|
Q2 Lessons Learned- as the kids leave school!
Greetings!
As the second quarter of 2009 draws to a close, we realize that we are in this economic situation for the long haul. That means doing more in your operations, doing it better - and for less money - no matter what your business is. We would like to introduce three concepts: voice broadcasting, dynamic phone number insertion and our colleague Ira Perlman has some insights about the Chicago commercial real estate market. Remember, it's all about incremental ways of running your business better and leaner for the long term!
|
|
Voice Broadcasting: 17 Questions To Ask Your Service Provider
Are you shopping around for a solution to automatically send outbound calls to customers or prospects?
Whether you call it Voice Broadcasting, Phone Broadcasting, Voice Mail / Message Broadcasting, Robo Calling, or just automated calling, here are 17 questions you should consider asking before you choose your provider:
1. On-Time Delivery Guarantee - This isn't the airline industry. Expect on-time service. If your calls go out late, you shouldn't have to pay. Unfortunately some voice broadcasting providers tend to over-schedule broadcasts at a given time, forcing them to send out your broadcasts behind schedule. Does the provider have an on-time delivery guarantee?
2. Self-Service or Middleman - Can you manage & schedule your own broadcasts, or will you need to rely on a middleman to do everything on your behalf? We strongly recommend the former. In either case, expect excellent customer service.
3. Transfer Fees & Double Billing - Some providers advertise one per minute rate, but double bill by charging you for each person on the line. Ask if they charge extra for a transfer, or if they double bill, to make sure you're not going to be charged twice the advertised rate.
4. Extra Fees - While you may need to pay for extra ports if you want to send out lots of simultaneous calls, you shouldn't have to pay for setup fees, unanswered calls, busy signals, disconnected numbers, or fees for transferred calls. Ask what extra fees may apply.
5. Per Minute Rates- How much are per minute rates? More than 10-12 cents per minute is pretty high, while 1-2 cents per minute is suspiciously low. Where are the hidden fees? How is the sound & delivery quality? Ask these companies tough questions, and ask for references.
6. Rounding - If you are doing high volume broadcasting, will the company offer 30 second, or even 6 second, rounding instead of to 60? A provider that offers 6 or 30 second rounding could save you half (or more) of the advertised price of a provider offering only 60 second rounding. If a call is normally $0.035/minute, rounding a 24 second call could cut your call costs in half with 30 second rounding, and even lower with 6 second rounding.
7. FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule Opt-Out compliance - In 2008 the FTC enacted the Telemarketing Sales Rule which requires voice broadcasters to offer an opt-out option in their voice broadcast messages. Much like the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of solicitation emails, certain voice broadcasts now require an "unsubscribe" or "opt-out" option. Ask what compliance tools your vendor offers.
8. Pausing Campaigns - Let's say you are voice broadcasting to generate leads. Your campaign does surprisingly well and all of your phones are ringing off the hook. If your agents are all busy, you'll want to temporarily pause your campaign so potential leads don't get a busy signal when they transfer back. Does the voice broadcasting provider offer a pausing capability?
9. Voice Mail Detection - Can your vendor detect whether a live person or voice mail answers your call? Just like you'd relay a message differently to a live person than to a voice mail, your voice broadcasting company should enable you to deliver an alternative message for voice mails.
10. Interactive Voice Response capabilities - Do you want an interactive voice broadcast, or are you just looking to send a recorded message? If you want interactive calls, ask your vendor about interactive voice response (IVR) capabilities. This can be especially useful in the lead generation business where you want to prequalify leads.
11. Transfer - Ask how you can route customers or prospects when they chose to transfer back to you. For example, many voice broadcasting companies will have you record a message and then tell the caller to press 1 to be transferred back to a single number. What if you want to route the caller based on their location to the nearest store? To an available sales agent? To your office, cell, & home phone simultaneously? To your virtual receptionist, an interactive voice response dialog, or voice mail? Figure out what you need, and find a voice broadcasting company that can route calls to fit your need.
12. Recording - When there is a transfer back to your sales agent, do you want to be able to record that conversation "for quality & training purposes"? Ask if that is possible.
13. Best Practices - Does your vendor truly care about your success? Ask for tips & best practices or assistance from a customer service rep who has experience setting up successful broadcasts.
14. Customer Service - Can you reach the provider over the phone? If you schedule a big broadcast will they monitor the calls? Are they nice, helpful & informative on the phone? Consider your voice broadcasting provider a partner, and demand outstanding customer service & support.
15. Open & Honest - Does the provider publish pricing on their website? Do they answer your questions in a straight forward manner? Do they get back to you quickly? Can you find their phone number, address, and management team on the website? Do they have convincing testimonials from real customers? Find a company you can trust.
16. Reporting - Do you get instant access to reports, or do you need to wait? Can you download them into multiple formats, or is it just some numbers in an email from your sales rep? Using reports to determine your ROI and to improve future broadcasts is crucial. Demand top-notch reporting.
17. Silo or suite - Does your provider just do voice broadcasting, or can they come up with creative solutions to help your business grow? Ask what else the voice broadcasting company does for companies in your industry.
