Ten reasons why remote phone campaigns are better than on-site. And four reasons why they are not.

For over twenty years, telephone campaigns in education have been run by gathering a bunch of students in a room, training them, and then hitting the phones. Covid has, almost overnight, introduced remote calling. Now we are running campaigns with callers across the country, even overseas in some cases. The supervisor is in front of a bank of screens. One is running a video conference line. One is running calling software. And one is tracking the missile launch (the last one is a lie; Sean Connery you are much missed!).

It’s quick to see the current advantages: A remote team won’t be derailed by one person getting ill. However much lockdown tightens, the show will go on. And, of course, there is no chance that callers at home can end up stuck in your accommodation for weeks.

It’s clear this approach works. Income is great and callers are happy and effective. So it is a solution for now.

However, experience is showing it is more than a stop-gap. Our current campaign in The Netherlands has had no drop-outs (which is a first) and is at 80% of target, 60% of the way through the campaign. Its becoming clear there are other huge advantages that are proving to be so compelling that it seems likely that remote calling may well become the norm (or at least a true alternative), even when Covid is under control. So what are these?

Ten reasons

1. You don’t need a dedicated call-room space

Anyone who has run a phone campaign for the first time will testify to the work that can be involved in finding somewhere from which to call. It’s hard locate a space that is free for several weeks, where equipment can be set up and left undisturbed, that has good internet and is close to facilities like loos and somewhere to make a cupper. Of course one can find such a venue. People have been doing so for over two decades in our universities and schools. But it’s really nice not to have to.

On top of that, if you are using a consultant, now you do not have to house them. This can save a lot of hassle and a very large amount of money.

2. Lower IT risk

Ever had the internet fail during a calling session? No software, no phones and panic to get IT to respond and sort it out. They probably don’t work evenings and weekends and it’s easy for a whole session to be lost. When the callers are at home, the risk is spread. Yes, you may lose one caller, but not all of them. And that caller has 24/7 support for their home internet. They pick up the phone and someone responds and sorts it out, whereas your great IT guy may not be back until after the weekend.

3. Enhanced security

Hold on, you say, it can’t be safer calling from home! When you go on holiday, you probably put your passport in the safe. You may put your cash in a money belt. You put your handbag under your arm. At night you don’t walk down alleyways. In reality, the crime rate may well be quite low and you are as safe or more so than at home. But you take care. It feels risky because it is unfamiliar. When you do remote calling, you take time to set up secure phone lines, protocols for handling data, ways of monitoring callers. You make a big thing about confidentiality, using tougher contractual clauses and lots of extra training. At the end of all this, far more care is probably lavished on security than if you were calling on-site.

4. Callers are more likely to apply

If one were to ask most students from disadvantaged backgrounds the benefits of coming to university, there is a significant chance some will say ‘because I won’t have to end up working in a call-centre’. If you google ‘graduates end up in call-centres’ you will find stories in The Mail, Mirror and Independent all reporting the ‘horror’ that so many graduates end up in such terrible and inappropriate jobs after they finish their degree. It is a totem of career failure to many. Whilst it is a great job to be a student caller which enhances life skills and confidence hugely, would be applicants may not see it that way.

A remote campaign can be advertised in a different way. The relationship (whilst a great team spirit can still be established - see below) is more equal. It is more one-to-one. Callers are not being asking to be telephone fundraisers. They are being asked to be professional fundraisers who do their asking on the phone (and even some face to face, see below).

5. Callers are more likely comfortable

Whilst we make huge efforts to make the experience nothing like the stereotypical ‘battery-chicken’ call-centre, students are still sitting at desks, round a room, making calls through headsets, watched over and dealing with at least some inevitable background noise. Despite our efforts, which mean that attitudinally the atmosphere is not one of grinding call after call, the temporary nature of the setup means we don’t have the comfort we might put in place in a purpose built facility.

By contrast, callers love working at home. They have an army of slaves ready to tend to their every need (aka mum and dad). Tea and biscuits flow like mana from heaven. They can fall out of bed at five thirty and make their shift at six. They only need to own really nice tops (because they will be in pyjamas from the waist down). Of course, one may feel that this is not a productive way to go about things. Maybe that is true in theory. But given they seem to get very good results, it clearly works in practice. Being happy goes a long way.

