Even with the rise of online customer service channels, contact centers still handle a growing number of the more complex customer sales and service interactions today.   And with the growing volume of calls driven by mobile adoption, new and innovative marketing programs are emerging such as click-to-talk functionality, connecting web visitors directly with the call center, and performance-based call transfer programs.

Consumers often choose the distinctly human interaction of the voice channel to answer their sales and support issues; over 45 billion call transactions annually by some estimates. This is a huge marketing opportunity that smart enterprises are already taking advantage of. Remember, many studies show that consumers tend to respond well to human contact during the sales process. Though they may conduct much of their research online, many of these purchases still take place offline.

Greg Sterling, an analyst at Opus Research, told Business Week that “The naïve assumption that people made in the early days was that e-commerce was going to decimate other kinds of customer contact. When there’s a human connection, there’s a lot more that can be sold, and those customers are a lot more valuable inherently.”

Live, one-to-one interactions in the voice channel give enterprises greater insight into what the customer is actually looking for. There’s a give and take between caller and call center agent during phone conversations you simply can’t get with an online purchase. This is one of the primary reasons that the enterprise voice channel is still so powerful, especially from a marketing perspective. In the voice channel your contact center agent is in control of the customer experience (for better or for worse!) and can use that one-on-one time to address any customer service or sales concerns, build a stronger rapport with that customer, and even leverage some cross-selling opportunities in the conversation. The latest voice channel opportunities for marketing allow companies to leverage customer insights, demographics, purchase histories, etc. to drive added service and sales value for consumers and enterprises through company call centers.

Given the fact that call volumes into customer contact centers are growing driven by a mobile savvy consumer and new voice / data applications there is   growing value and need for marketing professionals to leverage the enterprise contact center as an untapped customer engagement channel.  For instance, live calls typically convert at a much higher rate than other advertising channels, such as web advertising alone. Enterprises that take advantage of the unique marketing opportunities to engage customers through their call centers stand to create a new source of revenue and improve their brand.

A customer trigger event is a major (although it could be a minor) event that happens in a consumer’s life, such as buying a house, that triggers the need for additional decisions  regarding products or services. For instance, prior to buying a house, a consumer might give thought to buying flood insurance, installing a home security system, or even something as seemingly straightforward as purchasing a lawn mower of their own. Now that they have a home (and a yard) to protect for years to come these other purchases suddenly become incredibly important—all because of that one trigger event. Brands that are able to anticipate and respond to these customer trigger events stand to improve both the customer experience and turn a profit. The solution lies in your marketing partnership network.

Marketing Partnerships Enhance the Customer Experience During a Trigger Event

Depending on the other companies you partner with, your partnership network can enhance the customer experience after a customer trigger event by evolving your brand into a concierge-type service, or trusted advisor. For instance, someone who has just purchased a home is probably swimming in the amount of things they need to do/are supposed to do/want to do after buying their dream home—your partnership network can make their next few steps that much easier by presenting them with relevant and timely offers directly related to their trigger event. Your partners could include a mortgage company, a locksmith (definitely need to get new locks!), or even an arborist (tree) inspection company—in theory the possibilities are practically endless. As long as your marketing partners exist in a relevant (but not directly competing) niche and can provide your customers with the right offer at the right time (i.e., the trigger event) your network could have no limits.

By presenting your customers with these relevant offers you are enhancing the customer experience by taking the legwork and some of the guess work out of their next important purchase brought on by the trigger event. Just keep in mind that it’s your recommendation that your customers are basing their decision on so it’s important to only work with partners that will take good care of your customers and strive to deliver excellent customer service every step of the way. Choosing the wrong partners can actually damage your brand’s own reputation.

