Flexible, insight-driven approach delivers high quality demo appointments and market intelligence for Person Centred Software.

Person Centred Software (PCS) was founded in 2013 to help improve the quality of life for people in social care. With over 20 years’ experience developing technology for the care sector, the company’s mission is to improve the lives of those living and working within social care settings through digital transformation.

Over 3,500 care providers use PCS's care management software to evidence all aspects of care, making it the UK's most widely used digital care system. With a priority on care staff and residents, the company stays true to its values by ensuring its products remain easy to use and flexible to nurture, help support and empower everyone in social care. 

Campaign objective and project background

The Telemarketing Company (TTMC) was introduced to PCS by a venture capital firm who had invested in the business. The company was keen to exploit an opportunity created by a government funded initiative to drive digitisation across the care sector, with the goal for 80% of all care homes to go digital by March 2024.

PCS was one of a small number of businesses on an Assured Supplier list, created to help care providers select from high-quality, accredited digital care system providers. With a large universe of care homes, the company didn’t have the in-house resource to hit the market at scale and felt TTMC had the right credentials and experience to help them build awareness and generate demand on the back of the government push for digitisation. 

Project execution

The initiative was for a limited time only, so speed and scalability were essential to maximise a return on the window of opportunity. Four callers were assigned, and a team briefing took place to cover the client’s proposition and benefits, including simplifying care plan administration, removing paper processes, making staff’s jobs easier and ensuring Care Quality Commission compliance.

The primary goal was for TTMC to generate appointments either online or face-to-face for the PCS sales team to demonstrate the company’s Digital Care System. Secondary objectives were to create awareness, refresh and enhance the existing database and gather market intelligence to validate PCS’s view of the landscape. The client had identified key pieces of information required such as whether homes were already digitised, which providers had been engaged and the length of existing contracts. Agents needed to differentiate the brand from other suppliers on the Assured Supplier list by highlighting their unique selling points, for example their easy-to-use, icon-driven, care app, already used by 70% of all digital homes across the UK.

The target audience was broad - owners and managers across all care homes in England. As data was due to be published listing care homes and regions with access to funding, the plan was to segment data and tailor the approach and message accordingly. However, as campaign launch approached, details had not been released so TTMC had to quickly adapt and re-brief the team to call blind with no insight into the funding status of each home. The objective was to build awareness of the digitisation initiative and PCS’s proposition, targeting all homes with a generic message to nurture a warm pipeline in advance of full funding becoming available.

As calling began, it became evident that there was less awareness than expected around digitisation, so the team focused on educating prospects on the government initiative and the benefits of digitisation broadly, using the pending funding as a hook to secure leads. After a four-week period good momentum had been achieved but funding details were then released and the agency had to quickly pivot again, reverting to an approach segmented between homes with access to funding and those without. The calling schedule was adjusted; some regions were dropped and those where funding was available prioritised. The schedule was also adapted in one region to integrate promotion for an event that PCS was running to highlight digitisation.

Daily contact and weekly reviews ensured that TTMC was kept up-to-date by the client and able to tweak their approach as required. Results were good so the head count was doubled from four to eight agents as more data became available. As the initial phase of calling prior to the release of funds had been so successful in England, the client requested this be extended to Ireland, Scotland and Wales and agents with regional accents were assigned to the new geography. Whilst funding was not yet available in these regions, laying the groundwork and building awareness would warm the pipeline in advance. When one round of calls to care homes in England had been completed, the agency started call backs to prospects not yet reached and appointments that were not completed to ensure no opportunities were missed. 

As the campaign matured, ongoing reviews continued to identify new ways to optimise performance, with shared call recordings and real-time reporting ensuring a continuous feedback loop between client and agency. PCS needed to manage their diaries in house and TTMC was not able to book appointments directly into the sales team’s calendars, creating a delay and the risk that leads would go cold. To minimise this risk, an online form was introduced that captured prospect availability to be sent immediately to sales for a 24–48-hour turnaround. The agency worked closely with the internal team and a multi-pronged approach was adopted for accounts where PCS was already active. Calling into those accounts, TTMC was able to identify and feed awareness across a wider group of influencers and decision makers, reinforcing the client’s proposition, and helping move the account towards conversion.

Results

PCS has been delighted with the work TTMC has done to maximise the opportunity presented by the government funded initiative for digitisation of the care sector. With a short window of opportunity, the team engaged quickly to raise awareness whilst funding was pending and then pivoted rapidly to adopt a strategically segmented approach to prioritise the best opportunities. This flexibility and the focus on continuous improvement has really delivered results, with the team scheduling over 566 appointments to date, at a rate of one booking every 7.78 hours.

Hundreds of calls capturing valuable insight have helped PCS understand how their brand is perceived and build a clear picture of the market in terms of its readiness for digitisation and the competitive landscape. 2755 responses confirming current providers have created a highly accurate picture of competitor market share and identified competitors that were previously unknown – vital input for future planning and strategy.

The programme will continue until the government scheme ends and PCS is already considering other propositions which would benefit from TTMC’s support.