The best phone system for staffing and temp agencies

A shift to cover for tomorrow morning: call 40 temps in 10 minutes.

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Hundreds of companies use to make every call pay off

The situation

What holds you back today

01

Same-day cover handled one call at a time

02

Candidates unreachable on the first attempt

03

Booking confirmations poorly evidenced

The answer

What Skipcall changes

A parallel dialer that fills a shift in minutes

The parallel dialer →

Confirmation SMS from the same screen

SMS →

Availability history on every temp

The parallel dialer →

Specific to your industry

An agency's calling windows, client side and candidate side

An agency calls two audiences whose days have nothing in common. The client needs an answer before the shift starts, the candidate is unreachable while they are on one. The same call, made an hour too late, is worth nothing.

Before 07:00: same-day cover

In warehousing, production and logistics the shift starts between six and eight, and the overnight absences surface at handover. The production manager knows exactly who is missing and the agency has less than an hour. This is the window where you need several temps on the line at once rather than one after another.

09:00 to 11:00: the week's requirements

Team leaders and HR managers have come out of the morning meeting and know what they will have to cover. It is the best moment for a business development call: the person has the requirement in mind and does not yet have the day pressing on them.

12:00 to 14:00: the candidate window

A temp on shift will not answer halfway through it. Their break is often the only clear moment of the day. A text sent before noon sets the call up and stops you wasting it on introductions.

From 16:30: shift change and tomorrow

Shift workers become reachable again, and it is also the hour when clients confirm what they need the next day. Both sets of calls fit inside the same hour, which means both lists have to be built before you get there.

Thursday and Friday afternoon: Monday's bookings

Anything not confirmed by Friday evening is hard to rescue on Monday morning, since neither side has anyone available. It is also when timesheets come in, so your consultants are on the phone to those candidates anyway. Send the written confirmations before the end of the day: a verbal yes given on Friday does not survive the weekend.

What these windows have in common is that they are short. Across fifteen useful minutes, what counts is the number of people actually reached, not the number of numbers dialled, and that is exactly what parallel dialing with voicemail detection changes.

The script

The staffing agency script, client side and candidate side

Two calls with nothing in common: the one you make to a production manager to place a candidate, and the one you make to a temp about a shift that starts tomorrow. The first is prepared, the second is won or lost inside two minutes and falls over on one missing detail.

The client opening, mid-morning

“Morning, [first name last name], [agency name] in [town]. I am not calling to introduce the agency. I have a [qualification] available from [date], already placed on a comparable site near you. Have you got anything coming up on that grade in the next few days?”

An available candidate with a date gets an answer in seconds. An agency introduction ends with a request for a brochure.

If they say they already use another agency

“Everyone does, and I am not asking you to replace them. I am asking to be the second number, the one you ring when the first cannot cover. Which grade do you have the most trouble getting filled?”

No agency covers everything. Positioning yourself as the fallback rather than the replacement leaves the door open without putting the client in an awkward position.

If they ask for your charge rate before anything else

“I will put it in writing, but not before I know what we are talking about: which grade, what shift pattern, how long, what site. A charge rate means nothing until those four are fixed. Shall we go through them now?”

Pin the duration down as well, because once the worker has been in the same role with the same hirer for twelve weeks the Agency Workers Regulations parity rights kick in and the pay basis changes. A rate quoted without that conversation gets renegotiated later, badly.

The candidate call, for a shift starting tomorrow

“Hi [first name], [name] from [agency]. Shift at [client] in [town], tomorrow at [time], for [duration], as a [role], hours [shift pattern], [rate] an hour. Are you available?”

Site, time, duration, role, hours and rate before anything else: a temp accepts or refuses on those, and a yes given without them turns into a no-show the next morning. They are also exactly the details the 2003 Conduct Regulations require you to confirm.

If they say they are already on an assignment

“No problem. When does it finish? I will note the date and call you two days before to talk about what comes next. Would you rather I text you than ring while you are on shift?”

Closing with the candidate

“I am sending you the exact address, the time to arrive, the name of the person to ask for and the PPE you need to bring, right now in writing. Reply to me as soon as you have it, so we have both got it recorded.”

At Skipcall, every call is recorded, transcribed and summarised, so the script gets corrected against what your reps actually say rather than what we imagine they say.

Avoid this

Three mistakes this industry makes on the phone

The mistake

Offering a shift on the phone without giving the exact address, the arrival time, the shift pattern and the hourly rate.

Do this instead

It is the single biggest cause of no-shows on the morning of a start, and those details are what the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 require you to confirm in writing anyway. Give them in the first sentence, send them while the person is still on the line, and ask them to reply.

The mistake

Confirming a placement without checking that the tickets and checks are still valid.

Do this instead

Ask on the call and put the expiry date on the candidate record with an alert before it. A CSCS card, a forklift licence, a DBS certificate or a right to work document that turns out to have lapsed at the site gate loses you the shift and the client, not just the day.

The mistake

Quoting a duration the client has not confirmed.

Do this instead

Separate what is firm from what is likely, and say which is which. An assignment sold as long term and stopped after a fortnight costs you that candidate for every booking afterwards, and word travels fast between temps working the same area.

A calendar full of meetings starts with a call.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions, Staffing & temp agencies

Work from a list built before the urgency, filtered by ticket or qualification, by travel distance and by declared availability. Call several people at once rather than one after another: on a morning requirement, a sequential call queue arrives after the shift has started. Skipcall dials four lines in parallel and drops voicemails automatically, which keeps the consultant in conversation instead of listening to answerphones. Send the written confirmation immediately, while the person is still on the phone.
The need is double: reach a lot of candidates in a short window, and keep a trace of what was agreed with the client. Look at parallel dialing, voicemail detection, sending SMS from the same screen, and syncing with whatever you track placements in. Skipcall brings those together and integrates natively with HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce and Attio, with other tools connecting by API. It does not replace a front and back office system: timesheets, payroll, right to work records and Agency Workers Regulations tracking stay where they are.
In this sector the written confirmation is not just good practice, it is the rule. The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 require you to give the work-seeker the details of the assignment, the hirer, the start date, the likely duration, the type of work, the location, the hours, the rate of pay and any experience, training or authorisation the role requires, and to confirm them in writing. A Key Information Document also has to be issued before terms are agreed. On the call side, recording and automatic summaries save you reconstructing the conversation from memory, provided everyone was told the call was recorded. An SMS sent from the same tool as the call keeps both traces in one place.
Yes, where the person has registered with your agency and given you that number to be contacted about work: the call is part of the relationship they started with you, it is not direct marketing, and a Telephone Preference Service registration does not stop it. Tell them at registration what the number will be used for, how long you keep it and how to object. A cold sales call to a private individual who never registered with you is a different matter: that is direct marketing, it needs a lawful basis under the UK GDPR and the number has to be screened against the TPS.
The best window is mid-morning, once the production meeting is over: the person then knows what they are short of for the week. Avoid shift start, when nobody has a spare minute, and Friday afternoon, when decisions get pushed to Monday. A call about a named candidate who is available now gets far more answers than a general introduction to the agency.

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