Trigger Events Are an Opportunity for Your Brand to Engage the Consumer and Cross Sell Relevant Products

By cross pitching your customers after a trigger event your brand has the opportunity to upsell customers and monetize your organic phone traffic. Since your network isn’t limited to a one-to-one relationship with a solitary partner, your multiple partners are often competing to have their offer presented to your customers after a trigger event. Competition helps increase the value of each live lead you have to send to the winning partner, as each individual partner presents their own offer and bid for your phone leads. This gives your company the opportunity to choose the most relevant offer for your customers, as well as the more profitable offer for your company. For instance, you might be partnered with a credit card company but find that certain trigger events don’t produce the customer need for a new credit card. You can pass over that partner is favor of another. Once qualified customers are transferred to your approved partner your company gets paid for that live phone lead.

The key to taking advantage of a customer trigger event is timing! You partner offers have to ready to go when you have a customer on the phone and it needs to meet their particular needs right there and then. That’s why a partnership marketing network, as opposed to the traditional one-to-one relationships is so powerful—you have a much greater chance of being in the right place at the right time with the right offer.

Contact center capacity is going up as voice becomes “sexy” again driven by mobile adoption. This is both good and bad news for enterprises. It’s good news because the contact center is becoming an increasingly important channel for managing the customer experience. Being able to have a one-on-one interaction over the voice channel can have a much greater and lasting impact on a customer and the customer experience than most other channels, both online and offline. It’s a channel that the competition can’t duplicate or infringe upon meaning your customer experience remains uniquely your own. The bad news is that as contact center capacity is going up so too are sales and service costs. Higher call volumes means enterprises need more resources to keep things working smoothly—more agents, better technology, and more overhead. The challenge moving forward then is how can a contact center offset their operating costs without sacrificing the customer experience? One solution? Marketing partnerships.

Online marketing partnerships are incredibly common these days. For instance, when you book a flight online from American Airlines, chances are there will be several partner offers listed on your flight confirmation page, probably for a rental car company, local attractions or a hotel near the airport. These offers are driven by a trigger event; in this case the purchase of a ticket. These one-to-one partnerships give the advertiser/marketer the chance to connect with a relevant customer at a moment where they may be more inclined to buy and gives the seller the opportunity to become a “concierge” service for their customers, enhancing the customer experience. It also gives them the opportunity to create a new source of revenue.

But how can a partnership marketing model like that transfer to the voice channel and work in the contact center? How can a contact center become a profit center?

Let’s say, instead of going online, a traveler called American Airlines to book their flight. Once the flight purchase was completed the American Airlines agent would present an offer from one of their partners, like Avis or Hilton. If the flyer agreed to be transferred to the partner American Airlines would receive a fee for that live phone transfer. This kind of voice marketing partnership has existed for a long time, but the challenge to making it a strong and consistent source of revenue for the lead seller has been the fact that most of the partnerships tend to be one-on-one, which limits the number of partners they can work with, and ultimately the revenue they can earn. These partnerships often require a lot of upfront business development and long-term contracts as well, further complicating the process. Not to mention the infrastructure required to manage the call transfers.

That’s why SalesPortal created the “Google AdSense model” for contact centers. Contact centers can now work with a variety of partners and present their customers and callers with the most relevant offer. By removing the one-to-one restrictions of former voice channel partnerships both the contact center and the advertiser benefit. First off, the pre-approved partners can bid on a contact centers live call transfers, helping keep their customer acquisition costs down. Since they can run multiple lead buy campaign at once they don’t have to worry about their lead generation efforts running dry. On the flip side, the contact center chooses whose bid they accept, ensuring the best possible revenue stream.  Thanks to the SalesPortal partnership marketing network contact centers are able to monetize their phone traffic, helping offset the increasing operation costs and provide a new source of revenue for the enterprise.

An enterprise contact center could easily handle millions of customer service and sales calls in any given year – either in-house or at their outsourced BPO provider. Assuming that the average handling cost per call is around $4, an enterprise could easily spend tens of millions of dollars each year on their in-house and/or outsourced contact center. But what if you could turn your contact center into an efficient revenue center and make every touch point with your customer an opportunity to generate revenue?