6. Callers are more easily monitored and trained

It is quite a knack to listen to callers in a call room. Stand too close, you are leaning over them and they are uncomfortable. Too far away and it’s hard to hear. And all the time other callers are interrupting, so you end up missing the ask, or the trade down or the objection. Then the issue you wanted to sort out has to wait for a later moment. When you get that moment, you need to find a way to talk to them that is collaborative. If you take them from the room, they are in trouble. Do it in front of the others, however quietly, and they can be embarrassed. Online you can listen to them, you sitting elsewhere quietly in the background. The absence of your physical presence close-by lets them relax. You are equally undisturbed by others. When they have finished the call, you can give them an appraisal that is colleague to colleague. They listen and they learn faster and with more motivation.

7. Managers can engage and manage better

We have all noticed, working from home, that we are getting to know colleagues a little better. There is a more relaxed dynamic when chatting to each other from our living rooms and studies. Our personality comes out. The guitar on the wall, the three flying ducks, the picture from our great African safari becomes a talking point. We discover our colleagues have real lives. For managers, this is very valuable. Their authority grows by being real people, not just the boss. There is a problem within educational fundraising that the manager is always ‘head of the class’. Remote calling establishes an adult work environment. It makes it easier to manage because callers are not trying to fit into a maestro/pupil dynamic.

8.Greater team bonding

Students have friends at school and uni, but it's limited to term time. With the majority of their fellow students, they may chat in a group in a seminar, but don’t get to know them to any great extent. Calling from home changes that. They ask each other where they are calling from. They tell each other between calls about what they have done that day, or when their mum is getting back from the shops. They become hugely more real to each other. Because one uses breakout rooms and can so easily keep pairing people off in different combinations, new friendships are made. It has been striking how much closer the group becomes in a remote campaign.

9.Flexibility of campaign dates

Many institutions are incredibly limited in when they can call. Physical space is one factor but the biggest is student availability. In Oxbridge, one cannot call in term, one isn’t going to get people to come back mid-vacation, so there are only a few times a year when people can be encouraged to stay up or come back early to take part. In universities, term time is limited by exams and out of term is hard to achieve as many callers are the other end of the country. Getting them to stay locally for 4-8 weeks is often impractical. In schools, one is pretty much limited to the summer holidays as the recent leavers are far too far away the rest of the time. Calling remotely gives Oxbridge the chance to call deeper into vacations. It allows for longer campaigns with fewer callers. It allows to do some calling one side of Easter or Christmas and restart the other. It makes calling in December when the college is bed-blocked by interviewees an option. Universities can consider the long summer holidays. It even opens up the opportunity to conduct campaigns to places like Asia with international callers who are back home in the right time zone. Schools have extraordinary freedom. They can call anytime outside uni exams during the year.

10. Flexibility of campaign hours

One of the most disheartening things about on-site campaigns are the requests by alumni to be called at times outside the set calling hours. What does one say when someone who is being asked for ￡1000 a year says ‘phone me at 10am Tuesday’? What about if they asked to be called three days after the end of the campaign? You want to say yes. You also know that supervisor and caller will drag in for one call and the alumnus probably won’t answer! If the calling is remote, it takes a few seconds for the supervisor to go online, allocate the prospect, the caller stops reading Nietzsche or pauses the Xbox, and they try the number. If answered, great. If not, you pay the caller for 15 mins of their time and that’s the end of it. Such flexibility can easily add ￡5,000 or ￡10,000 to a campaign total.

This flexibility also extends to the number of shifts. In university term-time campaigns, it’s common to have twice as many callers as seats. This is because calling takes up so much time. A three hour shift might really be a five hour one by the time they have got to campus and got home again. Because remote callers are not spending a lot of time on travel, and when they are done for the evening, they still have some time for study or to relax, you can get callers to work more shifts each week. This makes them get much better, much faster. It also saves a fortune on training because you are not paying for twice as many people to be there as you need each night to call.

It's even possible to follow up really great leads, or people who are down for big asks with a face-to-face visit. In future, some from your team of fundraisers dotted across the country may be trained to visit people who live nearby but under normal circumstances would be too out of the way to consider for a personal ask.

Four challenges

1. Getting started – training and early monitoring

Whilst overall it is easy to monitor and manage callers remotely, remote calling lessens the ‘learning by diffusion’ that occurs in a call-room. Some might argue that such learning wouldn’t be needed if the formal training is good enough. There is some justification to this. But some callers will take things in better than others. They are then playing catch up. Hearing someone else do it well can fill in knowledge gaps. These gaps may not be glaring. It may just be where to find something on the software, what the top rate tax rate is, or what the code is for the USA.

This requires a very proactive approach to training. Ours is now greatly enhanced and online, with quizzes to test knowledge. Because it can easily be revisited, callers can self-help too.

It also means very communicative supervision. Everything needs to be succinctly explained and key points need repeating. It is vital the supervisor explains what they are doing. Why are they allocating prospects in the way they are? What are the aims that evening? How is the programme going? Will it make target? In a physical room, one caller asks and others hear and, if they don’t, they hear about it in a break. In a virtual campaign, the supervisor needs to deplore a lot of care and experience to ensure everyone is on message.

Confidence is everything in a caller. Training and communication can give this. So can early success: their own or, to a lesser extent, witnessing it in others. So carefully pairing people in support bubbles, sharing results as a continuous feed and allocating prospects to prime the chances of success are all vital.

Supervising remote calling is a highly skilled but rewarding task.

2. Drop outs and wellbeing

Callers supporting each other not only gives confidence, it improves wellbeing. But the supervisor must be proactive too. Glancing across the room can reveal if a caller is stressed. Remote calling demands one asks, listens and helps. If they have that sense of leadership, they will be fine.

Nonetheless, expect a few more drop-outs. When on-site, fewer things have the chance to intercede. Calling from home may mean a caller suddenly becomes a carer. It may mean they are asked by parents to help with a family business. They may suddenly feel the need to rush off to boy/girlfriend the other end of the country.

3. Technical setup

Callers need good kit if working remotely. On-site, there is logic in having basic machines because communally used equipment can take a bit of a beating. Of course, basic kit may not be all that reliable, but one can counter that with some spares and just swop them out. Offsite, it all needs to work reliably as replacement will cause delay. Supply good machines and callers will take more care of that machine as its in their personal care. And added bonus is that the risk of the theft is much reduced.Supply new kit to a call-room and maybe ￡10,000 is exposed.If each caller has a single machine, a theft can only amount to a few hundred pounds.

The temptation is that one might use the callers’ own laptops. This has a number of issues. Firstly, they are unlikely to have the anti-virus and browser security settings the way you want them. This can be addressed, but it’s more robust to have a specific machine set up in advance and used for nothing else. Secondly, it can reduce the applicant pool to only those students with money to own such equipment. That is neither useful nor fair.

However, great laptops at affordable rental are available and with a support package that means the rare issues that occur are swiftly resolved. 

Headsets can be sent (and quickly replaced) via online retailers.

We have even worked out how to operate inexpensive incentives that the callers love.

And it's incredible how well one can operate a call-room using video conferencing. I never thought I would write a 20 page guide to training, managing and motivating callers online… but now I have!

4. Gift fulfilment and confidentiality

It’s vital the software you use has Attestation of PCI Compliance. This isn’t just about taking gifts. In a call-room, it may be workable to get round PCI by taking single Direct Debits, with PDQ machines etc. And if one is watching what is happening, then the fact the software is not as secure as it should be may be OK for the rest of the data. Far from ideal, but maybe a risk some are happy to take.

One would have to be quite brave to do this remotely. The reason for this is that, if there is some data breach, the first thing that will be blamed is the software. It is vital the institution can be certain that the software cannot be responsible because it has the in travel and at rest encryption required and the server it is hosted and meets PCI specifications. It is irrelevant that only the credit cards need to be PCI protected. You need to know that all of your data is incredibly secure. That way, the callers know that only human error on their part, involving actions outside the system, can cause a breach. That will make them much more careful.

The happy result of using PCI compliant software is that one also has a solution to gift collection, taking card details and bank details over the phone. All you need is the right software (like ours) and encrypted VoIP (voice over internet phones, which we can supply). That way, you don’t have to worry about the home network; in fact it’s now more secure than it was on-site!

Remote calling is an exciting development. It will transform the ease and frequency institutions can run campaigns. I am currently writing a guide to Regular Giving for the IDPE. Remote Calling will feature. I would love to hear from people with ideas/opinions/experiences of Remote Calling so I can make this section in the guide as useful as possible. Please get in touch [email protected]