5 Call Center Lessons to Gobble Up From Butterball's Famous Turkey Talk-Line

No call center wants to run a-fowl of their customers this hectic holiday season. Whether customers are in a jolly mood or in full stress mode, we want to give them a friendly, helpful experience. But as every call center agent knows, that is not always easy. Fortunately, we can learn from experts — and who better than the seasoned pros on the annual Butterball Turkey Talk-Line?

This famous call center reappears every year in early October, agents poised to assist would-be turkey chefs with every little detail and smooth their ruffled feathers when necessary. Get ready to feast on these valuable lessons.

1. Omni-Channel is Key

Back in 1981, a half-dozen or so ladies “manned” the phones of Butterball's Turkey Talk-Line. But savvy call center managers knew that the secret ingredient for Turkey Talk-Line success was technology. So, when frazzled cooks clamored for more options, they added email, web-based chat, texting, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. No old fogies at the Turkey Talk-Line.

Yet, the vast majority of their customer contacts each season continue to be via phone. Why?

2. The Power of Personal Connection

Anyone can research information online, but they cannot ask questions or get personalized advice. Besides, it is a time of year when folks are thinking about family and friends, so making a human connection to talk turkey (and maybe share a short anecdote or two) just feels right.

Being nice gives customers a nicer experience, in the spirit of the holidays. What a wonderful thing to keep in mind as we all don our headsets and pull our keyboards close for another mad dash to year’s end.

3. Hire the Right People

We all know that not everyone is cut out for call center work, especially when the holidays roll around. While most agents do not have to literally save someone’s family dinner, we often do have to save their day. It takes people who love to talk to others, who can empathize with customers, who are patient and reassuring, who can and will treat everyone with kindness.

New Turkey Talk-Line agents are recruited via referrals and word-of-mouth — not unlike many new recruits at any call center. Treat people right, and give them the tools they need to help customers effectively, and they will be happy to spread the word about their great workplace.

4. Continuously Train Your Reps

When someone calls the Turkey Talk-Line, they expect agents to know their stuff (or should we say stuffing!). So, Butterball University convenes in October, as the Turkey Talk-Line is about to get underway. Agents prepare turkey dinners using multiple techniques, refreshing their extensive personal knowledge and learning the latest trends and fads.

Armed with phones, laptops, and headsets, they also have a full menu of other resources right at their fingertips. They can send video tutorials or recipe links to callers, or view customer photos to provide more specific advice.

Continuous training is crucial for year-round call centers, but ramped-up, holiday-specific training can boost confidence for agents and results for customers. How can agents work even more efficiently? Butterball hangs a big chart that serves as an at-a-glance cheat sheet for thawing/cooking times. Low tech, super-helpful.

5. Carve Out Time for Fun

Working the Turkey Talk-Line may seem amusing, but any agent knows how hard it is to stay upbeat when the lines are humming and callers can be downright cranky. Butterball keeps their call center on brand and cheerful with a big inflatable turkey and blue and yellow candies that give agents an energy boost whenever needed.

We can follow their example with seasonal decorations, snacks, and beverages that keep agents in the mood and fueled up. Or, random small prizes to thank agents for their great work. Make a list of the silliest or most heart-warming questions such as the guy who asked if it was OK to bake glitter onto his turkey, or U.S. immigrants wanting to start their own American Thanksgiving tradition. Good humor is infectious, elevating everyone’s experience.

So, what have we learned?

The Turkey Talk-Line is not really doing anything new, they are just doing everything right. With the right people, the right training, the right attitude, and omni-channel technology, every call center can serve up delicious customer experiences this holiday season.

2023 Buyers Guide

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Premium Listing Call Center Studio Call Center Studio Call Center Studio is the world’s first call center built on Google and is one of the most secure and stable systems with some of the industry’s best reporting. It is one of the most full-featured enterprise grade systems (with the most calling features, one of the best call distribution, outbound dialing features and integrations—including IVR, AI Speech Recognition, blended inbound/outbound calling and includes Google’s new Dialogflow and Speech API. Call Center Studio is the absolute easiest to use (with a 10 minute setup), and is the price performance leader with lower equipment cost and less setup time.

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Acqueon Technologies Inc. Acqueon's AI-driven conversational engagement software enables sales, marketing and service organizations to engage in emotionally connected dialogs with customers via their channel of choice for significantly improved results. The Acqueon suite adds multichannel campaign management, contact center analytics, desktop, and CRM connectors for your contact center software of choice, including Amazon Connect, Cisco, Nice inContact, and Twilio. Acqueon conversational engagement software leverages the Acqueon IQ platform to aggregate data from the various applications, assemble rich customer contexts, and drive next-best-action using powerful statistical and predictive models.

