The best customer service comes from the heart.  I think the video below is the best example I’ve ever seen of the heart of customer service, of making a difference.  I hope you’ll take a few minutes and watch it.

http://www.stservicemovie.com/

I am a big fan of online video and just see that market exploding in 2008.  Well today I came across a great video about online video and thought I’d pass the link along.  I especially appreciated the statistics they bring to light.

http://www.accelacast.com/jlp/inP_iaf/1/80226632/

Clicking the URL above will take you to “Getting Results with Online Video”

In 2006 Vertex Data Science, one of the world’s largest provider of call center outsourcing did a comprehensive study to improved the performance of its telephone sales operators.  What they learned is fascinating and I think it is applicable to our call centers in the PI industry.

Successful operators, it turned out, speak little and listen much.  When they do speak, their voices fluctuate strongly in amplitude and pitch, suggesting interest and responsiveness to the customer’s needs.  Operators who speak with little variation come across as too determined and authoritative, but by speaking invitingly, being responsive but not pushy, a skilled operator can let callers find their own way to a sale.  “Like a mother speaking singsong to a baby, variation sounds perky and inviting.  If operators do it right, they’re almost certain to be successful.” 

These valuable insights have allowed the company to train operators to converse more effectively, and it helps them seek new hires who exhibit these speech patterns.  They say that the system has improved their telephone sales performance by 20 percent or more.

During the study, the scientists were able to very accurately predict the success or failure of the call very early in the conversation based on how things were said, not what was said.  There is a growing volume of other evidence that confirms that the old theory is flawed - that theory being that what is said is more important than how it is said.

Let’s apply this to our industry.  Wow, where do I start!  I have done ghost calls at firms throughout the country and I can tell you that in most cases the operators do a good job of working their way through a script and getting the facts, but all too often they do a poor job of showing warmth and interest in the client’s situation.  What is lacking in those instances is any kind of a connection.  And only rarely do I find an operator that is innately a good listener.

A few months ago I did a study, in a firm, of conversion of new case calls by operator.  We looked at this with the understanding that all calls were randomly distributed to the 6 operators.  Yet the conversion rate differed quite substantially.  The intake person that had the highest conversion had already been singled out by the firm as their “best operator.”  What set her apart is the warmth in her voice, the genuine interest she had in helping people, and the connection she made with most of the callers.

Let me give you a real life example of how training for your intake people could heavily impact your bottom line.

Let’s suppose you get 300 new case calls a week.  You currently sign 20% or 60 cases a week.  If we could train your staff so that each operator converted just 2% more of the cases that are currently lost that could add as many as 6 cases a week.  If the average value of a case in your firm is $5000, that could mean a difference of $30,000 a week.

You may have a completely different set of numbers but I want you to think about  what the impact would be of adding 2% more cases to your bottom line.  I think it will make you consider prioritizing training for your intake operators in the coming year.

A recent study of more than 20,000 online shoppers resulted in some key research findings about the effectiveness of various tools for acquiring customers.  As you read them you will see that they provide great insights that can easily be adapted to our industry.

• The #1 reason that a shopper visited a website online was because of familiarity with the brand.  This group also had the highest satisfaction score - 77%.
• Promotional e-mails are an effective marketing tool:  24% of shoppers came to a site because of promotional emails from the company.  This group is more satisfied than those who came to the site because of a search engine and is 16% more likely to buy than those who came through a search engine.
• Search engines and shopping comparison sites bring more first-time visitors, who are significantly less satisfied and less likely to buy.  While the largest group of first-time site visitors came via a search engine or shopping comparison site (29%), this group was less satisfied than first-time visitors who came the site because of familiarity with the brand or promotional emails.
• Word-of-mouth recommendations are more effective at driving desired future behaviors than offline advertising.  Satisfaction for online shoppers who came to the retail site based on recommendation enjoys a slight advantage over that of shoppers who were prompted by offline advertising.  But word of mouth has a significant advantage in driving the future behaviors of recommendation, online purchase and loyalty.

In light of these findings there are several best practices that can help us improve customer satisfaction with the site experience, relative to the acquisition source.

• Ensure complementary messaging between the acquisition source and landing page on the site.  When a prospect comes to a Web sites based on a paid search ad, the page they land on should be closely related to the ad they clicked on. 
• Analyze needs and perceptions of first time visitors.  They have no prior experience with your Web site and they often struggle to understand the organization of the site.  You want to make sure that you understand their greatest concerns so you can do a better job of creating a satisfying first visit that will keep them coming back, time after time.
• Explore what’s driving word-of-mouth recommendations.  One of the most certain and powerful reasons to recommend a Web site is to deliver a highly satisfying experience during the site visit.  The only way to do this is to analyze the high priority areas for improvement, based not only on satisfaction scores, but on projection of the relative influence of improving one aspect of the site experience over another.  Delivering a highly satisfying experience will gain you recommendations as well as future business and ongoing loyalty.

