If you Google ‘Customer in Control’ you are faced with a lengthy list of articles describing how in the digital age, the customer is firmly in control of each stage of their purchase journey, with a wealth of choice and information at their fingertips. This view of the buyer in control has become accepted amongst sellers. Increasingly focused on nurturing inbound leads through their digital programs, they deliver a constant flow of content and information, until the buyer is ‘ready’ to engage with a sales rep – typically, ‘60 percent’ through the process, according to commonly quoted statistics.
It might, therefore, come as a shock to the system, to learn that the customer feels far from in control, and in fact, quite the opposite.
Research by CEB amongst 600 B2B buyers tells a different story. Buyers are ‘overwhelmed and often more paralysed than empowered’. A recent study by IBM paints a similar picture, describing how most people are disappointed with digital brand experiences – in fact, 70% aren’t impressed with ‘The Experience Revolution’.
Too much information and too many options make customers feel less in control
The CEB Research throws light on why the B2B buying process, in particular, might be more rather than less painful, despite the wealth of information and choices available to today’s buyer.
- The buying group is more complex and diverse; according to CEB, the average is now 6.8 people strong, versus 5.4 two years ago.
- The buying process is more protracted - it takes longer to evaluate the wealth of information available and get buy-in from a bigger group of decision makers.
- Given the amount of choice, customers feel less secure in the decisions they make and, as a result, are more likely to feel post-purchase remorse.
- Sales reps may compound the issue, with 68% believing that more information helps customers make better decisions.
Easing the route to purchase - the role of the sales rep
Interestingly, The CEB research shows that the majority (86%) of sales professionals agree that ‘helping the customer consider all options and alternatives is important’. However, is presenting the customer with ‘all options’ the same as easing the route to purchase? Shouldn’t suppliers be aiming to offer the customer ‘the right option’ instead of simply demonstrating ‘all available’ options?
Equally, an effective sales rep should make the customer feel secure, guiding them through the purchase process, helping them navigate the overwhelming choice of options to find the product or service that is the ‘right fit’.
Understanding your customer and finding the right fit
In order to guide the customer to the right solution, both sales and marketing need to understand the customer’s needs, their definition of success, and the barriers they face. They need a deep understanding of the buying group; who is involved, what challenges do they face and what is the purchasing motivation for each buying team member? Only with this level of insight, can they communicate a relevant message and a proposition tailored to the customer’s individual needs.
Take a proactive approach – engage early
Rather than waiting until 60% into the buying process, it is in the interests of both buyer and seller to have an early conversation that qualifies interests and builds a solid base of understanding so that neither party wastes time further down the line. A proactive approach where the supplier engages at an early stage ensures that the customer’s needs are at the heart of the process, allowing the seller to present a targeted, compelling offer from the start. This facilitates a more relevant customer experience and helps nurture a relationship built on trust and rapport, making the customer feel secure with a credible partner who truly understands their viewpoint and addresses their needs.
Putting your customer back in control
As discussed, the sales rep’s role is key to easing the customer through the buying process but, given timescales required and the need to engage a complex buying group, sales resource in many organisations is already stretched. Where resource is limited, it is worth considering an outsource option, which can be applied at almost any stage of the buying cycle, generating leads at the top of the funnel, qualifying and converting inbound leads and nurturing them until they are ‘sales ready’, or taking them right through to close of sale. If, due to limited resource, you are leaving your buyers to navigate through 60% of the buying process, not only does this risk leaving them feeling overwhelmed and lost, but it creates an opportunity for your competitors to step in and take them by the hand, potentially losing a sale for you.
At The Telemarketing Company, our teams have supported hundreds of clients, bridging gaps in resource and supporting their sales and marketing functions. Our telemarketers engage business decision makers in productive, unscripted conversations that generate high quality leads and opportunities. Our lead management specialists are skilled in systematically qualifying inbound enquiries to ensure in-house teams receive leads that are truly ‘sales ready’, and our Inside Sales team provides high performance telesales, guiding prospects skilfully through the full buying cycle, from initial engagement, on-going nurture to close of sale and beyond.
If you’d like to learn how we can help you put your customers back in the driving seat, get in touch today.
Source: http://www.ttmc.co.uk/en-gb/knowledge-bank/2017/5/5/is-the-customer-really-in-control-and-if-theyre-not,-who-might-be/
Publish Date: May 5, 2017 5:00 AM |
2021 Buyers Guide Speech Technology
| 1.) | Agara
Agara is an autonomous virtual voice agent powered by Real-time Voice AI. It is designed to have intelligent conversations with your customers, vendors, and partners without any assistance from human agents. It can handle a wide variety of calls including inbound customer care calls, outbound lead generation calls, appointment scheduling calls, and overdue payment recovery calls.
Agara is available for several industries including banking, insurance, retail, e-commerce, airlines, and telecom. Powered by advanced Real-time Voice AI that understands speech in real-time, automatically determines the right process to follow and guides the caller along in the process with natural conversation.PH: +1 (512) 333 4634 |
| 2.) | Call Center Studio
Call Center Studio
Call Center Studio is the world’s first call center built on Google and is one of the most secure and stable systems with some of the industry’s best reporting. It is one of the most full-featured enterprise grade systems (with the most calling features, one of the best call distribution, outbound dialing features and integrations—including IVR, AI Speech Recognition, blended inbound/outbound calling and includes Google’s new Dialogflow and Speech API. Call Center Studio is the absolute easiest to use (with a 10 minute setup), and is the price performance leader with lower equipment cost and less setup time.PH: +1 512-872-7565 |
| 3.) | Call Tracking Metrics
Execute automated actions based on words spoken by your customer.
