buy can change from one week to the next. To overcome this, set up a 50-50 split test where calls from each media airing are divided evenly between two call centers. This is the true measure of call center supremacy.

2. Practice makes perfect

   As the sales consultants field more calls, they learn the best ways to answer objections and close the sale. That’s why you will need to provide enough calls to gain a statistically accurate evaluation of how your call center will perform over the long run. Again, a 50-50 split will give each call center equal experience with the campaign.

3. Go straight to the bottom line

   It’s almost impossible to compare call centers by looking at statistics like conversion rates. One reason is call dispositioning. Most call centers field calls from several campaigns over one number, so it’s difficult to assign certain inquiry calls, hang-ups and wrong numbers to a particular campaign. In one recent 50-50 test where both call centers received the same number of calls, one company reported receiving 38% fewer calls than the other, which led to an artificially high conversion ratio.

   Hence the importance of a 50-50 call split: it lets you bypass disposition-based statistics like conversion rates and revenue per call and go straight to the bottom line

The targets for each product are different. When AT&T knows the number of PCs a business has it can determine the best candidates for high-speed data

EARLY THIS YEAR, AT&T Broadband rolled out its business-to-business products to five markets. Immediately, the provider of high-speed local and long-distance telephone, Internet and cable television services hit a wall.

To afford the hookup costs, AT&T needed to reach small businesses that were only a block or two away from the residential areas the cable company already served. AT&T also had to find out what these businesses did, so it could determine the services they’d be interested in purchasing.

AT&T needed business data and help to analyze that information to figure out the best businesses to target.