In the voice broadcasting business, you get what you pay for. Spend time doing research & asking the right questions.
Voice Broadcasting Application: Appointment Confirmation for medical and dental practices
Time management is a key component to running a successful medical or dental practice. When patients miss appointments, it throws off your day and prevents you from filling that slot with a patient whom you can help. Ifbyphone's Voice Broadcasting enables you to automatically call patients to remind them of their appointments.
Using Appointment Reminder Calls For Your Office
Instead of using your staff's valuable time to make repetitive administrative calls, simply pick the recorded message you want to send, upload the phone numbers for the patients who have appointments tomorrow, set the start time for your calls, and hit send. Whether you are calling 10 or 1000 patients, the Ifbyphone Appointment Reminder service will make each call for you. You can even personalize your message with the patient's name, appointment time or other appropriate information.
Key Features of Voice Broadcasting
> Complete control to schedule and manage broadcasts
With our no-programming Voice Broadcasting system, you set the delivery schedule and even the speed that calls are made.
> Change Appointment Options
Proactively learn which patients need to change their appointment. Ifbyphone's Appointment
Reminder Service includes a Press 1 option so patients can Press 1 to speak with a receptionist
to reschedule their appointment, giving your office time to fill that slot.
> Instant access to real-time reports about each call
Real-time broadcast reports let you know which patients received the message live or on their answering machines.
|
Getting the most out of your marketing expense by using Dynamic Phone Number Insertion
To say the economy is bad might be a bit of an understatement. It's affecting companies and people in every sector of the economy. People are naturally looking for ways to tighten their belts. Every expense is now being looked at a second and third time. Is this expense delivering value? If you are working with your clients to help increase their sales, you need to show more than web traffic these days.
Companies need to see how that traffic converts to real business. More web traffic doesn't necessarily mean more business. So how do you show your customer the bottom line impact you are having? Well, IfByPhone has always been about taking your customer the last mile, and showing that path. Here are two ways that we have been helping prove advertising ROI for a long time:
- Click-to-Call - For a long time, you have been able to put a simple link on your website that creates phone calls between your vistors and you. We can then show you how they got to your site in the first place, and what keywords they used to find you. This is a simple little application that will help you generate a few extra calls per month, and for very little money, show you what keywords are generating phone calls.
- Call Tracking - You can get inexpensive local and toll free numbers with us. Put different numbers in different media (one in print advertising, another on TV, another for online). IfByPhone will tell you who called in, when (down to the hour of the day), and how long they talked.
- Track Calls through Google Analytics: We can post each call your receive to your Google Analytics account, so you can measure the ROI of your online advertising with on line results as well as off line results.
These are nice inexpensive tools. But recently we added another that really fills out our offerings. This new service is called Dynamic Phone Number Insertion. Let's say you do a pretty good business on the Internet. Some of your customers convert by buying from your site, but others you talk to before they buy. You are probably bidding on several combinations of keywords from Google, Yahoo or MSN to generate your traffic. You can see how many hits the keywords are generating, and if you're interested look at analytics to see how long they stay, or how many pages they visit on your site.
But wouldn't it be nice to track people that convert off line too? Wouldn't it be cool to track which keywords are actually generating sales? With Dynamic Number Replacement, you can do exactly that. Simply tell us which number you want to show up when a specific keyword is entered in, and when the user sees your landing page, they will see that number. Cool, huh? Ah, yes, but you have too many keywords! Well, how about you just add a tag on the end of the inbound link. That way you can show different numbers by campaign.
All in all, we provide any number of ways to help you measure the ROI of your marketing spend. For people buying marketing products, this will give you a direct correlation between the money you spend and the income you make. It can help you divert resources towards more effective keywords and improve your bottom line. |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
Featured Article
The Soft Chicago Office Market brings in great opportunities
Sr. Vice President, Howard Ecker and Assoc.
Let's face it, the Chicago office market is extremely soft, and may continue to get softer. Yet there are some encouraging opportunities especially for tenants looking to expand or find new space.
There are creative opportunities for tenants to negotiate better deals in leasing for an office space. Tenants particularly in the finance industry have been greatly affected with the downturn of the economy. Mergers, consolidations and office department re-structuring have forced institutions and companies to close or relocate, thus removing their names from buildings. Giving other tenants to lease at an attractive rate and re-name certain buildings. On the other hand, landlords looking to refinance in the next 2-5 years are unenthusiastic in lowering rents to meet the market and renew tenants, but are forced to offer incentives to existing and prospective tenants to keep spaces occupied.
Green leasing is gaining traction as well between landlord and tenant partnership. The practice of being "green conscientious" is beneficial for both by lowering operating expenses for buildings, and therefore benefits tenants directly. Sustainable practices of tenants have seen a reduction on their energy cost, paper consumption and water consumption. Landlords with existing buildings are making efforts in sustainable practices as well. Reaping off the benefits in cost reduction, a better and healthier office environment, and government provided incentives.
Ira Perlman can be reached at 773 569 0054 to meet your commercial property needs as a tenant! | |
