Combating The Decline In Answered Calls
As the number of calls being answered continues to drop, organisations need to be more sophisticated in how they contact people. Simply calling a list of numbers to try and persuade the respondent to open a bank account, say, is unlikely to produce very many results. On the occasions when the agent does get to speak to a human the incentive would need to be very good to attract new customers.
As a result, organisations are starting to utilize the big data generated by social media and identify target prospects using specific social media searches. For example, searching for specific words on facebook such as “new baby grandson” is likely to identify a new grandparent. Sending a text or email to that person suggesting they open a savings account for the new bundle of gurgling joy could be very appealing and hit the mark perfectly.
If the prospective customer were to then visit the website to investigate the suggested offer, they may be tempted to engage in a chat conversation to find out more. Since all the communications are held in the CRM, the agent handling the chat can quickly be made aware of the information that has already been sent and use appropriate messages accordingly such as including the phrase, “Congratulations on your new grandchild”. Immediately the customer will feel the exchange is personal and be more receptive to offers suggested. As the chat conversation progresses the agent can suggest moving it to a voice conversation using WebRTC, which will quickly and simply connect the customer to the same specific agent. This creates a more human interaction and builds a further element of trust. The trail of communication will be logged in the CRM providing an excellent model of case management. It may then be pertinent for all future communications from that customer to be sent to that agent’s personal work queue rather than a general work queue where the customer would need to start a new relationship with another agent.
Having multimedia coupled with the CRM means there is only one place that needs to be accessed to review a customer’s communication journey. Agents can utilise the scripter application to select appropriate emails, chat replies or text messages to send to customers as the occasion dictates. Combine this with having a truly multimedia contact center solution that doesn’t require agents to log in and out of queues of different media channels in order to communicate with customers, and you won’t notice the drop in voice calls being answered.