Our intelligent word detection and transcription tools make it easier for you to decipher the content of your customer conversations and automate action based on those insights.
Transform the audio of your calls into speaker-organized scripts so you can easily search your call log for specific words from a conversation, or automatically detect when words of intent are spoken by your customer.
Listen in on and highlight common patterns in order to execute triggers to initiate a new action or workflow, such as emailing a manager if the word “cancel” is spoken on a call. You can also set up to automatically redact content from a transcript, such as sensitive health information transmitted on a call.PH: 8005771872 |
| 4.) | Daisee
Daisee
Daisee builds technology that empowers people to solve problems by making interactions simple and smart so they can have a more significant impact, be more productive and be better at what they do. We believe incremental improvements carry huge potency and provide exponentially greater change for the better.
Genesys customers can now automate risk and quality management using Daisee’s speech and sentiment analytics and remediation workflow software. Daisee helps improve customer experience, ensure regulatory compliance, identify missed commercial opportunities & training requirements as well as provide valuable insights back to the business directly from the frontline – the true voice-of-...
(read more)Daisee builds technology that empowers people to solve problems by making interactions simple and smart so they can have a more significant impact, be more productive and be better at what they do. We believe incremental improvements carry huge potency and provide exponentially greater change for the better.
Genesys customers can now automate risk and quality management using Daisee’s speech and sentiment analytics and remediation workflow software. Daisee helps improve customer experience, ensure regulatory compliance, identify missed commercial opportunities & training requirements as well as provide valuable insights back to the business directly from the frontline – the true voice-of-the-customer.
Unlike legacy speech analytics providers that simply transcribe audio to text and use ‘word spotting’ (i.e building a database of synonyms for every use case - ‘angry’ and ‘manager’ as well as ‘upset’ and ‘supervisor’ and simply spotting for those words), the engine has proprietary use of its sentiment language – a University innovation developed at Daisee, resulting in far more accurate transcription, enabling derivation of the context of a conversation.
The Programmable Scorecard™ scores every call, and automatically activates a workflow for low-scoring, high-risk calls in near-real-time so they can be immediately reviewed and remediated.
As the solution is pre-trained out of the box, deployment is a matter of weeks, not months and there is no setup or professional services fees – just a straightforward SaaS based pricing model. Ensure 100% of your phone interactions are not only monitored but also analyzed and scored with high-risk calls triaged for fast review and remediation.PH: +61404697151 |
| 5.) | Eckoh
EckohASSIST
Advanced speech recognition and natural language expertise that routes callers by simply asking ‘how can I help you?’. It allows customers to use their own words to ask for what they want and steers them to the right place.
Menus are eliminated altogether and contact centres can use a single inbound telephone number.
PH: 01442 458300 |
| 6.) | MattsenKumar LLC
SmartSpeech
SmartSpeech – The Best In Class Speech Analytics Software
An all-inclusive speech analytics application that enables you to visualize your audio using state-of-the-art speech recognition, transcription, and text analytics technologies.PH: +91 99026 10044 |
| 7.) | Nemesysco
InTone Suite - Emotion Detection via Voice Analysis
InTone™ is a voice analysis tool geared to detect genuine emotional and cognitive reactions regardless of the speaker’s language or chosen intonation.
It integrates into existing contact center environments and provides realtime indications of both client and agent emotional reactions throughout all ongoing calls. This unique set of indications assists managers and call center representatives to truly understand the client, improve call center performance, easily detect angry calls, elevate training efficiency and provide a tailored customer experience in every single call.
Nemesysco's contact center technology is also available in API and SDK forms.
Please visit our website for information about our product portfolio.PH: +972-9-9605894 |
| 8.) | Voci Technologies Incorporated
V-Blaze Speech to Text
Our GPU-accelerated, AI-based technology enables you to deliver greater insights to the contact center by transcribing audio into analyzable text.
- Transcribe large volumes of recorded audio quickly
- Integrate transcripts with your analytics or business intelligence platform
- Reduce your hardware footprint and minimize total cost of ownershipPH: 412-621-9310 |
| 9.) | Voxjar
Voxjar
Voxjar is your one-stop-shop for driving better phone calls with your customers. We're a modern Conversation Analytics and Call Coaching Platform.
- Custom Charts and Dashboards give you the freedom to analyze calls from the highest level down to the details of each conversation.
- AI-Powered Speech Analytics transcribes, searches, and analyzes your reps' phone conversations, at scale.
- Quality Assurance and Call Coaching tools let you evaluate and improve agent performance with a human touch.
- Long term recording storage for historical analysis
All of these together provide the holistic, easy-to-use software that you need to manage a modern call team and create better con...
(read more)Voxjar is your one-stop-shop for driving better phone calls with your customers. We're a modern Conversation Analytics and Call Coaching Platform.
- Custom Charts and Dashboards give you the freedom to analyze calls from the highest level down to the details of each conversation.
- AI-Powered Speech Analytics transcribes, searches, and analyzes your reps' phone conversations, at scale.
- Quality Assurance and Call Coaching tools let you evaluate and improve agent performance with a human touch.
- Long term recording storage for historical analysis
All of these together provide the holistic, easy-to-use software that you need to manage a modern call team and create better conversations with your customers.
Voxjar brings value across all departments to improve Sales, Marketing, Customer Care, Collections, Compliance, and even your Product Team.
Deep insights into each customer conversation will invigorate every corner of your business.
Start today with a free 14-day trial
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