Marketers are always looking for the next best thing to set their products and services apart from the competition. Old stand-bys like web advertising, direct mail, email are great – but isn’t that what everyone is doing? What most don’t realize is the value an IVR can bring to your marketing efforts.

As an important access point to customers, the telephone represents a valuable sales channel and an important opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell products and services. Rather than focus strictly on outbound solicitation, marketers are also providing offers and incentives to customers when they call into the call center. This method is particularly appealing as it requires no action by the customer to hear your message; they are a ‘captive audience’.

Organizations that are focused on managing their customer relationships beyond the initial sale are better able to distinguish themselves from their competitors. For the call center, this means extending the value of the customer service function to driving enhanced productivity not only through the reduction of costs, but through driving new revenue opportunities.

Some of those opportunities may include:

• Promotions. Provide targeted, customized promotional messages or special offers to your callers.
• Upgrades and accessories. Communicate, and give the customer the opportunity to purchase, new versions of, or add-ons to, existing products or services, including warranties.
• Gift Cards. Provide access to purchase or redeem gift cards without the need for a live agent.
• Invitations to events. Extend invitations to open houses, special shopping events, or other events hosted by your organization.

To enhance the up-sell or cross-sell process, on-demand IVR applications and call center solutions can be designed to interact dynamically with your in-house customer purchasing data. By reaching into a database, the application can identify customers and their individual purchasing histories, triggering an appropriate offer from the application, customizing and personalizing the call experience.

Customer surveys can be used as part of the call process as a way to poll your customers and can often be administered during hold times. These surveys can be used for a variety of market research initiatives, from general customer satisfaction to evaluation of new products or promotions. This use of an IVR solution serves two purposes: it is a subtle way of reducing the perceived hold times and therefore increasing customer satisfaction. It also provides you with valuable marketing data for your organization.

From store locator services to order status to gift card redemption, an effective IVR solution can automate many standard customer inquiries while at the same time extending the value of your brand – even while you are not there. These solutions can also front-end your call center, helping regulate call length and issue resolution, promoting a positive customer experience.

Typically when introducing Angel.com’s Site Builder toolkit (the WYSIWIG editor used to build all customer voice applications within the Angel.com system) to a prospect, we use the analogy that the Angel.com “Voice Site” is like a website, and the “Voice Pages” that you piece together are like webpages.  I’m a reader of Search Engine Watch and I recently came across this article by Tim Ash titled “Roles vs. Personas vs. Cognitive Styles“.   Being written for a web design/optimization audience it was obviously aimed at explaining the various visitors who may visit a website and how to design/optimize the website for these unique visitors.  What struck me is that most companies put a lot of time, energy and money into building and tweaking the company website to optimize it for the best possible customer experience.  But many companies don’t realize that the other main public face of the company, their phone number, needs the same love and attention and should be given just as much “optimizational care” as their website.

Who calls a company’s toll-free number?  The same people who visit the company’s website!  Let’s take a look at the web visitor “Roles” that Tim outlines:

Roles correspond to specific classes of visitors interacting with your site. They are defined by their relationship to your Web site and call to action. The role breakdown can be basic, or it may need to be slightly more nuanced depending on your circumstances.  Here are some representative examples of possible roles:

• Consumer e-tail company: New visitors (who haven’t visited your site before), returning visitors (who have visited but haven’t bought yet), first-time buyers (trying to complete their first purchase), repeat buyers (who already have their information stored in your system), e-mail list members (who have signed up to hear about future special offers).
• Plumbing supply company: Retail customers (looking to buy an individual replacement part), plumbing contractors (need an array of parts for a specific customer job), wholesale buyers and real estate developers (need large volume price breaks and extended payment terms).
• Dating service: Prospective member (hasn’t signed up yet), new member (has paid but hasn’t set up a complete personal profile), experienced member (has done multiple searches and contacted other members).
• Educational-saving-plan provider: Future recipients (children under age 18), parents of recipients (who typically establish the plan), relatives and friends (who may contribute money to the plan).

