Why It’s Time to Look Again at Local Retail Calling

Empowering retail store staff to call their local customers

Ever since Obama showed how targeted local outreach can deliver huge campaigning benefits, businesses with store networks have been experimenting with empowering retail store staff to call their local customers.

Having spent the last year driving a landmark project to support Retail stores contacting customers in their catchment area for one of the UK’s leading telcos, I can confirm that it’s a customer contact initiative whose time has come. Retail store calling to generate in store quality appointments can generate significant revenue uplift and the technical barriers that previously held local initiatives back are now a thing of the past thanks to intelligent data and hosted CAM technologies.

What we found was that customers respond very positively to calls from local store staff – providing the contact is timely and relevant. It didn’t seem to matter that the customer may have originated from the digital or central inbound channel. Context is everything, so it’s critical that Retail store customer calling programmes take advantage of the same data and campaign monitoring that’s already powering your outbound programmes. If the integration’s not there, local initiatives can quickly falter – particularly if the right outbound contact management and monitoring isn’t in place.

The trick is to use a hosted solution that can be accessed easily by in-store staff using tablets or laptops. An effective CAM solution will then take care of customer record store catchment allocation, secure record access, the full audit and tracking of calls, IP telephony, call recording and in-store appointment booking.

From a customer perspective, the whole experience was seamless. We only reached out when we knew that customers would be receptive. The initiative effectively served to nudge them into doing something they were probably already thinking about. And because we had built a store appointment booking function into the solution, we were able to book customers in for account reviews at their local stores where they didn’t have to wait. Almost invariably customers liked this pro-active approach, came into the store with a positive attitude and, because everything was really easy, they were ready to take immediate decisions about the next stage of their contract. The solution took care of SMS & Email appointment reminders with store direction and maps.

In-store, the experience was also good, with our retail staff really taking to the programme. They knew which customers were coming in as data was specifically triggered due to a customer event. Consequently, in-store staff were able to come up with exactly the right packages in time for customer appointments. Customers also felt much freer to discuss other aspects of their digital lives, with many opting for additional devices or related services – a level of engagement that we would have been unlikely to achieve through traditional contact centre channels.

What we proved was that Retail store calling to local customers can prove a highly effective weapon in addressing high churn segments. We also confirmed that customers liked the proactive contact, and being able to address their needs in a face-to-face environment.

Entrusting the ‘last yard’ of communication to local employees clearly helps out in terms of local engagement – however it couldn’t have worked so well without an underlying intelligent data strategy. We found C-Centric’s hosted C-CAM platform gave us the customer data management we needed, along with the monitoring and reporting that allowed us to control the process from an end-to-end perspective.

To learn more about driving your local Retail Calling strategy with intelligent data and CAM monitoring, please download the new report that I’ve authored with C-Centric that sets out how getting Retail store calling up and running is much easier than you think, and deliverable within weeks.

Warren Pennington – Account Manager

With over 10 years’ experience, Warren has broad commercial and operational experience in Marketing, Media and Financial Services. He has worked with a number of leading organisations including Callcredit, News UK, Virgin Media and Talk Talk.

Vlad Corduneanu – Project Manager

Speaking 7 languages, including Chinese, English, German, Romanian and Russian, Vlad has a Masters from Henley and is certified with the British Computing Society. He brings this, together with 6 years in analytical roles to C-Centric.

Asit Khiroya – Head of Operations

Asit has vast IT and business experience across a variety technologies. He has led some of the largest data management implementations in the UK. At C-Centric he creates leading edge solutions that deliver clear results for clients.

Humphrey Davis

Humphrey has led ground breaking contact centre transformation programmes across leading telecoms organisations including Talktalk, EE and Virgin Media.

As a C-Centric client over many years, we have successfully worked together to implement solutions that drive increased sales and productivity.

Humphrey’s achievements include delivering in excess of 80,000 incremental monthly post pay sales through a multi-channel cross-sell strategy, building an external outbound channel delivering 40,000 monthly sales, exceeding volume, value & MRC targets, and designed and delivered a sales from service methodology that significantly reduced the cost per sale by 60%.

In addition, Humphrey has delivered a single sales from service programme covering 20 sites on 4 continents achieving local business objectives whilst supporting overall Exec Board objectives, introduced a loyalty and retention strategy that achieved 10% attachment rate and 20,000 monthly sales and led a project to use discarded data to drive further cross sales and net new customers.

Liam Smith

An experienced business leader with a track record in delivering strategic, operational and people activities.

Liam has held a number of senior roles within the energy supplier npower, in both residential and business retail markets. Following the deregulation of the energy market, Liam pioneered outbound and online acquisition, establishing the first quote and switch service of the Big 6 energy suppliers, and setting up internal and outsourced telesales channels.

Liam is currently Director of Customer Contact with Rank Group and is also a Non-Executive Director to a number of growing businesses, advising them on their growth and business strategy.

Neil Devadason – Head of Strategy and Analytics Services

Neil is a proven integrated multi-channel marketing strategy consultant and leader, having worked with Heathrow Airport, Guardian, Ideal Shopping Direct, Citi Group, BoA (MBNA), AXA, Virgin Media, Sony Mobile, Centrica, and BskyB.

David McKee – Head of Technical Consulting

David has over 20 years’ experience in delivering large and complex solutions, having previously worked with firms such as Acxiom and Sequent, and built some of the industry’s largest databases for Virgin Media, BAA, BT and IBM.

Neil Perring – Director

With over 25 years leadership in outsourcing firms such as BPS Contact Centre Services, Teleperformance and Interact CC, Neil offers an in-depth understanding of the challenges facing today’s outbound campaign operators.

Michael Page – Director

Michael is one of the industry’s acknowledged experts in optimising outbound campaign performance. He brings deep digital expertise to C-Centric, having worked as Head of Digital Development for Acxiom, and as a Director of MiQ Solutions.

Tim Pottinger – Chief Operating Officer

With over 30 years’ data marketing experience – including senior roles at WWAV Rapp Collins, Callcredit Information Group and now at C-Centric, Tim is driving the company’s business development as it builds out its smart data proposition.