Ensuring the quality of sales leads and acting on them as they come in is paramount to a successful marketing campaign, but many companies are still simply feeding these customer requests into their CRM systems to be actioned as and when possible, according to Richard McCrossan, strategic business director for Genesys, who explains why companies need 'optimal responder' programmes to drive appropriate responders to encourage sales, and why the contact centre holds vital customer information to help make that work.
A sale can come from anywhere, but the more information you have on a customer or prospect, the easier it will be to determine how high a priority he or she should be.
There are many responder programmes you can use to establish priorities, and one of the most successful ones is RFM analysis which uses historic data to assess Recency, Frequency and Monetary value of the customer or prospect. This produces a score that determines the likelihood of the person making a purchase, and allows you to decide the correct action to take with that customer.
There are many factors to consider when it comes to temperature-checking your leads but while you should always prioritise your leads, it is often critical data held in the contact centre that will enable you to 'raise the temperature' and personalise your engagement. There are three things to remember when it comes to marketing leads:
"I have seen occasions where someone has just purchased a particular car only to be sent a mailer from the same company about purchasing the same car but with a better deal," said McCrossan. "No matter how 'hot' your lead is (in this case having visited the car showroom that day), if you don't consolidate data across both marketing and customer service, this will only lead to frustrated customers."
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