If you think about it, each one of these is someone who could/would also call the company phone number.  Just as the website needs to be set up to handle each of these visitors, so does the main phone number of the company.  Whether the main phone number goes directly to an agent, or especially if there is an IVR system in place, designing the phone-based customer experience is critical to the public face/brand of the company.  Let’s look at a couple of these Roles and how the IVR could handle each:

• Consumer e-tail company:
  New Visitors (who haven’t called your company before): This is your chance to establish/re-establish your brand.  We’re going for brand consistency here.  These callers likely have come into contact with your brand before through your website, print ad, tv ad, etc.   If you have a “voice of the brand” for a tv spot, use that same voice in the greeting and prompts of the IVR system.  If you have been trying to project the message “we’re easy to do business with”, don’t send callers through an endless maze of options.  If you’re targeting a young, hip audience, use music and language appropriate to that audience.
  Repeat Buyers (who already have their information stored in your system): This one is a no-brainer and can certainly be one area where a streamlined IVR system can not only increase customer satisfaction, but also affect the company’s bottom line.  Integrate your phone system with your backend database or CRM system.  Your phone system can be set up to recognize the caller ID, and greet the caller by name, then give them automated information quickly such as their order status, last payment or gift card balance.  Then give them other options after you’ve already given them the info they’re likely seeking.  This makes the customer’s interaction quick, easy and pleasing, and takes some of the burden off your agents.
• Plumbing supply company:
  Plumbing Contractors or Wholesale Buyers: Completely different audience than a mainstream consumer brand.  These callers know you and have used you many times before.  Don’t set up a phone system that is generic — the IVR should cater to these established customers and make them want to keep coming back.  Personalize the flow by recognizing their repeat caller ID.  Keep the greeting brief since these callers typically know exactly what they need and they want it fast.  Give them touchtone options that they can memorize to get where they need to go within the IVR.  Allow for “barge-in” so they don’t have to listen to the entire prompt before selecting the option.  Again, keeping these customers happy can be crucial to their ongoing business with you.
• Educational-savings-plan provider:
  Relatives and friends (who may contribute money to the savings plan): Just like anyone can pay/donate money online, so can they over the phone.  An IVR for something like this should be instilled with the same “feel-goodness” that you find in the pictures of happy children that would likely be placed on a website for an educational savings plan.  Record the greeting and prompts with a warm, feel-good voice talent.  Use happy language throughout, and language that lets the caller know that this transaction is secure.  Make the donation process of putting in credit card information quick and painless; and, after the donation process is done, reinforce the security message and automate the process of getting a receipt to the caller.  A pleasant caller experience leads to more donations, which makes everyone happy.

As you can see, these descriptions of what you can do with the IVR systems of various companies has a common theme of “make things better for the caller and good things happen.”   Well, the mantra of Angel.com is “putting the caller first”, but doesn’t it just make sense?  A lot of time and energy is put into streamlining the web process.  Making information easier to find on a website makes the people looking for it happy.  Streamlining a form on a website landing page typically means more people will fill it out, which makes businesses happy.

The company website is not the only public face of the company.  In fact, the phone is often the biggest touch point between business and customer.  Everyone should think of their company phone number like their company website.  Make the phone interaction better and you make your callers and customers happy.  Happy customers makes businesses happy.

Phone-based marketing.  What does that mean?  Well, it used to mean a bunch of call center reps calling everyone and their brother at dinner time to pitch them for some company.  Then we took the reps out of the equation and sent blast automated phone calls (still at dinner) with a company pitch.  Fast forward a couple of years in technology, and the expanded use of cell phones, and there are a plethora of ways to market to people through the phone.  I came across a couple of articles yesterday that spoke directly to how marketers are use various techniques, all centered around the phone. 

First I came across this article which describes NIKE’s use of toll-free numbers in promotions of all kinds — product info request lines, and numbers that let you “listen in” on sports superstars as they hype NIKE products.  This is a great example of pull marketing in which NIKE advertises and broadcasts these phone numbers, and customers (and potential customers) call the number to be fed the NIKE product schpiel.  Simple yet effective use of IVR.  And if they’re doing it right, they incorporate an IVR Store Locator so consumers can immediately find the closest NIKE store and go buy the shoes or apparel when the message is hot.

