Customer relationship management is not only about making sure you provide an excellent service to your customers when they contact your organisation. It is also about understanding how to use new or different channels to proactively contact your customers to improve relationships, cross- or up-sell services and gather feedback.
Outbound, proactive contact can also decrease your inbound contact.
Alison Wright, Columnist, ITWeb
Taking a different approach to your business could mean challenging your current business processes and channels to see if there is a smarter way to do business. Instead of sending a sales team into the market to find prospects, why not qualify your prospects over a more cost-effective channel, and let the sales reps focus on winning business from qualified prospects?
Case study
Take Wall`s Direct for example, an interesting case study in which a business successfully defended its market share using an outbound call centre. Ice-cream manufacturer Wall`s, known to South Africans as Ola, had achieved and maintained its 70% market share by dominating the UK retail outlets. The company offered free refrigeration units to its retailers based on the condition that they only stocked Wall`s products in the fridge.
The UK Mergers and Monopolies declared its dedicated distribution channel anti-competitive. This spurred Wall`s into action with a customer management initiative that consisted of a 120-seat call centre to manage the relationship with 60 000 retailers.
The premise behind the establishment of Wall`s Direct was to offer a next day ice-cream delivery service to retailers, no matter how small the order or how great the distance.
The target was to contact each of Wall`s 60 000 customers at least once each week in order to encourage ice-cream sales and address seasonal peaks and troughs.
Wall`s Direct operates 24x7x365, offers a next day delivery on orders placed before 7pm and has achieved a 99% delivery rate. The three-day Met Office weather forecast is used to help predict demand. In addition to the call centre, the team includes a 100-strong sales force team out on the road.
The call centre made three million retailer contacts in the first year, with a capacity to handle 25 000 calls a day.
As an example of changing a business model, this may seem extreme, but it enabled Wall`s to defend its market share. Because the expected decline in market share did not materialise, Wall`s is again under scrutiny by the UK Mergers and Monopolies Commission for what is essentially a job very well done.
Wall`s is rather a dramatic example of changing a business model from reactive order-taking to proactive selling. However, the lessons learnt from this can apply to any business.
Proactive contact
Customers appreciate being acknowledged and valued, and using new channels of interaction like the telephone and e-mail, it is cost-effective to proactively contact customers. Welcome calls when the customer joins your service will establish a perception of good customer service from the outset of the relationship. Courtesy calls to close a support request or a complaint will ensure that a customer feels valued.
A phone call or e-mail to ask customers if they are happy with your service will do two things: create goodwill and gather direct feedback from your customers about your service. This can, and should, feed back into your service enhancements.
Outbound, proactive contact can also decrease your inbound contact. Adding one frequently asked question to the end of a support call can decrease the likelihood of that person calling or mailing in to ask the same question. And it shows that you know what your customers are asking and are willing to put effort into reducing their hassle factor.
Try thinking differently about your customer service. You will find that there are many opportunities to add value by proactively contacting your customers.
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