The letter was the touchpoint, not the message

They wanted the caller to talk about the letter. Almost nobody had read the letter, so the opening was trying to continue a conversation that had never begun.

The letter created the contact, not the conversation

I once worked through a letter-writing company on a charity campaign. Their script told our callers to talk about the letter that had been sent. The problem was simple: almost nobody answering the phone had read it.

The opening made the caller sound irrelevant

The caller was asking people to remember words they had never seen. Before the real cause or request could be explained, the person already felt lost. The results were terrible, but I was told not to change the script.

I changed it anyway

I stopped treating the letter as the message. It was only the touchpoint: the reason the charity could make contact. The caller now gave the message properly on the phone instead of pretending the person already knew it.

The result rose by 400%

Once the opening matched what had actually happened, the result increased by 400%. The agents had not suddenly become better and the people being called had not changed. One wrong assumption in the first words had been burying the whole campaign.

The charity stayed

We now work directly with the charity and it is our second-biggest customer. The letter-writing company is no longer involved. The relationship lasted because the calls produced the result once the opening was allowed to tell the truth.