English is not just a national language it is a unique global passport.
The sameness of language can overcome any identity crisis, sometimes inconveniently. When I arrived in London, fresh from South Africa and desperate to immerse myself in a foreign culture, language became an issue. If I opened my mouth to speak and there was a South African nearby (and there usually was…) they would inevitably gravitate toward me and want to bond. This was not what I had in mind; I have nothing against my fellow citizens but I had spent a lot of money, and come a long way to have a ‘foreign’ experience. The concept of a bunch of us hanging out together in London was beyond me.
Just as there is safety in numbers, there is safety in a shared language. Our voice quality, accent, vocabulary, and particular idiom all denote who we are and where we come from. Language articulates our identity. Others recognise this identity and either there is a synchronicity (you’re part of the group) or there is not. Friends feel the same about things; have similar interests; and will often express themselves in a common language.
The British government’s Kingman report in 1988 on the teaching of English firmly endorsed the importance of language education as an instrument of personal development, and the promotion of a sense of personal identity: the ’shaping of personality and the exploration of self are inextricably bound up with language development.” But the report also recognised the role of language teaching to develop wider identities. “From childhood,” it says, “we learn to use language not only to identify with certain groups but also to exclude others.”
To belong to a particular ‘nation’ is a sense of identity. We reside in a certain geographical area and are as a result, a certain race. South Africa is a good example of people of many different races trying to develop a sense of patriotic identity in respect of the nation. This, of course is only happening now, and South Africa was a prime example of how certain groups who do not talk the same, look the same, or act the same are excluded from the ‘greater’ group. However, given the importance of communication in fostering links between people, it is not surprising that language is high on the list. South Africa has eleven official languages but English is the one you need in order to get a worthwhile job; in fact, there are few countries in the world where English is not used in the course of a day. English has become our global common ground.
Language helps to articulate cross-national identities that would otherwise be difficult to sustain. Therefore, the Kingman report emphasised the need for children to widen their horizons and prepare themselves to enter a ‘public world’ to which the passport is language. International conferences are usually held in English; our cross-national youth culture currently converse mostly over the Internet in English; popular music is often sung in English and so it goes. Language is seen as opening pathways not only to careers but also to fulfilment in identifying with the global community at large - and which you may seek to identify with as well.
No doubt, telemarketing has evolved as a very potent tool for marketers and companies to publicize as well as sell their product and services in recent times. However there are also hurdles in running the telemarketing business in case you are an owner of a contact centre or call centre. You must have faced the problem in your center where your agent hangs on a call more than allotted time. In such a situation you can not even blame the guy who is handling the call as his process is clogged only because of the busy signals, answering machines, no answers and disconnects. However it has incurred expenses over the telephone bills as well as remained the same on the wage bill of the employee. Situation even worsens when you have committed a client for a large number of calls in limited time with an immense pressure of deadlines.
Predictive Dialers are great aid to any telemarketer to give solution to this problem as they are capable of handling a huge number of calls in limited time. They are unique in a sense that they can increase the productivity of an agent manifold. It ultimately lowers costs per transaction and increases contact rates for you. It is highly recommended for large as well as small telemarketing groups. Predictive dialers enable a calling person with unique capacity to judge and detect unnecessary calls like busy signals, answering machines, no answers and disconnects. You can understand this way, a Predictive Dialer is devised to predict or rather anticipate during the call process to ascertain availability the next representative or agent will be free and when the next hello will be detected. It is an intelligent outbound call processing mechanism employing complex mathematical algorithms to predict when to dial next. The working of a Predictive dialer takes place in following manner. In a call centre a predictive dialer that can be a hard as well as soft dialer happens to be attached to a network server that stores the information related to the numbers of people and businesses to be called are stored in a network server. All agents are linked to that server. In the dialing process when the server or dialer stars calling the number it is predictive dialer that manages the calls. In a situation while calling there is no response or silence from other side the dialer hangs up. From the other calls, the dialer will screen out busy, unanswered, and answering machine calls. Only the live calls are put through to the agents. As soon as the agent gets connected to a call he can view all the information related to the call on his screen. The biggest advantage with predictive dialer is that it can adjust to calling patterns depending on various factors. * Total number of rings while a customer picks up a phone. * On the calls which are answered * On the length of talk time, in case calls are short the predictive dialer adjust to dial more numbers * On the basis of available agents if fewer agents are available predictive dialer set the calls to be dialed less frequently. * Desired abandonment rate, under this a person who hangs up before the dialer switches the call to a free agent will not have a live telemarketer available to talk to. Keeping all the factors in focus a predictive dialer dynamically manages the pace at which to dial out, to keep all agents talking. While managing it ensures waiting period of the agents to be minimum at the same time keeping abandoned calls down to acceptable levels. A predictive dialer, after estimating the number of agents approximately can doubles the telephone numbers to be called thus prevents agents from sitting idle. The predictive dialing program saves an agent’s time by dialing on its own and give only attended call to the agent. This way predictive dialer enables a call centre owner to increase profits per hour with maximum number of calls. The biggest benefit of predictive dialer is this that it dials on the behalf of an agent. This saves an agent from any personal approach however let him free only for sales pitch. To get more information on Predictive Dialers you can visit the site www.yoursautodialer.com