Rapport in telemarketing ‐ mirror, mirror on the call?

Examines the hypothesis that the UK population has not yet fully developed a telemarketing culture and that there is, therefore, a particular need for telemarketers to understand how rapport might be developed on the telephone. Relevant literature from the fields of social psychology, applied psychology and marketing are reviewed and a programme of research was carried out, comprising an Omnibus to measure the extent of telemarketing experience in the UK population and a study among organisations with in‐house telemarketing facilities to explore the types of practices that might foster rapport. It concludes that a telemarketing culture still has some way to develop and that, while many organisations used a number of seemingly relevant techniques, in particular NLP mirroring and matching, there are a number of issues still to be resolved regarding measurement of rapport as well as the theory and “measuring instruments” associated with NLP. Other factors affecting the development of rapport in a telemarketing environment are also considered