An enormous amount of customer information passes through an organisation's hands in the course of its day-to-day operations. Much of it can play a vital role in developing customer relationships and marketing to existing clients and prospects, but only if it is pulled together in an accessible form and actually used to gain insight into the consumers being targeted.
Data provides valuable insight into customer purchasing patterns, preferences and behaviour. Marketing can then be more effectively targeted and personalised. However, for many organisations, such data is collected but never integrated in a functional database. Many firms have a wealth of information on customers that they are failing to utilise. We have dubbed this 'data wastage'.
By eliminating data wastage, businesses could make more efficient use of their budgets and boost ROI. Failure to act on it can have a hugely detrimental effect on a brand or an organisation's overall reputation. A company's credibility can be seriously damaged by an apparent lack of institutional memory or acknowledgement of a history of dealings with a customer.
To look at just what impact data wastage is having on customers we conducted a survey across the UK to examine whether consumers were in fact taking note of whether companies were failing to keep track of their interactions with their customers and prospects.
The findings clearly show that companies need to improve their efforts at integrating and using the information they have to hand on consumers, as 65% of respondents reported that companies communicating with them were sending them offers for products they would never buy despite the fact they had given these firms details on their personal preferences.
Moreover, a shocking 58% found that some firms did not even know that they were existing customers and were sending them offers aimed at prospects. The research also revealed that more than half of the respondents who had bought a product from a company found that the same organisation then repeatedly tried to sell them the same item.
Data wastage is clearly a problem. Not only are many companies wasting spend on redundant or poorly targeted offers, but consumers are taking note - and neither of these is good for the long-term health of a brand.
What is vital for any company that is underutilising the data at its disposal is to pull together all the databases held by different parts of the company, along with any third-party data it is buying, in order to create a central resource that provides the much-sought-after 'single customer view'.
This takes what for too many firms is a liability and turns it into a valuable communication, marketing and operations asset that can help:
Turning data into a manageable and accessible asset that provides a single customer view is not necessarily an easy road for a company to take. But for firms that embark upon the journey, it can pay long-term dividends, strengthening an organistion's ability to build on its existing customer base.
For many businesses, the most straightforward solution is to bring in a managed service provider with the knowledge, experience, technology and data resources to turn diverse and often disconnected databases scattered trhoughout an organisation into a unified platform for actionable insight.
With the aid of a specialist printer, firms can determine where their organisations data needs to come from and develop a central store into which all streams from within the company can flow - and that can then be tapped by all the relevant departments or business units that could make use of that data.
Businesses can then utilise the full weight of the this available data to improve data quality, enhance insight and develop more effective strategies for expanding customer relationships and attracting new business.
Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2010
4.) | PEC Telecom Virtual Phone Numbers (DID) and Business VoIP Phone Service Whether a customer is running a Call Center business, an IVR system to take phone orders or a voice mail service bureau, he still needs inbound lines and access numbers (DIDs). These lines and DIDs give customers the ability to call in and use the service. Traditionally, these lines and DIDs were obtained through the local telephone company (i.e. Verizon, AT&T or Time Warner) and a company could only purchase numbers with area codes in the region the system resided. With VoIP, this has changed. DID Live is an IP DID service that allows you to accept incoming calls via VoIP as an alternative to standard digital or analog lines. The service provides the same quality of sound you expect from... (read more) |
5.) | Pointel Voice Self Service Voice self-service can reduce cost and improve customer satisfaction. As with every system implementation, it is not the software, but the implementation that will define the success of the project. This also holds true for self-service implementations. Pointel follows a unique and proven process to implement voice self service. This process has been fine-tuned through years of experience implementing contact center and self-service applications. Pointel can design and develop solutions that will meet and exceed our client’s voice application needs. With several years of experience in Genesys GVP(Genesys Voice Platform) implementation and integration, Pointel can provide an integrated voice... (read more) |
I am checking out all the amazing and daily updated content on ContactCenterWorld.com and networking with professionals worldwide
Send To Friends Post On My Wall