Next, as a regular reader of Larry Chase’s Web Digest for Marketers, I received his latest weekly newsletter, which listed a couple of new marketing techniques centered around the mobile phone (#1 in his 12 trends.)  He gives the example of the latest push marketing couponing techique being used by Subway (sandwich company) which employs SMS messaging.  Customers register online (or send an SMS from their cell) for Subway coupons, then Subway can “push” coupons (or any other branding I guess) their way at any time. So far it has proved to be VERY successful in the couple of cities in which they’ve rolled it out.

In this same Digest, Larry Chase touches on QR Codes which are being used successfully in Japan right now.  Companies place QR codes (souped up barcodes) on ads, posters in public transit areas, etc., then consumers take a cell phone picture of the code.  The software installed on the phone recognizes the code and displays various info (movie showtimes, product info) on the phone for the consumer. 

All of these are great examples of phone-based marketing.  Without cell phones, none of these work the way they should (or work at all.)  But, if you’re a marketer, which one is the best?  Which one are you going to use?

How about taking pieces from ALL of them?  The optimal, souped up, mobile marketing platform that I see is as follows:

1. Advertise a toll-free phone number with a call-to-action of getting coupons
2. Have consumers call the phone number from their cell when they see the ad, when it’s freshest in their minds
3. An IVR system gives a quick branding pitch then asks the caller to “opt-in” to all future marketing campaigns from your company
4. The IVR system then immediately gives them their first “coupon” or offer
5. The IVR then asks them if they would like to find the closest store to them and sends them to an IVR store locator
6. The system can also perform an automated name and address capture for future direct mail campaigns
7. Once the caller is opted-in with their cell, you can push SMS coupons or other QR-code-like information to their cells at any time

What’s better than that!?  Let me know what you think… post a comment, and thanks for reading!

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I just read a nice post on the Marketing Productivity Blog on a topic I/we’ve known for quite some time, but probably never put into words.  To summarize, here’s a snippet from that post…

Fact is, an IVR is a technical interface to humans, just like a web site is.  And just like many web sites, it was probably built and programmed by some engineers without a lot of direction from Marketing or Customer Service.  There’s really no reason at all why the folks optimizing the web site should not also optimize the phone system too - especially if they do a good job with the web site! 

All of this is related to VUI Design, as is the topic of a lot of the posts on this blog.  The concept seems pretty simple… apply to the phone all the best practices discovered in the countless web usability studies done over the past 15 years. (As an aside, here’s a great resource for web usability studies.)

But wait… wasn’t the phone around BEFORE the web?  Why aren’t we using all of the best practice studies done on phone usability?  When you find a phone usability study that is worthwhile before even 10 years ago, let me know.  Fact is, a phone was a phone back then, and IVR or any kind of automation was a thing for massive companies, and all built by the Operations team.  Once the web hit, people kind of abandoned the phone for quite some time.  In recent years, companies have come to realize that the phone is still a MAJOR touch point for their customers; additionally, phone technologies really took off and companies had more options with what to do with it to make it more than just a two-cans-and-a-string connection between two people.

So, companies picked up right where they’d left off 10 years ago with their phone, and the Operations team put together very similar phone systems that were seen 10 years prior.  Not good… enter poor usability, poor customer satisfaction, and rebellion against the now widespread use of phone automation.

This doesn’t mean we should abandon the phone again.  We should do what we did with the web… and make it BETTER and more USABLE.  The first websites out there, and the first web ordering systems were pretty awful.  Customers didn’t like them and didn’t trust them.  Did companies abandon the web?  Hardly.  They made it better… and then better… and then better still… until their customers actually preferred it over going to a store. 

Who made the web better?  Sure, Operations teams all over the country had a hand in it… Marketers certainly don’t understand all the coding behind making a web order system work.  But Marketers sure understand what their customers like.  And even more, CUSTOMERS understand what customers like. 

