Category Archives: customer insight

Telemarketing – a field guide

As I got the fourth phone call in a week from a telecommunications company wanting me to switch or upgrade, I sighed with frustration. As someone who has managed telemarketing campaigns, and who has benefited from excellent service calls, I know that telemarketing can be positive and profitable – in terms of sales and in terms of enhancing the relationship between company and customers.

So why are telemarketing calls so annoying?

1 – the caller doesn’t know who I am or the relationship I have with the organization. Seriously – how does Rogers, who owns Fido, not know that I have cell phone service with Fido? How is it that my fairly simple name get mispronounced almost every time?

Companies track purchase behaviour and a multitude of other details about their clients. Phonetic pronunciation of names and tracking the comments of the customer are absolute requirements for any company undertaking telemarketing. Please acknowledge that I do business with you and that it’s valued.

2 – the caller isn’t offering something relevant to me. Why switch phone service when the costs and services are identical? Want me to change to your service? Offer something significantly better than what I currently have. Why did you think I’d want tickets to the circus? Is my name from a list of people who have supported a particular charity or are you cold calling from the phone book?

3 – the caller doesn’t know the details of what they are offering. So I am interested in getting a subscription to the dance series. Is that ballet in tutus or contemporary dress? The caller had no idea.

Callers need to know as many details of the business as possible and know how to quickly find answers to customer questions. Small details really do make or break the deal.

4 – the caller doesn’t ask me anything about my experience with the company. I don’t want to listen about you – I want to talk about me and how I experience your company. Callers representing the company are contacting current and potential clients – it’s an amazing opportunity to advocate for the company and collect quick feedback on brand awareness and customer satisfaction.

Telemarketing is as much a Public Relations activity as a Sales activity. Use it wisely to carefully promote your message and collect important information from your customer base.

Economics of fear and sustainable buying practices

Here’s a hypothesis for consideration:

With news media reporting – in particular headlines – bleakly declaring the end to life as we know it for many months now, it is inevitable that people feel that the global financial crisis is having a major impact on their lives. This feeling is spawned by what we are told day in and day out at least as much as it stems from real losses in employment or investment portfolios.

Sustainable buying practices might well be on the rise. Those are practices not based on personal debt financing and overleveraging to “get things now”. They are built on concepts of need, affordability, prioritization and saving for specific purchases. As this shift occurs it demands equally sustainable pricing practices, elastic enough to be responsive to the market and to ensure the survival of the business beyond this crisis. It means the “traditional” growth model has to be rethought in terms of “sustainable exchanges”.

Any business model but especially those based on debt financing will have to be rethought in the context of needs, wants and sustainable personal – and business – finance.

I imagine it also means customer value propositions will increasingly include price related incentives, meant as short-term fixes to stimulate consumption. But in business only a few can survive on low price positions, the rest need greater differentiation to sustain their business. I imagine the competitive landscape will increasingly be thought to include alternatives across sectors of the economy, not just direct competitors within a specific sector.

If the above is so, what does that mean for how I think about performing arts marketing and sustainably developing audiences?

Thoughts on Making Buying Decisions

Some purchases we make require very little critical thinking – and some that would benefit from weighing options more carefully are made using overrides. (“I want it”, “my neighbour has it already”). Some purchases receive a great amount of attention – often those that cost a lot of money, but not always.

One way to think about performing arts marketing is that we endeavour to recruit buyers who are willing to use convenient overrides so that they subscribe year after year, regardless of the specifics of the programming or other aspects of the overall customer experience.

This is important because arguably purchasing several live performing arts events in a single transaction (subscription) has significant implications for the buyer: time commitments, long terms planning and their financial capacity to pay in advance.

What are the circumstances required for someone to make a complex purchase in a mostly automatic fashion? And is it realistic with emerging audiences or is that a model of a time that is coming to an end?

