While everyone clamors about the power of the Internet, I see the pendulum is swinging back to a new balance between cost and customer service. Certainly my own focus group of one person (me) indicates a level of frustration with Internet-based customer service.
I hate downloading user manuals from the computer.
I hate trolling through that ironically-labeled ‘knowledge base’ only to find questions that don’t fit my questions, much less the answers I need.
Finally, I admit it, I like my hand to be held when I’m putting together my children’s toys the night before their birthday party.
Personalized customer service is coming back, and thank goodness. However, it’s coming back primarily because of higher returns on investment. Loren Stocker of Vanity International, which offers vanity phone numbers like 1-800-BUILD-IT, points out that Hotels.com discovered that booking rates were 26 times higher when booked by phone.
That certainly makes sense in consumer-focused industries like travel, which is why Susan Rutan launched A Passion for Travel, a new franchise of Cruise Planners. Susan knows that travel can be a major investment, so people want their experience to be perfect. They know they can spend hours searching the Internet, or they can trust Susan’s 22 years of experience with American Express Travel. Susan’s biggest challenge is educating clients that they don’t pay her a dime, and that her prices match Internet prices. Yet I’ve never found a travel site that throws in customized gift baskets as a thank you for using their service. Personal touches and customized service are what keeps Susan’s customers coming back.
Vanity 1-800 numbers have additional benefits in customized service. Dwayne King of Veriking reminded me that the key benefit is that it’s free to customers, so they are more likely to contact you and give you the opportunity to interact personally.
It’s also an inexpensive way to track and nurture sales leads. 1-800 numbers cost very little, typically $5-10 per line per month, and can be free. You can also find a unique vanity phone numbers to help customers remember your phone number. At such low prices, you can set up as many lines as you need, even temporarily, to see how many phone calls you receive from different advertising venues which are not otherwise trackable. If you have a new television ad, for example, adding a specific 1-800 number will help you determine precisely how many people called because of that ad.
Finally, the advent of mobile phones has raised caller tracking to a science that’s surpassing most web site analytics. Companies such as VoodooVox charge only $5 per line per month to provide 300 demographic points on all of your callers. These are many richer data points than web demographics, and they are validated by VoodooVox’s three distinct databases. As VoodooVox’s Tom Macguire explained, the demographic data can provide invaluable information such as the language preference, household income and home ownership status of callers. So if 20 percent of calls are from people who are primarily Spanish-speakers, your company can get a leg up on the competition by adding Spanish-speaking representatives.
VoodooVox goes further by allowing you to conduct call tracking by phone lines and even see individual profiles. The individual’s profiles can be shared and cross-references with your standard CRM systems like Salesforce or connected to custom ones. This allows small business to see whether the people they’ve been targeting actually make the phone call to buy, or even whether they are a good lead. For instance, luxury retailers may be actively spending time and effort to lure a particular client; now if he calls, they can determine whether he really has the household income to spend.
With phone tracking, you’re validating the quality of leads by readiness, and you’re reeling the customer in with personalized interaction. That’s value worth calling for.
Meredith Munger is a principal of Munger & Company Marketing (www.meredithmunger.com). Reach her at Meredith@meredithmunger.com.
