Howie Mandel said, “People who annoy people are the luckiest people in the world.”
Woody Hayes said, “Paralyze resistance with persistence.”
Howie knows comedy and Woody knows football, but they wouldn’t have done so well in tele-recruiting. Persistence is delicate. With too much persistence, you annoy donors and prompt them to request removal from your database. With too little persistence, your donors fail to donate. In either case donations drop, hospitals have less blood available, and fewer lives are saved.
So, how often should you contact a donor? There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Your contact center will need to modify best practices based upon trial and error.
The following guidelines, however, can inform your strategy as you optimize it:
- Dial a household no more than once every 3 days.
- If a donor does not want to schedule, or is currently unable to donate, wait at least 21 days before you call again unless a medical condition or recent travel dictates shorter or longer wait times.
- If a donor cannot donate for at least a month (e.g., is pregnant, away at college, or out of town for an extended time), adjust the callback dates in your database to reflect this.
Once you have established contact frequency rules, ensure that your tele-recruiters adhere to them strictly. Doing so can reduce your blood center’s opt-out rate by as much as 36%, increase the longevity of your call files, and save more lives.
In what other ways do you determine optimal contact frequency?