I spent billions on marketing for this?

Your most valuable assets are your customers, so you’ve probably spent big bucks on a CRM system that helps you increase repeat business. But what about calls from people who have never spoken to you before? Do you really know who’s on the other end of that inbound call? Are you even prepared to handle that unknown caller appropriately?

A surprising number of world-class companies aren’t.

Case in point: One Thursday night while watching 30 Rock on NBC, one of the leading telecom providers ran an ad touting a new wireless phone with an 800 number to call. Since an ad in that primetime slot probably runs in the $200K-$300K range, I was feeling mischievous and wanted to test how well one of the world’s best known brands converts customers through this pricey inbound marketing effort.

The first call was quickly answered, but I was just as quickly bumped out to a busy signal. Hmmm … maybe viewer response to the ad triggered a momentary spike in inbound calls, I figured. But a second attempt was unsuccessful as well. The company never found out who I was, where I lived and whether I was a new prospect or longtime customer. So the next day I fired off an email to the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, politely letting him know that his call handling business fell down on the job.

On the following Monday, the company’s Head of US Telesales calls me, not at all happy with my contact with her marketing counterpart. The CMO took her out to the woodshed, saying “We spent $1.2 billion on marketing last year and we can’t get anyone to answer the phone?” I wasn’t expecting an apology and I didn’t get one as she vented her anger.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that unanswered calls were only part of her problem. The company didn’t have a closed loop for acquiring customers who said they were interested in their service. How many other qualified leads of people who did get through were falling through the cracks, simply because the reps didn’t find out who was on the other end of phone before the call ended? If someone called to ask about the phone and for whatever reason didn’t sign up, would the company have any way of following up on the warm lead? I never got a follow-up call or a mailer.

I wanted to explain to her what her customer service agents already know: that when prospects call you for the first time, you’re flying blind. Even big companies like hers have yet to grasp that their best asset in a transaction is knowing the consumer they’re dealing with ― starting with phone number, name and address so they can keep the dialog going.

If you fail to have at your fingertips a caller's contact information, then you're throwing your marketing investments out the window. For all the millions spent to make the phone ring, don't you want to know who's calling?

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Paul McConville

Director of Consumer-Facing Services for TARGUSinfo, a marketing services company in the Virginia suburbs of DC.

You can reach me at paulmcconville at TARGUSinfo dot com.
http://www.TARGUSinfo.com/marketing

Comments

[Edgar Valdmanis]

Unfortunately, this is an ongoing theme.
I was in a kind of parallel situation some months ago. I received poor service, and complained back to the company about their lack of flexibility. The response said that the customer service rep had acted correctly since they were not permitted to be flexible! Astonishing. What these companies don't see is that they loose potential ambassadors as well.

[Ron Hayes]

I found this post disturbing - not because of the subject matter but because the called a potential customer and chewed you out. That is so incredibly stupid. Here was a perfect opportunity to find out valuable information for improving their process and instead, she tells a potential customer off. Sheer stupidity and lack of any business sense.

[Kelley Robertson]

Great post Paul. A friend of mine experienced a similar situation. He was contacted by a call center rep to buy a membership and the person who called him was obviously not suited for the job. My friend contacted the company and was told in no uncertain terms that their call center was doing just fine. Too bad large companies can't put aside their ego--it would be amazing what results they could achieve.