Before we answer this question, let us examine another phenomenon…in the advertising and marketing arena.

In order to lower their customer acquisition costs, advertisers are always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to reach targeted audiences that may be interested and qualified for their products. However, reaching the right customers at the right time with the right offer is proving more challenging…with Do-Not-Call regulation and anti-SPAM laws, legacy channels of targeting your customers via outbound calling and email campaigns have become obsolete. Even in traditional online and offline media, consumers are bombarded with marketing messages – commercials on TV, ads on buses and subways, outdoor billboard ads, search engine marketing, display ads, flyers and inserts, direct mail, SMS, etc. And consumers have become de-sensitized and have learned to tune these marketing messages out. Capturing the attention of a target audience is getting harder and more costly for advertisers simply because there is so much clutter and noise that their message has to contend with.

That is where partnership marketing comes in. Here is how it works:

In your contact center, at the end of a customer service or sales call, if the agent has done their job well, then you have a happy customer…the agent has just delivered great customer experience and developed a rapport with the customer. So, there is a “moment of magic” once the customer’s transaction is successfully completed and the customer has a sense of satisfaction…and even joy. This is when your agent has the opportunity to recommend a RELEVANT product offer to the customer – a complementary and targeted add-on product or service that your customer would appreciate getting more details on. Customers interested in hearing more about the add-on product would be transferred to the “advertiser’s” call center and your company would get paid for the customer referral! With little extra effort on your part (and thanks to the skills of your agents) your contact center can leverage this simple process to make each call generate significant revenues for your company, while enhancing customer engagement by presenting RELEVANT product offers that deliver tangible value to customers.

Advertisers are incredibly interested in live phone lead transfers and are willing to pay top dollar for qualified customer referrals. They end up lowering their customer acquisition costs by tapping into a rich source of new customers. Your contact center becomes a veritable revenue center; and your customers get a complete buying experience. Now that’s a WIN-WIN-WIN!

Quick question—which employee in your company is responsible for brand management? Many businesses would say their brand managers, the PR and marketing team or maybe even the CEO should be held accountable for public brand perception. The truth is that every single employee in your company, especially the front-facing teams like sales and customer support, are all responsible for brand management. This specifically includes your contact center staff, a branding resource many businesses fail to leverage effectively.

Your contact center employees are responsible for creating a positive customer experience for each and every caller, which directly impacts brand perception. In fact, a recent Purdue University study found that 92% of customers judge an organization based upon the interactions they have with a company’s call center. In many cases, a contact center agent is the only human interaction a customer will have with your company after making a purchase. That single agent becomes the face and voice of your entire brand; in those few minutes they will either support the values your company claims to adhere to or will fail to meet that customer’s expectations. How they handle the caller’s service or sales issue will influence that customer’s perception of your brand and may determine whether or not they continue to do business with your company in the future. (89% of customers say that a negative experience with your brand will send them to a competitor for their next purchase).

Your company’s contact center is just as important to your brand as your retail stores, website or advertising campaigns. It could even be argued that a call center is MORE important than other customer interface channels, because it’s where your brand is going to be put to the test every day. For many businesses, the contact center is the foremost connection gateway for their customers, whether it is by calls, email, social media channels, or live chat. Unlike many other communication outlets (social profiles, customer forums, blogs, etc) the call center is one of the few places where the brand’s image remains solidly in the hands of the company, not the customers. You have the power to create a great customer experience by delivering on your brand’s promise. Prove yourself to them and help solidify public brand perception!

Businesses would be wise to remember that at the end of the day, most customers are not going to remember the name of the customer service employee they spoke with. They will just remember that they contacted your company with an issue/question and how quickly and efficiently their inquiry was handled. How that one contact center employee handles the call will directly impact your customers’ perception of your brand.

