As a TTHM Operator, I have enjoyed collecting accurate contact information for clients over the phone and in person for decades.
Getting it right means that people feel seen and heard, a fundamental need we have as humans. So often folks are put through the ringer of automation, artificial intelligence, recordings, robots, and outsourced call centers. It means a great deal to myself and those I speak with that I am a real live human that hears them and can respond.
Many times at Telephone Town Hall Meeting (TTHM) we use the data collection platform to repeat information that may have been missed by people who were listening to our live forum. Very often our Telephone Town Hall Meetings cover miles of ground in a single hour, making it challenging for some listeners to grasp every word, detail, or important phone number or website. Having a separate queue to pull folks from who need information repeated makes it simple to find them and to have the information ready to repeat at a pace they can write at. Being live humans, we operators are also able to listen as a person repeats the number back to us to ensure they wrote it down correctly.
Oftentimes forum participants make it into the Collection Queue but want to ask a question. We are able to explain to them that they need to press 0 when they are back in the listening audience to submit their question to an operator in the Screening Queue. We can sometimes answer these questions as well, if they are simple and covered in the provided documentation that we receive from the client or moderator.
Data Collection is amplified with the addition of a web registration page. This simple, free add-on allows people to pre-submit their contact information and questions for the forum. The submitted information pre-populates the data that we see as operators, making our job easier. Our data managers also load as much detail as possible from client data or targeted data that we have provided. Instead of starting from scratch, with most people we are simply verifying that what we have is correct.
We are also able to spell things out to ensure that what we have collected is accurate even if someone is hard to hear, has a strong accent, or has background noise. All of these issues would ruin accuracy for a bot or in a recording, but for a live operator, it’s no issue.
When we collect data, we can capture email addresses for our client’s e-newsletter, but also mobile phone numbers for future calls. Along with Mobile Direct Dialing, this can expand the audience by including the vastly increased number of cell phone only homes. As an operator, I’ve grown to enjoy all sides: Screening, Data Collection, and Mobile Dialer reading. Reach out to us for a Live Demo today to see how the A-Team Staff at TTHM can rock your next mass-outreach event.
About Becca:
As a TTHM Operator since 2020, Becca has collected thousands of e-newsletter opt-ins and processed even more live questions for a myriad of telephone town hall events. Producing forums for school districts, political campaigns, medical insurance providers, labor unions, and cities around the country has helped Becca to gain a wealth of knowledge from client speakers and event participants. Becca works from her home office on Florida’s Gulf Coast, but she has produced live forums while working remotely from Colorado, Montana, Iowa and lots of other places in between!