So take a tip from those who have come and studied before… enlist the help of your Marketing team in developing language and call flow for your IVR system.  After all, Marketers are typically pretty good with the spoken word, but they have a good sense of what the most important issues to your callers may be based on the analytics they see from the website.

And… don’t forget to use your customers as one of the best resources for how to design your phone system.  Done right, you can change the tune of the customers who call your IVR system, just like was done with the web over the years!

An article last week from RCR Wireless News reviewed a promotion from “IceBreakers” candy, where, after checking online to see if you’re a winner, calls your mobile phone and connects you to an IVR that lets you record a Karaoke that can be used as a ringtone. Here’s a snippet from from the article that explains how the IVR portion of the process works:

Once you select a song that you want to record and you’re ready to sing, the service dials up your handset and an IVR takes over (you still need your computer screen to have the lyrics at hand). You go through a brief timing exercise to account for latency, which consists of counting to eight along with the IVR, and get a few tips before you start (such as, make sure you have good reception). Then it’s three beeps, the music starts, and it’s time to use that handset as a microphone, and “give it all you’ve got!” as the perky IVR voice encourages you to do.

This proves that IVR can be fun. It’s also another interesting application of click-to-call.

I just got a news alert with this story in it and had to blog right away.  An Irish Internet and phone company (Perlico) just put out a press release titled “Ireland’s most successful ever viral marketing campaign?“  Their “viral marketing campaign” stems from a little fun they decided to have with their IVR system.  Essentially, you call their main phone number, their IVR system picks up and says something to the effect of “Press 1 if you would like to sign up for our service, Press 2 if you’re an existing customer, and Press 3 if you would like to hear a duck quack.”  If you press 3, you hear a duck quack, and then the IVR voice comes back on and says “Thank you for calling Perlico.”  To really grasp this, you have to listen to this radio segment in which they test it out.

Think this sounds ridiculous?  Think again.  This is what the Perlico COO had to say about the campaign…

“Since this launch, based on the volumes of calls, the campaign has been a phenomenal success.  In just over 3 days we have received over 70,000 calls and added a significant number of new customers as a result which make this one of the most successful viral campaigns in Ireland.  Perlico is committed to bringing our service and savings message to as many people as possible so look out for more antics from the duck in the near future.”

Companies always put a lot of emphasis on driving prospects to the company website.  This is a great example of driving people to the phone… for B2B, the phone is a much better channel for sales.  The only issue I see with Perlico’s IVR is that they should give the option to transfer to a sales rep after listening to the duck quack.  Give people something funny, create good will, and you’ve already made the job of selling them a lot easier!

One more interesting side note to this… Perlico also publishes their Customer Service statistics daily, giving customers stats such as average wait time, # of calls answered in under 30 seconds and initial call resolution stats.  It’s not every day you see a big company putting themselves out there like that!

I came across this today, and being in marketing, this is REALLY cool to me.  Here’s a great example of new and old medias coming together to create a great marketing campaign.  General Motors/Opel (European car maker) was releasing a new car at the end of last year and wanted to create some viral buzz about their now Astra TwinTop convertible.  They thought about an email campain, they thought about a viral video campaign, they thought about an IVR-based marketing campaign… then decided to combine all of these into one mega campaign.  Read the full details here >>

In a nutshell, they emailed their database of 80,000 customers to give them the option to opt in to a new and exciting promotion they were running.  Customers were asked to provide a few key pieces of information in their response, including their cell phone or desk phone number.  Within a few minutes of responding to that opt in email, the customer was sent another email with a link to a 1-minute funny video related to the new convertible.  And while watching the video, a phone call was placed to their number and the voice of the main character from the video started talking to them and asking them questions, individualized with their name, over the phone!  If the customer didn’t pick up the phone, a similar message was left for them.

