Client: Regional provider of consumer Cable TV, Phone, and Internet services
Situation: Client maintained an in-house call center to service inbound sales calls triggered by a variety of promotion media. Client call center agents interacted with a billing and provisioning system during the inbound call, but had no means to capture information specific to each inbound caller or call situation. As a result, sales could only be reported for specific time periods, but not for specific market segments. In addition, there was no reporting available to show the reasons that callers were not purchasing. Affinitas was asked to field a portion of Client’s inbound sales calls and to provide specific reporting details while also maintaining sales performance levels.
Solution:
- Affinitas selected a team of agents and supervisors that were experienced in Client’s industry.
- Affinitas requested a copy of Client’s customer database, which was loaded onto a secure server for agents to access during inbound calls. Affinitas also requested a copy of each direct mail promotion file used over the last 60 days, as well as any future mail files, and loaded those onto the server. Affinitas also overlaid demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and market segmentation data onto these records.
- Affinitas agents were thus able to quickly match inbound callers to the Client database via a match to their phone number or address. For customers, the customer profile populates the agent screen to drive relevant conversations and/or targeted product offers. For customers and non-customer callers, the demographic data overlay provides a narrative description of each caller for inbound agents with advance information regarding the mindset of the customer with whom they are about to speak. Affinitas agents then augment this database with additional demographic or personal data points that surface during phone interactions, as well as names and addresses of new callers who do not match the database.
- Affinitas also increased the range of call disposition categories well beyond the existing standard Client categories to capture additional call driver and call results data, thereby giving the Client more actionable information from call sessions.
Results:
- Affinitas agents felt a distinct advantage when speaking to callers since they knew something about each caller in advance of the conversation. Agents were able to tailor offers, features, and benefits to the specific needs of each caller based on the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data available to them.
- Although Affinitas sales performance experienced a gradual ramp-up, Affinitas agents exceeded Client expectations during each of the first four weeks of call activity, and then consistently met or exceeded Client goals along the ramp-up path. Within 6 months of program launch, Affinitas agents consistently matched or exceeded the performance of their Client call center agent counterparts.
- Call disposition data provided specific caller feedback and marketing intelligence that was used to drive future marketing tactics. For example, if a significant percentage of callers said that the competition’s service was better, future direct mail efforts targeted that competitor and expressed Client features and benefits as being superior.
- Caller records were sorted by certain disposition/refusal categories, then output and queued for outbound sales follow-up calling. For example, callers who “wanted to think about the current offer” were called back in five business days with a closer offer to achieve the sale. Callers who felt that the price was too high were called back with a different offer with a higher perceived value, or a free month of premium channel service.
- Affinitas continues to service a significant portion of this Client’s inbound sales calls today.
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