|
|
IMPROVE BLOOD DONOR RECRUITING SUCCESS
When it comes to recruitment of blood donors, teleservices become a matter of life and death.
Major areas of focus to improve
your telerecruiting effort, highlighted in this article, include the
importance of telerecruiter training and evaluation, determining cost per
draw and developing incentives for agents.
Incept Corporation has developed a team of telerecruitment professionals, since 2000, that specialize in donor recruiting. This experience has enabled us to identify major areas of focus to improve the success of telerecruiting campaigns.
The keys to improve success in blood donor recruiting include: utilization of the most effective telerecruiter training and evaluation techniques; accurately determining cost per draw; and developing incentives for agents that are proven to boost productivity.
TELERECRUITER TRAINING
The most critical part of developing a successful telerecruiting campaign is ensuring that your team has easy access to the most accurate, up-to-date resource materials. To accurately measure performance, recruiters must utilize the same techniques to attract donors. These elements are essential to maintain consistent results with the highest possible quality.
Being sure you have the right people on the phone is key in developing an effective blood donor recruitment team.
Selecting “the right people” begins during the hiring process. Motivational techniques must then be utilized on an ongoing basis to reinforce the characteristics these people displayed when they were chosen to recruit blood donors for you. The most important motivational factor is creating a positive work environment with consistent managerial support.
Once you have the team in place, there are a number of points that must be considered to ensure the training they receive is most productive.
It is crucial that people truly care about the cause they are working for. Recruiting blood donors is a life saving endeavor. It is vitally important that this message is clearly conveyed in recruitment calls.
If you are using volunteers, they are making calls because they believe in the cause. Be sure they show it in their voice.
Develop a training program that thoroughly educates telerecruiters. They must understand both the local and national need for blood; as well as the fact that each blood donation can save four lives.
Create a testing process that each telerecruiter must pass before making calls.
Make sure an up-to-date medical book is readily available addressing all acceptability guidelines.
Utilize role playing in training and ongoing coaching to ensure the maximum success in on the job performance.
Be sure that all recruiters are consistently following the approved script. This is essential in accurately measuring performance.
Voice inflection is a factor that must not be overlooked. Donors can feel the attitude of the person on the other end of the phone. It is crucial telerecruiters project the 'feeling' that the donor is helping, not just saying the words.
There is a commonly believed myth regarding the use of volunteers; that they will not, or do not, need as much supervision or motivation as the recruiters who are hired to do the job. In fact, monitoring presentations for quality should become the primary focus in cases where volunteers are making calls. While volunteers greatly decrease the front end recruiting cost, you must make sure deferral rates do not suffer due to a lack of supervision.
ANALYZING TELERECRUITER PERFORMANCE
Falletta describes cost per draw as "the most crucial piece of information to understand." He says that, "All the other tools are used to decrease this number. It never lies."
The necessity of measuring and being able to analyze is why it is vitally important to be consistent in training and having all recruiters follow the same script. This allows you to understand why some telerecruiters are effective while others are not. Top performers are all too often not monitored when, in fact, they are the ones we can learn the most from.
There are a number of factors to measure when analyzing a telerecruiter's performance. They include:
How many calls are they making per hour?
Dialing the phone manually, an agent should be able to dial in the range of 40 phone numbers per hour.
Track the contact rate. How many people answered the phone?
How many people are being reached each hour?
How many people said "yes" to donating?
What percentage of each Telerecruiter's appointments actually show to donate?
"Some people may be resistant to having this information measured at first," advises Falletta. "It is crucial that the telecruiters understand this information is used to improve the process of recruiting blood donors and that helps everyone...the community, the blood center and the agent in terms of their job security and potential bonus opportunities."
In conclusion, when it comes to analyzing telerecruiter performance, the most important part is making sure your donors actually arrive and donate.
DETERMINING COST PER DRAW
Falletta describes cost per draw as "the most crucial piece of information to understand." He says that, "All the other tools are used to decrease this number. It never lies."
Cost per draw is evaluated based only on the donors that are contacted by your telerecruiting department. Often times, public relations efforts, advertising campaigns and personal affiliations with the blood center will cause people to donate. Do not let these impact your numbers.
Factors to consider in determining total cost per phone hour include:
Hiring expenses
Training expenses
Agent pay rate
Taxes for employee
Cost of employee benefits
Long distance bill
Equipment costs
Technical support costs
Costs of a TR manager
Overhead for the space being used for the telerecruiters
Determine total draws per hour by looking at:
Each contact that a telerecruiter makes and how many donations result from their contact. Typically 30 days is a fair amount of time to use for evaluation.
The total cost required to garner the donations.
Divide the first number by the second and you have your total cost per draw.
CREATE INCENTIVES FOR AGENTS
It is essential to understand that telerecruiting is a very difficult job and often causes agents to lose interest. That is why an incentive plan that helps agents focus on short term goals is important.
"At the end of the day," says Falletta, "the agent is going to work as hard as they want to. By using proper incentives you can allow the agents to motivate themselves."
In closing, the Incept team offers the following advice regarding creating incentives for agents.
Create contests for the entire team; such as:
If we hit our recruiting goal of "x" donors this month, everyone gets "y".
Make the incentive work closely with your blood center's objectives.
Focus on cost per draw.
Use competition to improve performance. You might:
Offer prizes to high performing individuals
Conduct competitions on a daily or hourly basis as long as the back end show rate is analyzed.
In summary, implementing the proven successful methods outlined will make a difference in the success of your donor recruitment effort. It is important to remember that all donor recruitment programs are run differently. Some of these tips may be more important for you to put in place sooner than it may be for someone else. All aspects of this plan do not have to be done simultaneously. But, taking what you have been given and installing these program enhancements step-by-step will incrementally improve your recruitment performance.
|
|
"I feel that Incept has done a great job to better understand why donating blood is important. Over the past 4 years, they have become blood banking guru's."
Donyah Perine,
Director of Finance,
Life Share Community Blood Services
|
|