Call centre follows-ups boost marketing payback
Ensuring the quality of sales leads and acting on them as they come in is paramount to a successful marketing campaign, but many companies are still simply feeding these customer requests into their CRM systems to be actioned as and when possible, according to Richard McCrossan, strategic business director for Genesys, who explains why companies need 'optimal responder' programmes to drive appropriate responders to encourage sales, and why the contact centre holds vital customer information to help make that work.
A sale can come from anywhere, but the more information you have on a customer or prospect, the easier it will be to determine how high a priority he or she should be.
There are many responder programmes you can use to establish priorities, and one of the most successful ones is RFM analysis which uses historic data to assess Recency, Frequency and Monetary value of the customer or prospect. This produces a score that determines the likelihood of the person making a purchase, and allows you to decide the correct action to take with that customer.
There are many factors to consider when it comes to temperature-checking your leads but while you should always prioritise your leads, it is often critical data held in the contact centre that will enable you to 'raise the temperature' and personalise your engagement. There are three things to remember when it comes to marketing leads:
- You may require several 'touches' Not all respondents will want to buy something from you there and then, so you should create a "nurture" programme that ensures all respondents that aren't immediate leads are not just discarded. Start building a simple 'live' profile of your prospects and relevant nurturing material - they may have come back to you with queries a product or solution - your contact centre holds this vital data to enable your next 'touch' to be spot on.
- Keep them interested Use multiple forms of media to reach your customers. Different people prefer different means of communication. Make sure you are considering different media in following up with a customer: web chat, video chat, instant messaging as well as on the phone. You could also try different media at different points in your sales process, this will keep customers engaged and gives them the opportunity to get in touch with you whichever way they prefer. Again your contact centre may hold the information that tells you their preferred method of communication - if it's email, then the phone call might just annoy.
- Personalise Make sure you gather the right information and feed this into your CRM. You should try and keep prospect information as up to date as possible. This will make it easier for you to deliver a more personal experience for your perspective buyer. If a customer has complained about one of your products or services, they will not want to receive promotional information from you until their complaint has been dealt with and they are happy. All of this information is held within the customer service department.
"I have seen occasions where someone has just purchased a particular car only to be sent a mailer from the same company about purchasing the same car but with a better deal," said McCrossan. "No matter how 'hot' your lead is (in this case having visited the car showroom that day), if you don't consolidate data across both marketing and customer service, this will only lead to frustrated customers."
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