Sales are the lifeblood of any business, and if telemarketing is a key part of bringing in sales for your company, then you can leverage the power of Mekashron in many ways.
1 - Telemarketing with Mekashron
Mekashron's powerful telemarketing functions will enable you to:
- Plan, track and manage all your telemarketing calls and campaigns
- Record all outgoing calls for your own safety
- With Mekashron's powerful reports, see exactly what calls have been made and when
Before you start, here is a checklist of the items you will require in order to use Mekashron for your telemarketing:
- Voice modem connected to each PC, and connected to a telephone socket
- Telephone connected to each voice modem
- Mekashron installed with unique station ID for each telemarketing PC (see later)
We also assume that before starting to use Mekashron for telemarketing you have completed the following tasks:
Mekashron Business is ideal for any company which has, or wishes to set up, a simple and easy-to-operate call center. All that is required is a PC with voice modem, telephone and telephone line for each user. An example set up of a small call center is shown below:
Figure 1.1 - Schematic of a Simple Call Center
Please note that for large-scale professional telemarketing operations you will be better served by purchasing the Mekashron Call Center version of our software. This version supports Voice Over IP (VOIP) and the use of audio headsets.
Having said that, Mekashron Business is nevertheless designed to be used with ease with multiple users. Vitally, Mekashron Busines includes the protection of automatically preventing multiple telesales staff from trying to call the same client or prospect simultaneously.
In order to ensure that this protection works correctly, it is essential that each of your Mekashron PCs has a unique Station ID to ensure that Mekashron can successfully recognize each individual installation. If you have multiple PCs that are built using a ghosting process, each PC will be identical and therefore have the same station ID - creating a risk that more than one of your telesales staff could accidentally call the same client simultaneously.
To check the Station ID on your Mekashron PCs: Select Help -> About.
Figure 1.2 - Checking the Station ID
If any stations have the same ID, please change them so that each ID is unique, simply by overtyping the station ID with a unique number and clicking Close.
2 - Telemarketing Settings
Before you can start using Mekashron to manage your telemarketing calls, you need to set the system up for outgoing calls.
The settings are found from the Main Mekashron menu under Main -> Settings, by clicking on the tab marked Telephone.
Within the Telephone tab there are three sub-tabs: Telemarketing, Voice Broadcasting and Incoming Calls. The Telemarketing tab is the only one you need to configure at this stage. We will cover the other two tabs in the Campaigns chapter.
Telemarketing Tab: The default tab when you go into Telephone settings is the telemarketing tab:
Figure 2.1 - The Telemarketing Tab
The first option you will see on this tab is the Use Modem versus Use VOIP choice. You will notice in Mekashron Business that the Modem option is selected, and the VOIP option is grayed out. VOIP is only available in Mekashron Call Center, so if you require this functionality then please click on the link to upgrade your system to the Mekashron Call Center version.
Figure 2.2 - Modem and VOIP Options
In order to make and receive calls through Mekashron, you will need to have access to a Modem and telephone line. In the Dial Device dropdown you will see the modem or modems that are connected to your PC. Select the modem you are using and click on the Properties button to set this modem up.
Figure 2.3 - The Dial Device Dropdown
There are a number of settings you need to configure for your modem:
Figure 2.4 - The Modem Properties Form
- Dial Prefix - if you require your users to dial a number to obtain an outside line, enter this here.
- Area Code - Your telephone dialing area code
- Modem Phone Number - The phone number of the line your modem uses is a necessary setting.
- Incoming Calls - Answer on Ring - Use this setting to control how many rings before Mekashron picks up an incoming fax call.
- Tone Dial - Leave this setting selected unless you know you have pulse-dial telephone lines installed.
- Detect Busy - This setting enables Mekashron to recognize when a number that has been dialed is engaged. Normally you would leave this setting selected.
- Wait for Dial Tone - You should not uncheck this option if you have tone dialing, as it ensures that Mekashron waits for the dial tone before trying to connect an outgoing call.
Once you have selected and configured your modem, there are a couple of other settings available on this tab. The No Answer option allows you to decide how many rings a telemarketer will wait for an answer on an outgoing call.
Figure 2.5 - The No Answer After Option
If there is no reply after this many rings then Mekashron will hang up the call, mark it as not answered, and lead the telemarketer onto the next call. The default setting is 10 rings, and we recommend that you keep this setting at 6 or more for the best results.
A final and important setting on the Telemarketing tab is the location to which Mekashron should save recordings of outgoing calls.
Figure 2.6 - The Voice Recording Options
If you do not wish to record calls, you can simply leave this part of the settings blank. If you do wish to record calls, then simply click the Browse icon and select a folder on your PC or your network where you would like Mekashron to save the audio files that are recorded when calls are made.
There is also an option for how many days you wish to retain these recordings for. Be aware that you may require significant amounts of disk space free on your PC or server if you retain recordings for a long time and if your telemarketers are making lots of outbound calls each day!
Figure 2.7 - The Voice Recording Options after Configuration
In the example above, the user has chosen a folder to save outbound calls to, and has reduced the time to save the recordings for from the default of 60 days to 5 days.
The Delete button will perform the deletion of recorded files older than your retention period for you. Note that you must remember to periodically delete your files using this option so that you do not run out of disk space.
3 - Telemarketing Users
In order to use the telemarketing functionality of Mekashron, you need to set up your telemarketing staff in Mekashron with telemarketing permissions.
For detailed instructions on adding and managing users, please refer to Users Management.
There is a built-in Permission Group provided by Mekashron called Telemarketing Group. This is pre-configured for you and you can add users to this group in order to quickly give them the permissions required for telemarketing. You can alter or delete this group if required, but it is a quick way to add telemarketing users should you wish to use it. In the screenshot below we are adding a user called John to this group.
Figure 3.1 - Adding a Telemarketing User
The Telemarketing group is already set up with the special permissions that a user will need in order to have access to all the necessary Telemarketing functions within Mekashron. You can view the detailed setup of the Telemarketing group by clicking on the right-hand red icon near the Permission Group dropdown:
Figure 3.2 - The Permissions Group Dialog Box
When a Telemarketing user logs into Mekashron, he is presented with the Telemarketing List tab, rather than the multiple tabs that you see when you log in to the system as an administrator. We will learn more about the functionality of the Telemarketing List tab and how to use it to the best advantage of your business in the Using The Telemarketing System section a little further along in this chapter.
4 - Summary
In this introductory section we have seen how simple it is to set up Mekashron ready for your telemarketing activities, and to set up your telesales team with the correct access to the application. The remainder of this chapter will take you step by step through the process of using Mekashron to streamline and turbo-charge your telesales, starting with guidelines on how to Create Statuses as you'll see in the next section of this chapter.