Total ad spending fell slightly in the first half of 2007, down 0.3% to $72.6 billion from the same time last year, reports TNS Media Intelligence.

“For the first time since 2001, media advertising expenditures have declined for two consecutive quarters,” says Steven Fredericks, TNS MI CEO, in a statement.  “The results reflect weakness across a range of industries and advertisers.”

The biggest loser was newspaper advertising, losing a full percentage point in share, to 17.8% of the whole.  Local television ads were next, slipping 0.6%, yet 10.8% of the total.  Not surprisingly, Web advertising jumped to 7.6% of the ad share from 6.4% in 2006.  Magazine advertising also grew to 20% from 19.1%.

But, “given the uncertainties about near-term economic growth and consumer spending, we expect core ad spending will continue to face challenges,” the report says.

What is most interesting for our industry, however, is that direct response advertising increased 11.3% in early 2007 - more than any other of the top ten advertising categories.  I think we’re seeing the evidence of that with the growing number of attorneys advertisng on television. 

Viral marketing campaigns are less effective than the buzz about them would indicate, says a new report from New York bases Jupiter Research, which surveyed 3,580 marketers for their opinions.  Per the report, viral marketers plan to decrease use of this tactic by 55% within the next year.

While they effectively increase brand awareness, only 15% of viral campaigns in the last year actually achieved the marketer’s purpose of getting consumers to buy into and promote the company’s message to others.  And if a consumer doesn’t repeat the message to another, is a campaign really viral?

According to the report, the biggest problem viral marketers face - other than tracking campaign performance - is general ad clutter.

I believe that the Internet will continue to change the way we do business.  I don’t think I’d get much of an argument from anybody on that.  However, when I talk with my clients about strategic marketing initiatives that are web based, I often hear something like this “our clients don’t have computers so that probably wouldn’t work for them.”  I hear it less and less, but I still hear it. 

Well, I believe that the scales have tipped the other way and the majority of our clients do have computers.  That is confirmed to me more and more as I watch the email lists of my clients grow and I look at open and click through rates on emails that we send to clients.  I also see and measure pass along on some of the multimedia emails that we send and the opportunity that provides to grow our databases.

 It is such an exciting time to be a marketer.  Social networking, online video, email, podcasts, screencasts, the list is endless.  Are your clients on the web?  Yes they are - in droves.  If you’re not utilizing web based marketing strategies beyond just having a website, I recommend that you research options and make a few of these strategies part of your 2008 marketing program.

NC attorney David Daggett is the Managing Partner of Lewis & Daggett and one of my favorite clients!   http://www.lewisdaggett.com.  I wanted to mention him today  for a number of reasons.  First, because of an upcoming event that David is participating in.  And second, because this guy just gets it.  A few years ago I was at the firm and I met his law partner Mike Lewis and their amazing staff of employees clearly dedicated to customer service and helping people.  The firm tag line is “A History Of Helping People” and they really take that seriously.  

David happens to be preparing to compete in his fifth Ironman World Triathlon Championship in Kona, Hawaii later this month.  I was sending a press release out today, relevant to this upcoming event, and in composing that communication I said the following:

 ”I work with attorneys throughout the country, and although I don’t normally send out press releases, I decided to do so because my client Attorney David Daggett is so unique and his story is so inspiring.  David has boundless energy and a large staff of employees that happen to have the best customer service that I’ve observed in virtually any law firm in the country.  That just doesn’t happen unless someone at the top is setting a powerful example.  David really does that and I’d love to see his story of investment in people shared.  His athletics truly are a metaphor for his life and the way he approaches people.”

The video clip that accompanies this post was shot by a Fox film crew that followed David in his 2006 Ironman World Triathlon Championship.

David, best of luck to you in Hawaii.  We’ll look forward to hearing how it goes and hopefully seeing some video footage of the events!

If you’d like to send your well wishes to David, please click on comments just below the title of this post.

My Space allows members to customize their individual profile and in the process they have an opportunity to learn a great deal about their members.  So it just makes sense that in the very near future My Space advertising will be targeted based on the members profiles - just like we saw foreshadowed in the movie Minority Report a few years ago.

In today’s New York Times there was an article entitled “MySpace to Discuss Latest Efforts to Customize Ads for Members.”  According to the article “MySpace, the Web’s largest social network and one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet, says that after experimenting with technology over the last six months it can tailor ads to the personal information that its 110 million active users leave on their profile pages.”

 Currently when I visit My Space I see mass-market pitches for mortgages, online dating, etc.  But, if the future unfolds as anticipated, we may soon be presented with customized pitches during our online experience.  If and when that happens, the response will undoubtedly increase significantly, but the cost of the advertising will be greater as well.  Sounds like a win win to me!

There are lots of great marketing strategies that can be initiated on a miniscule budget.  In this podcast I share some of those strategies.