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If you’re running the type of business where a customer wants to speak with someone before making a purchase, recent headlines most likely have you smiling: phone calls are in the forecast, everywhere. A multitude of studies, reports, and reviews show that the volume of phone calls to businesses is growing at an accelerating pace, fueled by a culture of immediate fulfillment, and the one superstar rising trend that’s surfacing in everyone’s lexicon: mobile.
Though the shift to phone calls (as well as texts and chat) is certainly promising, it underscores the importance of focusing on relevant leads as well as attributing conversions. Think about it: if the volume of phone calls to your contact center suddenly grew by 10x, would you want to zero in on the most successful calls and try to emulate them by knowing their source? Chances are, you wouldn’t simply want to do it – you’d feel compelled to succeed at it.
And the secret to that success lies in collaborating with your marketing department.
Collaboration with your marketing team can help you drive more quality leads to your contact center as well as help you get credit for sales you close.
How does that happen? Allow us to illustrate with a semi-fictional story.
Meet Chris, a married father of two in his mid-40s looking to close on a new home in a few weeks. He has a credit score of 650 and is interested in finding the best mortgage with the best terms.
Like the vast majority of consumers in the 21st century, Chris begins his search for mortgages on Google. He sees an ad from “Top First Bank” and clicks it. He’s browsing the page and is agreeable with the terms offered. However, he’s not sure that he’ll qualify. As he’s scrolling through the page, a popup window appears, encouraging him to call Top First Bank, displaying the phone number in big bold font.
Chris picks up his phone and dials the number. A greeting welcomes him:
“Thank you for calling Top First Bank! For English, press 1. Para Espanol, oprima dos”. He presses 1.
Next, Chris hears:
“Thank you for calling Top First Bank! Current customers – now you can get double points with the all-new TF Credit Card. Ask your banker for details!”
After a brief pause, the greeting continues:
“If you’re a current customer, please enter your account number followed by hash. If you’re not a customer, please press 8.”
Starting to lose his patience, Chris presses 8, then hears: “For bank accounts, please press 1. For credit cards, please press 2. For loans, please press 3. For all other products, please press 4.”
Tired, but nevertheless interested, Chris presses 3 and is put on hold. He waits a few minutes then finally connects with an agent. The agent sets out telling Chris about several home equity credit line offers. Chris explains that he is seeking a mortgage and would like to know if his credit score qualifies.
After asking Chris for his zipcode, the agent explains that she needs to check with her supervisor for the answer and asks for permission to place Chris “on a brief hold”. At this point, Chris gives up and hangs up the phone. It’s late and his 3-year-old wants to play before going to sleep. A week later, Chris and his wife walk in to the nearest branch of a competing bank and sign a mortgage.
What went wrong here? The marketing team did an excellent job of reaching Chris at the right time – when he was searching for mortgages – and getting him to act on his interest by encouraging him to call. However, there was no coordination between the marketing department and the contact center, which led to three failures.
When Chris called, he had to completely re-identify himself to the contact center, choosing a language, geographic region, and product of interest. So by the time Chris got around to asking the question he called for in the first place, he was exhausted and wouldn’t tolerate any further delays.
Marketing had no idea about Chris’ frustrating experience at the contact center. If marketing knew, the online advertising team could target Chris with online ads encouraging him to call back, much the same way that Amazon chases us around with online ads featuring products that we viewed but didn’t buy.
If Chris would eventually call back and sign up for the mortgage, the contact center would have no way of proving to marketing that it serves an important purpose in helping to convert marketing dollars to actual revenue.
The bottom line: when there is no coordination between marketing departments and contact centers, inbound leads fail to materialize. A close collaboration between the contact center and the marketing department would have won over Chris and countless others like him.
Outleads has pioneered the solution to this problem. Join us later this month on the Genesys AppFoundry webinar to learn how you can connect your contact center to your online advertising platform – and reach new heights of excellence.
This blog was co-authored by Dorin Rosenshine. Dorin is the founder & CEO of Outleads, a Genesys partner with technology that enables brands to adjust online advertising and content based on offline data.
