“Fake Calling” and How You Can Spot It in Realtime
Fake Calling describes a telemarketer, recruiter, headhunter or anyone whose job it is to make a lot of calls to prospective businesses but are, in fact, faking it hence the term “Fake Calling”. The term is unique to the telemarketing type of industries and can be a source of frustration for any manager or owner who is expecting the telemarketing part of their marketing project to be productive.
How: Agents can fake calls in several ways. They include, but are not limited to:
frequently calling your cell phone
frequently calling one’s family/friends
calling any number that has a pre-recorded message like a movie theater or weather station and pretend to interact with it
Why: The main reason agents make fake calls is to make the number of calling attempts look higher than they really are in order to look like they are doing their job. Most companies that have a telemarketing business will (or should) have some way of tracking calls from their phone system. Periodically, the manager/owner will look at reports of the agent’s calls first focusing on the number of calls made, then the duration and then the results (if any). Agents just starting out will usually show high calling volume but short duration and not much in the way of positive results. As they mature, the call quantity may dip but the duration and results should start to improve. If the manager only relies on the number of outbound call attempts, and the agent knows this, then fake calling is going to happen at some point.
Remedy: Most phone reports will include a report called “Most Frequently Dialed Numbers” which will sort call records by number dialed, time, date, duration and source (i.e who made the call). A number that is dialed repeatedly will usually show at the top – this is handy as long as you look at the report daily, but the reality is that most managers/owners don’t have the time and may even consider this ‘micromanaging’ something they shouldn’t have to. That said, they still want to know if the agent is making legitimate calls or not. One of the unique features we offer is Real Time Redundant Dialing (RTRD) Notification which will email or text you should a repetitive dialing parameter be triggered. With this feature in place, you can tailor how many times a number can be redialed before being notified and even exclude phone numbers that you would expect to be called frequently (suppliers, existing customers etc).
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