As a marketing professional or business owner it is easy to get overwhelmed with efforts to attract new leads. Every cold call, paid ad and social media post is crafted to push a sale of your product or service. Whilst outbound marketing on digital channels is of course important, inbound marketing- and in particular, inbound call marketing provides an often-wasted opportunity to target your most engaged customers with top quality service, leading to not only the one sale, but a continued relationship with you and your brand. The voice on the other end of the phone becomes a proxy for the company itself, able to influence customer behaviours and attitudes.
Why is an audit of your ICM strategy important?
If a customer is calling your business, they are contacting you with intent. Whether it be to find out more about a product or service, overcome an issue, or to make a purchase, they want to talk to a representative that can give them the assistance that they need. 2018 research states that calls drive 10 times more purchases than clicks, and this presents an opportunity for your business- one that many companies are missing.
Zendesk 2020 CX trends study found that fast response times are customer’s top priority. The voice channel often allows for the clearest communication of information, in a real time experience. Wait times become a thorn in the side of companies who receive a high volume of inbound calls, but we will get to that.
Inbound calls are often the most convenient channel for a customer to contact your business as an increasing percentage of online searches and web traffic comes from mobile devices. With simple one-click to call options, it is easier than ever to communicate with brands. It would be a failure on the part of the business to not leverage these changing behaviours to their benefit.
Inbound Call Marketing Pain Points & Best Practice
So how best to optimise the voice channel and ensure that all inbound call opportunities are maximized before the customer even picks up their phone?
Training customer service and sales agents is an important part of the process, but oftentimes callers are subjected to long wait periods and endless bouncing to different departments to get the service they require. These things can leave a bad taste in a customer’s mouth, putting them on the offensive when the correct agent does answer the phone.
Customer points of pain when calling a business can be;
- Tedious and excessive wait times
- Customer does not receive adequate information
- Being bounced around to multiple departments or staff, causing the customer to have to repeat themselves (70% of customers expect businesses to collaborate on their behalf).
In order to ease these points of pain, creative solutions are available- so how can you know what is right for your business?
Examine your business goals. Would you like to improve the customer’s overall experience with your company? Upsell a new service? Inform your customers on opening hours over the holiday season? Or simply gain an understanding of how many customers are put on hold by your business, and how long for?
Methods to improve CX:
IVR:
An IVR (Interactive Voice Response) or Auto-Attendant is the first on hold message a customer will hear when they call your business. It can perform as a simple welcome message, or function to help guide the caller’s inquiry to your business’s desired department or employee.
Some great examples of effective use of IVR are the creation of an After Hours message- an additional courtesy for your customers, and if your business operates nationally, a professional message advising of public holidays and time differences in your area is courteous and will retain customers. Add to your customer experience, and engage with your audience on a personal level.
Call back:
Perhaps you have a manageable call volume, but each customer interaction requires a lengthier period of engagement- such as technical support.
Give your waiting callers the ability to leave their number to request a call back, should the hold time exceed a specified length. Callers can do this directly through their phone for convenience.
Jukebox:
What is your ideal customer’s favourite genre of music? How long is a piece of string? Your callers are individuals with different needs, likes, and dislikes, and what creates a positive customer experience differs across the board.
Enter Jukebox; a unique, self-service-based solution developed by Captivate Connect that can be adapted to meet the needs of contact centres.
In its purest form, it allows waiting callers to self-select a channel of their preferred music genre while they wait. These channels have options too! Set it up to have your promotions voiced over, work side by side with other services, or be left to run as pure music.
Your customer is King, so improve their waiting experience with an interactive system to increase brand value, and improve customer satisfaction.
Inform & Acknowledge:
Messages on hold are custom messages about your business – scripted and produced at our in-house recording studio. Your messages on hold are golden opportunities to strengthen brand awareness, and effectively communicate key information to your callers.
Every script is created in collaboration with you to align with your business’s marketing strategy. On hold messages for your business are delivered as unique experiences to encourage caller engagement, and improve the overall customer experience.
Traditional on hold messaging is boring, repetitive, and never changing. Continual stale elevator music with a few “we appreciate your call’s” thrown in for good measure is the standard in the industry. This has been done before, and customers have had enough.
Rather than allow your customers to waste their time waiting, delight them with interactive features and exclusive service offerings that they have never seen before. Keep your callers engaged from the second they put their phone to their ear.
Data Reporting:
In the digital age, Data is King, and without it businesses are unable to make informed decisions or develop strategies for change. The on hold industry is largely stagnant, and optimisation of the touchpoint is necessary for the continued growth of an organisation.
Captivate Connect’s reporting features offer valuable insight into your phone channel’s strengths and weaknesses. Know how long callers are waiting for, track how many callers were placed on hold, and monitor how long your most patient caller waited with Captivate Connect data analytics for your phone system.
Companies must do more with their inbound call marketing- or valuable clients will be lost. Intent equals engagement- For optimisation of your voice channel, call Captivate Connect on 08 9368 7500 or send us a contact form.