Combine this with the viral effect of asking that customer to forward the email along to friends, complete with friends’ email addresses, names and phone numbers, and Opel’s response to the campaign was phenomenal.  They placed 454,000 outbound marketing calls from the video, had more than 2 million web visitors, and added more than 12,000 new names to their marketing database.

What a new and unique use of IVR in marketing, that delighted both customers and Opel with the response.  If you think about it, there are hundreds of ways to use IVR in marketing — that don’t involve interrupting dinner with telemarketing calls!  This is just one more unique use of IVR technology!

Tracking marketing spend is always an issue. Companies spend money on many different campaigns to market their product(s) and struggle to report on the ROI of these marketing campaigns. As a marketing professional at a B2B company, I face the ongoing struggle to figure out the best way of tracking the leads that come in through our marketing campaigns. The web allows us to easily get our message out, and different web campaigns come with built-in tracking. But what about the most common connection you have with your leads/prospects — the phone. How do you track different web marketing campaigns through the phone?

Sure, you can beg your sales reps to ask each caller where they heard about your company, and you can hope that the caller actually remembers where they found you — neither of these has ever worked well for me. Instead, you can do what we at Angel.com have recently taken to doing. With our IVR and Salesforce.com integration we can now get much more exact tracking of where our phone leads came from and automatically store it directly in our CRM system.

Try this… for each marketing campaign you run, put a different phone number on the marketing piece. When people dial that specific number, you’ll know which campaign they came from. The call information, including “dialed number” will be populated directly into your Salesforce.com account so you can generate reports on these calls. Click on the screenshot at right for a larger image… for each call that comes into your sales department you can get call stats such as time of call, caller ID, hold time, talk time, rep the call was routed to, and most importantly for me, dialed number.

The call with the red box around it was one that I know came from one of our marketing campaigns — I can tell by the dialed number. From here I can run reports on each of the numbers to see which one is drawing the most calls. This call, for example, gives further ROI on our web advertising campaign on Google. Before implementing this, we only knew how many people clicked and filled out a web form. Now we know how many prospects forego the web form and call a sales rep instead. I can then run the caller ID against Leads, Opportunities and Accounts in Salesforce.com.

To take this even a step farther, I can actually automatically convert these calls into actual Leads in Salesforce.com by using one of our packaged integrations called LeadByFone, which does a reverse lookup on caller ID and inputs the name and address information from that reverse lookup as a new Lead in Salesforce.com. I’ll cover that in my next post.

Using your IVR application to track marketing campaigns has a definitive effect on the ROI of those campaigns. Don’t miss out on knowing where your phone leads are coming from.

Have you ever experienced this? You receive a phone call from your car dealer to let you know that the part you ordered has arrived and ask you about scheduling a service time to have it installed. Or your favorite retailer calls you on your birthday to wish you a happy birthday and invite to visit the store and pick up your free gift.

These are two examples of how companies can implement creative ways to enhance customer relationship and build customer loyalty. Using proactive outbound dialing is becoming a new cost effective source of revenue collection for multiple enterprises.

In a recent Speech Technology magazine article, Bob King, Fixed Operation Director of Clarkston Chrysler Jeep in Clarkston, Michigan, said that, “… after implementing an automated system with speech recognition that initiates outbound calls to remind customers that it is the time for the car first oil change the company has seen a 15 percent increase in the number of oil changes, subsequently reinforcing customer loyalty.”

A recent Gartner study revealed that companies are able to eliminate hundreds of inbound calls arriving at the busiest peak hours, which make the customer wait from two to five minutes, by replacing these calls with outbound calls of about 30 seconds in length to inform you that your auto part has arrived or to remind you to pick up your birthday gift or any other application. The result may reach a $4 to $5 cost saving per call and the ability to enable companies to transform their business and become more agile, more efficient and more competitive.

However, with all the advantages of speech recognition and outbound calls, speech providers should not pitch the customer from the perspective that it is all about cost reduction and revenue generation – speech automation shouldn’t be designed to replace live agents. A good speech application should be set up to handle proactive calls and to be as interactive as a live agent, while always keeping the option of being transferred to a live agent if needed.