Multichannel Marketer’s sister brand LeadsCon had its fall networking event LeadsCon Connect in Chicago in late September. I swung by to learn more about lead generation in the home services, healthcare and insurance industries. Here are a few best practices from industry leaders that retail marketers can apply:
Include your top customer service agents in company roadmaps
When a business is doing any type of product or experience upgrade, it pays dividends to include the company’s best customer service agents in roadmap meetings, said Chris Butler, general manager at DentalPlans.com.
“Your agent is your brand. They are the ones that are talking to your customers,” he said.
Customer service agents are also the employees that know the pain points of the company’s product, Butler said. Many businesses have their customer service agents write down customer feedback in a spreadsheet, and agents can give context to those notes in planning meetings instead of having executives interpret them. Including top-tier agents in product upgrades will ensure a business is including customer feedback.
Optimize call routing to your call centers
In an effort to mitigate rising costs, SunSetter Awnings went to a more IVR-focused approach to call centers. IVR or Interactive Voice Response is the routing of in-bound calls to help consumers answer questions or perform tasks themselves without an agent, or help route the call to an agent that can best help them.
With two call centers, SunSetter Awnings noticed that one call center converted leads 23% higher than the other call center, but it routed only 34% of its calls there, said Shannon Brower, marketing manager at Springs Window Fashions, parent company of SunSetter Awnings.
SunSetter realized that its call center with more live agents converted shoppers better than the IVR-focused center. And while more costly from one perspective, the better business move was for SunSetter to route more shoppers to the agent-focused call center, especially after a TV commercial aired and more potential sales would be coming in.
Marketers should broadcast company values to attract young shoppers
Marketers need to ensure that their message resonates with their target audience. For younger shoppers in 2024, that means highlighting the company’s values, said Roz-Linn Finn, vice president of marketing at U.S. Waterproofing.
Content planning may not have looked like this 10 years ago, but now Gen Z shoppers want to know what brands are doing for humanity, Finn said.
“What does our brand to stand for? We have to push that forward, and say, ‘These are our core values.‘ This allows us to engage people and keep them engaging with the brand,” she said.
Align call center agents performance with company goals
Call center agents should have clear guidelines on how to handle certain customer inquires, and businesses should measure agents’ performance against those particular goals, DentalPlans.com’s Butler said.
For example, if a company wants agents to “save a sale” for a customer who tries to cancel, then a company should not hammer agents so hard on handling times, he said.
In the same vein, if a shopper calls to cancel an order and she does not have the attributes of that business’s typical high life time value customers, then agents should just read the script to let the shopper cancel and move on. That will reduce friction for shoppers and save time for agents.
Set expectations with leadership on how long conversion can take
Sales attribution can be an art for many marketers. But regardless of which model marketers use, they should set expectations with their leadership about how long a conversion will take after an investment, U.S. Waterproofing’s Finn said.
Then, if revenue is not immediately following a TV commercial for higher ticket or more considered purchases, but comes in 45 days later, everyone is on the same page.
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