Many have the perception that a contact centre just answers endless amounts of calls. Those with this perception are very wrong. Customer Contact Centres have many functions and capabilities to support your marketing activities. HOW, you ask? The following blog will clear that up. The shift from the product and price era means that all operations including marketing are geared towards the customer. For now, organisations need to adjust their strategies to meet this goal.
1. Use Customer Support as a Marketing Channel
By combining customer support with your marketing strategy great things can happen as highlighted in the Business.com Blog Post. If providing great customer service puts your in-house team under pressure and takes them away from mandatory daily tasks, it is hugely beneficial to outsource this. Great customer support works wonders for your brand. Furthermore, this drives brand awareness and brand loyalty. Additionally, it creates positive word of mouth and word of mouse. By upping your customer support game it can work wonders for your organisation as a whole. The personalized customer support that a contact centre can offer you, allows you to adjust to this customer-centric era effectively. Excellent customer support encourages your customers to recommend you to a friend. Customers who have positive experiences can be walking billboards for your business.
2. Support your promotional advertising campaign
A contact centre has the capabilities to support your once-off and ongoing promotional campaign. This can compile specific activities to meet your needs including:
- Telephone Product Order Lines – Cross selling and up selling capabilities.
- Direct Mail Campaigns – Informing customers of promotional codes or sales.
- Outbound Telephone Calls – These outbound calls can inform customers of new product/service or simply for re-engagement reasons.
- Bulk Text Message – A fast and cost effective way to contact large volumes of customers.
3. Market Research- Before, during & after a campaign
Any marketer will know that in order for a campaign to be a success market research is vital. While many might argue that market research is only important prior to a campaign beginning, many more benefits can be sought by carrying out 360 degree market research. That is to say, carrying out such research during a campaign can allow you to adjust your campaign according to your customers feedback. Additionally, undertaking such activities will optimize your overall success by being proactive to any negative feedback. However, many in-house marketing departments may not have the man power or capabilities to do this. A contact centre can make this impossible, possible.
4. Carry out an Outbound Campaign on your behalf
Cold calling may not be the most favorable approach for many marketers, a contact centre can assist you in many more outbound pursuits. That is to say, cold calling is still a valuable tool that shouldn’t be over looked. Furthermore, some other outbound activities include direct mail campaigns and bulk SMS Text messaging. Both of which are an extremely cost effective way to further your marketing activities. Direct Mail and Text Message can be indispensable tools when running sales promotions or simply reminding your customers of a sale coming to an end. Just be aware of the new European GDPR regulation.
5. Monitor your Social Media
In order to control your Social Media platforms correctly, they need to be monitored. Overall, this can be deemed as an extremely time consuming activity. Social Media has the capabilities to increase brand awareness and most of all provide your customers with support. Customers now expect two way interactions. It can be said, that the day of like and share is truly gone. Customer’s now want to see how you are helping them with a personalized service.
By outsourcing to a contact centre and having dedicated person(s) to monitor your Social Media, you can truly reap the rewards. Agents can answer your customers general FAQs and respond to negative feedback. Usually, answering negative feedback promptly reflects that you care about your customers. Additionally, from a Public Relations (PR) prospective core brand values can be upheld. In turn, a contact centre can greatly assist your social media efforts for both new campaigns and ongoing customer support. A contact centre can give you real time access to each of your posts analytics. In the long run, you can see a pattern of common problems emerge and fix them appropriately.
6 .Support your Marketing Department
Overall, a Contact Centre can support your in-house team. By providing your marketing department with more support it gives them time to work on new campaigns and further drive sales. Additionally, many of the marketing activities listed above are time consuming and often take your marketing executives away from other important tasks.
Arema Connect currently support many marketing activities, across a wide variety of sectors. Our clients reap the rewards by a great deal of time consuming activities being outsourced to us. Additionally, we keep in close contact with each of our client’s with detailed reporting structures and feedback. For more Contact: info@aremaconnect.com
