Call Centers and Politics
Fall is upon us, and with it, this year also comes election season. Legislative seats, state governorships, and local/state judgeships are all up for grabs, and politicians are hot on the campaign trail in preparation for the November election day. With it being an election year, Gold Mountain Communications thought it would be a great idea to dive deep into the discussion of how call centers play an essential role during the political elections.
What are Political Call Centers?
There are two options for politicians when it comes to call centers. They can choose to outsource their call centers to professional companies such as Gold Mountain that specialize in sales, marketing, and communication or form their own call centers using their campaign staff. These staffers mainly consist of volunteers and interns.
Both types of political call centers dedicate themselves to having curated lists of contacts, so their efforts in outbound calls don’t go to waste by calling the wrong people. These call centers collect contact information from telephone directories and electoral roll and census data and have preexisting data regarding party information such as petitions and email lists.
Do Political Call Centers Work?
If you were to ask politicians this question, their answer would be short and sweet: yes. Phone and mail communication firms can pull in as much as $8 million from political action committees during any given re-election year.
Some may get annoyed by receiving calls, texts, or emails from a political candidate asking for their voting opinions. However, based on the amount of campaign money spent on political call centers, it is safe to say politicians view the number of upset voters as minute compared to those benefitting from these calls.
Technology is Crucial for a Successful Campaign
It’s been discussed in the past how technology is crucial for any call center, which is also true for political call centers. Technology utilized by call centers, such as automatic outbound caller ID, can be truly beneficial for a campaign. People tend not to answer calls from unknown numbers outside their area code. Increased pickup rates are associated directly with automatic outbound caller ID because the call comes from a person’s area code.
Another piece of technology that is helpful for a political call center is call disposition codes. Many professional call centers use this software as it helps a representative gauge whether or not a call to a specific individual was effective or not. If the person being called becomes hostile over the phone, this software will know to flag that phone number so the representative will not redial it.
We all know how vital politics are in the world, and now we understand how important call centers are to those politics. Whether collecting data for campaigning or determining which person to call or not call, professional and newly made call centers are a vital strategy in any campaign, large or small.