When a customer phones in to your contact center, the entire customer experience boils down one yes or no question—did you solve their issue? If the reason for the customer call isn’t resolved quickly and completely, then everything else your representative does to improve the customer experience is pointless. However, if your representative does resolve your customer’s issue or concern, then the positive customer experience can be amplified by a variety of factors including: how quickly the issue was resolved, if the caller was transferred to multiple agents, if the caller had to repeat their information, and so forth. A great call center customer interaction entails addressing and resolving the customer’s issue quickly and completely – because a happy customer is incredibly valuable to your company.

Happy customers are more likely to become repeat customers and their customer experience in your contact center greatly impacts the likelihood of them becoming your brand ambassadors. But that isn’t the only reason a happy customer is valuable; they can positively impact your bottom line: happy customers are the perfect targets for cross pitching^TM.

Cross pitching^TM is a patented and proprietary methodology pioneered by SalesPortal, a Silicon Valley-based technology company. The process involves your call center agent reading a scripted offer for a highly relevant product to your customers at the end of  sales and service calls. These product offers are from vetted and pre-approved branded advertisers. Customers interested in hearing more about a product offer are transferred to the advertiser’s call center and your company is paid for the customer referral – i.e. the live transfer lead! It’s a simple way to monetize your contact center and increase your company’s revenue, while engaging your customers with product offers that they want and appreciate.

But how does customer experience factor into your contact center’s revenue enhancement program?

A recent study found that 80+% of customers who were happy with the customer service representative’s performance would be willing to listen to an additional offer, whereas only 53% of unsatisfied customers were open to this. This means that happy customers are more likely to be open to buying more products and services. So in order to maximize the incremental revenue potential via cross pitching, it is paramount that contact centers focus on delivering top-notch customer service during the “primary” portion of the customer engagement.

A positive customer experience not only impacts your customers’ opinion of your brand, it also greatly enhances the incremental revenue opportunities available to your contact center via cross pitching. The happier your customers are with the customer experience you deliver, the more likely they are to become valuable referrals and live call transfers to your cross pitching partners, and the more money your contact center lead transfer campaign will generate!

It’s okay when The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger sings “I Can’t Get  No Satisfaction’ — but not when consumers do when dealing with contact centers.

Customer satisfaction can lead to contact center profits – and recognizing this, contact centers train agents in the art of creating happy customers.  The investment contact centers make in training agents – and the time agents invest in ensuring customer satisfaction – should not evaporate once the sale is made or even when a call nears termination.

Sales Portal’s contact center software enhances customer experience by engaging them with end-of-call offers that are relevant to the primary product and then seamlessly transferring them on to the cross-pitching advertiser. Contact centers select the advertiser from a marketplace based on their criteria of revenue, volume, product category and so on.

After the primary sale is concluded, agents deliver a short pitch (as opposed to either a complete cross-sell or up-sell) to pre-qualified customers. If the customer opts in, they are transferred seamlessly to a live agent at the marketer’s end. Since no customer data (including credit card or other payment information) is passed on from contact center to the marketer, call centers remain fully compliant with government regulations on all Sales Portal campaigns.

Through Sales Portal, contact centers maximize incremental revenue – and customer satisfaction – while minimizing Average Handle Time (AHT). Customers find it easier to locate relevant and adjacent products or offerings without having to dial any other number. And advertisers get quality leads at a price they can afford via live phone transfers.

To sum it up: Sales Portal brings satisfaction to everyone in the equation.

It is a widely known fact that over 15% of all customer-callers interested in DR products do not end up purchasing because they don’t have a credit card or a debit card. Marketers have tried different techniques – such as electronic checks – to convert these calls into a monetized outcome; however, there hasn’t been a reliable and easy-to-implement solution…until now.

Sales Portal has successfully launched monetization campaigns wherein marketers are able to generate revenue from no-credit-card callers and also consummate the sale of their products. This is achieved without the need for complex and cumbersome system implementations…in fact, marketers can be up and running with our no-credit-card campaigns within minutes and start generating revenues instantly.