An Insight Sets the Stage

Here are a couple of quick updates on work I’ve been doing: The Audience Development Strategy’s implementation by the NAC Orchestra continues to deliver excellent business results: In 2007 (year 1 of the strategy), we delivered the best campaign results in 19 years and exceeded several key targets. The 2008 campaign delivered the best results in 20 years.

The true test of a strategy cannot be merely success in its first year, when everyone is engaged, learning and changing. Keeping the momentum up to deliver to the increasingly ambitious targets in year 2 and looking toward the ever higher goals in each of the next 3 years is where the strategy and its implementation are tested. Especially important – as much of the media promotes a foreboding sense of apprehension about the unfolding global and Canadian recession – this strategy is built on the kind of deep audience insights that will help the Orchestra meet the challenges ahead.

On a similar note, I have been working with the NAC team on building a marketing strategy for the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards gala. Again, the rigorous, multi-faceted analysis phase which leveraged what we have learned about local audiences and expanded on that knowledge through additional research, is yielding the building blocks for an effective, multi-year, audience-centred strategy.

This latest project has been leading me to deepen the work on an insight about the tension between familiarity and discovery in buying decisions. It says that in order to buy performing arts experiences, the audience looks for things they are familiar with, but these are not necessarily the elements that will make the event memorable -which looks to be important to the repeat purchase decision. To be memorable, it has to deliver enough surprise and discovery. That means, if the marketing (or possibly the art) neglects the need for familiar touchpoints for a local audience, it can become exceedingly difficult to succeed in terms of marketing and sales.

The recent literature on neuroscience research has been interesting and may turn out to be enlightening – possibly helping to resolve this tension. In future posts I intent to explore these concepts further as I believe they are at the core of the marketing challenges faced in a world where the means of production and distribution are not only readily available but also cheap and global for all to use. Competition has to be thought of far more broadly now.

Conference presentation accepted

Excellent news: My conference paper has been accepted by the MRIA’s National Conference Program Committee. I’ll be presenting on my Audience Development work with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Winnipeg, May 25-28, 2008. Of course, now I’ll have to craft a worthy presentation.

I’m planning to demonstrate the application of insights derived from various types of research methodologies in solving a major business issue at the nation’s leading live performing arts venue. (That’s a mouthful!) Because I not only conducted the research but facilitated the strategy process, the outstanding business results (see previous postings) achieved already make a great example for “return on research invesment.”

I’m also planning on making an argument for the idea of “integrated research.” After all, today integrated marketing and integrated decision-making are everywhere – at least in words if not in deed – and I see opportunities for marketing researchers to advance a conversation about customer insight and its application.

Strategic Moves – Thinking : Business

Respect for the customer

Arguably, the most important asset a marketing researcher has is … a respondent. The Canadian industry association, MRIA, has created a Respondents Bill of Rights – and much effort goes into best practice development for research methodologies that both respect the respondent and provide insight on which to base business decisions.

What is the most important asset an advertising agency or a marketer has? I think the answer is … a customer. Not inventory, not intellectual property, not real estate, not world-class leadership, not strategic location, not stock price, not exclusive market rights, not employees (even though in my mind employees are intrinsically linked to the customer).

Why is it then, that there is so little effort made to care for the customer or the potential customer? Over 90% of new products fail and fewer than 50% of advertisements are effective – so why are they getting created and who are they really speaking to?

Instead of relevant, timely, opt-in, creative marketing activities, much of marketing seems to still be trying to yell louder or funnier or whatever at a fairly large group of people.

If advertisers want to be relevant then they might reconsider their focus and place the customer at the heart of business and marketing considerations. There are successful CRM implementations and there are impressive case studies of brands connecting with customers by acting on the knowledge they collect about them and creating many meaningful, memorable interactions.

Because it’s the customer that matters. Not so much mind share, or intent to purchase.
Instead, try measuring the degree of relationship a customer has with the organization and the degree of relationship the organization has with the customer.