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Cloud IT Services GmbH Dialfire Dialfire offers you a complete call center solution that is simple and intuitive to use and adapts to your needs. It's completely cloud-based, saving you the hassle of setting up a phone system and installing software. In addition to predictive dialing and call blending of inbound calls, you can create personalized campaigns through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Features include automated workflows and full control over the agent screen. You can see the full list of features here:

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ComSys S.A. CList for Outbound Campaigns Management CList by Comsys is an application that helps contact centers enhance the performance of their outbound campaigns. It accomplishes that by enabling the planning and execution of sophisticated communication strategies. Additionally, the AI-powered module of CList extends the possibilities of outbound campaigns delivering unprecedented results. Comsys is a provider of οmnichannel customer engagement solutions that assist companies around the world in delivering unique customer experiences. For the last 15 years, Comsys designs and implements complex projects for clients from the outsourcing, financial services, telecommunications, and retail sectors. Comsys enjoys strategic partnerships with t... (read more)CList by Comsys is an application that helps contact centers enhance the performance of their outbound campaigns. It accomplishes that by enabling the planning and execution of sophisticated communication strategies. Additionally, the AI-powered module of CList extends the possibilities of outbound campaigns delivering unprecedented results. Comsys is a provider of οmnichannel customer engagement solutions that assist companies around the world in delivering unique customer experiences. For the last 15 years, Comsys designs and implements complex projects for clients from the outsourcing, financial services, telecommunications, and retail sectors. Comsys enjoys strategic partnerships with technology vendors like Cisco®, Aspect Software®, and Microsoft® for the delivery of innovative interaction management and contact center optimization solutions.

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Consilium Software Consilium UniCampaign™ Reaching the right person with the right information on the right channel at the right time is a tall order. That’s the power the new Consilium UniCampaign™ has been adding to Cisco outbound contact centers, easily tripling or quadrupling results, from improving digital customer acquisition to managing post-sale customer relationship. Delivering proactive outbound engagement in a game-changer product, Consilium UniCampaign™ is an omnichannel List and Campaign Management (LCM) solution which complements the strength and robustness of Cisco's Outbound Dialer with the implementation of multichannel (voice, email, and SMS) outbound contact strategies. The new 7th release of UniCampaign™ is des... (read more)Reaching the right person with the right information on the right channel at the right time is a tall order. That’s the power the new Consilium UniCampaign™ has been adding to Cisco outbound contact centers, easily tripling or quadrupling results, from improving digital customer acquisition to managing post-sale customer relationship. Delivering proactive outbound engagement in a game-changer product, Consilium UniCampaign™ is an omnichannel List and Campaign Management (LCM) solution which complements the strength and robustness of Cisco's Outbound Dialer with the implementation of multichannel (voice, email, and SMS) outbound contact strategies. The new 7th release of UniCampaign™ is designed to automate all elements of outbound campaign execution, including business workflows, prioritization of contact channels, and handling responses from contacted leads via multiple channels. UniCampaign™ provides a turbo boost for Cisco contact centers outbound dialing with the most powerful set of multi-level filters and threshold-based campaigns, real-time one-touch control over stopping and resuming dialing, and across-the-board actions which can be applied to all campaigns or selectively. The Consilium Callback Manager module, known as UniCBM™, is an intuitive callback management solution integrated within UniCampaign™ for contact centers to end long hold times for customers during peak call hours. Our customers wanted to create data-driven outbound contact rules, based on client profile and propensity modeling, data on digital interaction preferences, and insights from external data sources such as CRMs and social media. UniCampaign™ has native integration with CRMs like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics to drive seamless import and export of calling data and dialing in a FIFO (first-in, first-out) or LIFO (last-in, first-out) fashion. If your CRM already has integration to online channels such as your website, Instagram, or Facebook, your online leads can get qualified by preconfigured business rules and called, emailed, and / or texted without any human intervention. UniCampaign™ is trusted by 100’s of clients across key verticals, ranging from top Fortune 500 and global organizations to industry-leading startups, helping them provide an entire canvass to communicate with customers, whether it is for sales through web or social media campaigns, deepening loyalty, improving cross-sell purchases, or debt collections resulting in proactive customer experience (CX) across all outbound digital channels. New features at a glance • Right Party Connect Optimization (RPCO) to make result-oriented calls that meet business objectives • Option to monitor real-time progress of each campaign using UniCampaign™ Dashboard • Multi-campaign disposition where agents can disposition call outcomes independently for each campaign • Enables Right Party Connect (RPC) by displaying all campaigns mapped to a specific contact • Multiple emails and SMS campaign templates for sending appropriate emails and broadcast SMS • Callback Manager (UniCBM™) to reduce the impact of customer abandon rates and calls waiting in queue, resulting in higher customer satisfaction

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