Q&A: The Difference C-CAM Makes

How did your strategy make a difference?

We developed a unique technology platform to manage every stage of large-scale outbound customer acquisition campaigns, from lead generation through to reporting call outcomes. In one year C-CAM saved us £250,000 on our annual budget, signed up 65,000 customers and reduced CPA by 40%.

 

How did your creativity make a difference?

By applying database analytics techniques to call centre events C-CAM helped generate 4 million leads from 140 online and offline sources, scored, enhanced and allocated them intelligently to 8 outsourced call centres and monitored the results of 25 million call events, all in real-time.

 

What difference did you make?

C-CAM built a bridge between the digital and call centre channels by bringing human contact to on-line consumers in search of a product. Rather than being unsolicited and pushy, outbound calls followed up the consumer pull from on-line activity. This was more cost effective and consumer friendly.

 

What details of the campaign strategy make it an award winning one?

Previously, with this industrial scale of customer acquisition campaign using multiple agencies, it was not possible to manage so many data sources consistently, have access to fine-grained and coherent performance data, personalise the contact for each customer, blend channels seamlessly and give management immediate and total control over all aspects of the campaign.

 

How did C-CAM support data management?

The platform allowed 4 million leads from 140 sources to be managed in a consistent and compliant way. For example, suppressions were run from internal and industry sources every 24 hours to ensure customers were not contacted inappropriately. Scoring and enhancing leads in a consistent way allowed accurate comparisons of performance and profitability by data source.

 

How did C-CAM support performance management?

The platform took feeds of 25 million call events from multiple agencies, transformed these into a common format and produced highly visual reports which allowed comparisons to be made between different data sources and agencies, right down to the agent level.

The intelligence gathered was on such a fine scale it allowed the “DNA” of each centre to be identified. Sales outcomes were improved by, for example, matching agents to prospects using a complex algorithm of variables including age, region (accent), sex and socio demographic group.

In addition agent behaviour was monitored for compliance, which led to a reduction in complaints and a better brand experience for the customer.

 

How was your management able to retain control?

Management was able to make adjustments in real time based on the data provided. The platform also gave clear visibility of call centre costs and automatically fed results to data suppliers, allowing them to auto bill. This level of transparency helped one client save £250,000.

 

How did the creative thinking bring the strategy to life?

There were three key areas:

1. Personalised contact

The centralised and consistent management of data sources allowed every lead to be enhanced with socio-demographic data. This supported the personalisation of calls by allowing:

a) A pop up “pen portrait” with predicted features of each customer to be presented to the agent via their desktop, enabling them to provide better advice.

b) Leads to be distributed in real time to the agency, agent group (or even individual agent) with the best capability to handle that type of customer and enquiry.

2. Blended channel contact

Online and offline lead generation was also supported and enhanced by the platform.

For example, a tablet based application allowed field agents to present the product, take orders and generate leads at prime traffic sites or door to door. An order could be captured or, if further contact was requested, the application would transmit the lead straight into an agency dialler queue with a call back date and time. Similar applications were used to capture leads online.

The seamless integration of online, offline and telephone channels gave consumers a single, consistent and efficient experience of the whole sales process.

3. Agent performance

The data gathered on call centre performance allowed us to analyse many metrics and identify the “DNA” of each centre. This made it possible to analyse weaknesses and monitor aspects such as down time to pinpoint improvement opportunities.

Agent attrition was reduced with further training, product briefings and coaching to motivate and engage them more. Rather than having to let non-performing staff go we saw them being retrained and incentivised to become more empathetic and productive.

 

How did the results support your creative thinking?

The objective when developing the platform was to better manage performance and costs in order to provide a better customer experience, increase sales, reduce complaints and lower CPA.

This was achieved by bringing together all elements of the campaign – lead generation, management and allocation, multi-site reporting and performance analysis – under the umbrella of one application, which allowed us to apply database analytics techniques to lift the veil and see more clearly than ever before what was really going on.

With 8 outsourced call centres – each of which used different IT systems, reporting formats and even call outcome codes – comparing performance used to be almost impossible. This left management blind and made it difficult to monitor agent performance and compliance, and evaluate the viability of different lead generation campaigns, promotions and data sources.

By providing a “lingua franca” into which call results and other performance data were translated, genuine cross-centre benchmarking became possible.

This changed everything. A laboratory approach could be taken, where new promotions, lead generation methods and demographic segments could be tested in as little as 24 hours. This ability to refine all elements of the campaign led to a dramatic improvement in conversion rates and a lower CPA.

Furthermore, by building compliance monitoring into the platform from the outset, and by reporting agent and customer feedback, we helped agencies and their agents become more responsible. Compliance became second nature and was no longer seen as a hurdle to be overcome in sales calls. This massively reduced complaints and gave the customer a better experience.

 

What results did C-CAM deliver?

The platform is a closed loop lead generation and call centre management tool which allowed us to apply the skill sets of both database marketing and operations management with more precision than ever before. For a major telco client the platform:

• Achieved over 65,000 new customer sign ups,
• Generated, scored, screened and distributed 4 million leads from over 140 real time feeds,
• Analysed over 25 million call events,
• Performance managed over 1,000 separate agents,
• Compliance managed over 1.5 million hours of calls and DPA -assured 4 million customer records,
• Saved £250,000 per annum from previous annual budget,
• Reduced acquisition CPA by 40%,
• Reduced client management overhead.