Right Person Contact and Predictive Dialling

Donna Fluss, Principle at DMG Consulting, the specialists in call centre efficiency, has stated that the new generation of outbound dialling services are going to completely change the way people think about customer contact. Blind Dialling is Dead! You need to concentrate on the relationship and Right Person Contacts. The restrictions of Do Not Call (DNC) legislation means that companies have to really sit back and think about when customers need, and want, to be called. Obviously DNC's (and the need for pretty good number suppression capability) will reduce the amount of people that you can call, but industry insiders are saying that "Although the size of the lists that companies have to call has decreased between 30 and 50 percent, the quality of the remaining prospects is better since the people who wouldn't buy anyway are no longer on the list." Telemarketing is stronger, but leaner.(Jim Mitchell, Aspect Software). Fluss goes onto to say that "Building and nurturing relationships with existing customers is a more rewarding use of a company's resources (and its predictive dialler) than the aggressive, shotgun-style outbound campaigns for new customers we were all so frustrated with a few years ago"

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Changing Service Providers Is Like Being On A Blind Date....

What happens when you are switching to a new service and the guys don't turn up when you expected them to? Well, you are one unhappy little puppy. James Enck is a pretty well informed telecommunications consultant and when his new service provider didn't turn up when they said they would, he just could not, could not, understand why he wasn't fore warned. I think in the case James is referring to their was a genuine Technology SNAFU and where your data is corrupted their is very little you can do "instantly". In speaking with one client such as the one James mentions in his post, VoiceSage was told that sending out SMS/Text reminders for appointment scheduling and appointment confirmations, actually drove inbound traffic volumes to the customer care center, as customers felt that had to personally "take an action" if the they were to truly feel comfortable withe the confirmation process. This isn't the first time VoiceSage have found that in some situations(types of information) customers are not comfortable with text. In Financial services for instance some customers feel that "updates" via SMS are "spewed from some machine in the basement that knows my account details....". Again, we emphasize that there is no substitute for a pilot when rolling out any new service.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

A Story About A Credit Card, A Tailor, and A Bank

Here at VoiceSage we think about how, when and where people would like to be "interrupted", and what they would want to do "in that particular context". The thing is that every customer company relationship has its own context, and every person will have different psychological thresholds. In a way, how we interrupt our customers is a corollary of how much attention they want to give us. Let me illustrate with a personal experience. I was in Abraham's tailors (Little Ann Street, Dublin) and having had a wonderful buying experience I hand over my credit card. As I've said before I think the "checkout" experience is key to entire purchasing process. Well, the card was stopped and the staff member was advised by the machine to have the customer call the bank in question. "Perhaps" my tailor advised "you have run over the limit?". "Not likely" I replied, "I have acres of space on the card". My tailor handed me the land line, and we called the bank. The bank did not deal with the query and handed me over to credit card services, who in turn told me to go to the local bank branch IN PERSON and sort this out. Wow, I said. I work in this kind of business and this is a horror. "No problem said the Taylor. I will hold the suit for you". I go to the bank THE NEXT DAY and they say, hey no problem with the card. "You were just making an unusual purchase, and they stopped the card" (because I was in Dublin, not Limerick). I think I looked at the bank official for a few minutes waiting to see what they were going to do to ensure that this situation would never happen again. No such luck. First, there is no reason why when an account is triggered as a potential fraud alert that a call cannot be initiated to that person's known mobile, a pin number requested, a transaction legitimised, and a confirmation received, all in the one phone call and with no other need for human interaction. Secondly, an automated call asking for verification could have increased my confidence in my credit card company; Thirdly, I could be a "highly risk averse person" who very much appreciates these kinds of alerts and interrupts.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact