The Homa Files

TakeAway: Many consumers have effectively become unreachable to marketers.

Choosing not to receive email, direct mail or phone calls, businesses are looking for ways to connect with these customers.

Toward this end, many companies are re-orienting customer service call centers to do sales pitches.

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Excerpted from Advertising Age, “Why Marketers are Turning Call Centers into Profit Centers,” by Michael Bush, December 13, 2010

Next time you’re on the line with a call center complaining about a product not working properly, don’t be surprised if you’re not rushed off the phone in record speed. The interactions between consumers and call center reps are evolving from hurried griping sessions to extended sales pitches and consultation meetings.

In fact, more and more marketers are looking to turn their call centers into revenue generating centers, according to a new study by Portrait Software, a provider of customer interaction optimization software. A number of factors are driving this shift but none more significant than the challenge of reaching consumers when a growing number of them are opting out of direct mail and email and opting into do-not-call lists. The study shows that 69% of large business-to-consumer marketers view their call centers as “business critical revenue generators.”

Jeff Nicholson, VP of product marketing at Portrait Software, said … “If you take a deep look into the existing customer bases of many marketers one of the largest segments they have are the unreachables,” …

“These customers have opted out of email, unsubscribed or added their name to a do-not-call list. Considering what that does to the potential for increasing the customer lifetime value and the potential to reach out and retain customers it’s dramatic. But when you have people calling into your call centers, in some cases this can be your only opportunity to service that customer, cross-sell them or get them to un-opt out.” …

Edit by DMG

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Full Article
http://adage.com/article?article_id=147618

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This entry was posted on December 16, 2010 at 5:53 am and is filed under Mktg - Customer Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.