Client Case Studies
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Fulfillment Services Case Studies
Direct Response Television for a Medical Device Company
An international corporation marketing medical devices developed a marketing program targeting severely obese individuals located in four strategically identified markets. Marketing objectives included
- Increasing product awareness.
- Tracking response by media vehicle and market.
- Testing DRTV as a medium..
Issues
An aggressive marketing communications schedule, including TV, newspaper and billboard advertisements, was developed to reach the
target audience. The message to customers included a call to action: attend a free seminar to learn how this product can change
your life!
Solutions
CMR's fully integrated project team organized resources and implemented a marketing communications program including:
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR) to front-end all calls.
- CMR agents who registered qualified prospects to attend free seminars.
- Mailing informational fulfillment packets to all qualified prospects.
- Emailing confirmation letters to prospects who registered for free seminars.
- Outbound Teleservices to confirm appointments and follow up with absentees or with prospects who originally did not wish to register for a seminar until they received their information packet.
- Reporting daily registration files to client for coordination of seminar logistics.
- Reporting results of all calls by day, time, market and media vehicle, which enabled the client to make informed media purchases.
Results
CMR registered more than 1,900 customers for seminars and achieved an overall conversion rate of 30.5% of all callers. DRTV
campaigns typically generate a significant number of customer abandons, due to consumer curiosity and lack of follow-up commitment.
CMR's conversion rate jumped to an amazing 47% among customers who took the time to speak to our agents and answer the
prequalification questions.
Our client expressed enthusiasm and appreciation for CMR's professional customer interactions and commitment to excellence throughout the duration of the program.
Print Campaign for a Pharmaceutical Company
A pharmaceutical company wished to introduce a new personal health care product targeting females between 18 and 45 years of age. Although the product crossed all socioeconomic groups, a special effort was made to stimulate use by college-aged women. This effort was primarily to maximize the lifetime potential of the customer, as well as to reach customers before alternative habits were formed.
Through national magazine advertisements prompting an inbound call, the client goal was to stimulate usage of a product, assemble a user database for further market research, and encourage repeat use of the product. Due to the personal nature of the product, the customer was given the option of entering their request through an IVR or going to a live agent group consisting solely of female CMR agents.
Actual use of the product involved a visit to their personal physician, discussion of their desire to use the new product, obtaining a prescription and filling it at their local pharmacy. Tracking of usage came from the return (by the pharmacist) of a rebate check with the customer's identification number. The product category had a strong re-buy percentage, so stimulating initial product use was vital.
Due to strict FDA requirements, CMR agents were required to follow an approved script exactly. When questions outside of the script were asked, the agent referred the prospect to their personal physician. If a customer called in with a problem or complaint, the CMR agent captured comment detail and transferred the customer to the appropriate client internal center.
The initial call captured information regarding previous products used, age, reason for interest, and existing knowledge of alternative products. In addition to coded data, verbatim comments provided some of the most valuable insight into how the client was perceived by potential customers.
After the call was completed, the file was sent to CMR's internal fulfillment center for processing of a personalized check with MICR encoding. Check numbers were assigned by the database as the original call was completed. Once again, due to FDA requirements strict quality control was required on outgoing fulfillment.
Integrated components of this campaign included:
- Media Support. Advertisements in national magazines boosted brand awareness and stimulated inbound calls.
- Database development. Requirements ranged from full contact record database and fulfillment tracking and redemption to address correction, customer commentary summaries, and survey responses.
- Reporting. CMR generated extensive reports for this campaign: daily, weekly and cumulative call activity (calls offered and handles, service levels, talk time, abandon rates) and call composition (completed surveys, fulfillment, customer service referrals, IVR and live operator analysis), verbatim commentary from customers, inventory monitoring (check management, redemption curves, stock status), and information research (customer demographics, propensity for new products currently offered, ranking on potential product offering, change in purchasing patterns, competitive issues and largest motivator to switch, price point and product sensitivity).
- Fulfillment. The fulfillment package met FDA specifications and included three inserts, MICR encoded rebate check, and customized packaging.
Inbound Services Case Studies
Increasing Access Line Retention Rates for a Telecommunications Company
For the first time, a local telecommunications company re-directed customer disconnect call volumes from their internal, union customer service operation to CMR, an outsourced, non-union, sales-centric call center organization.
High-Speed Internet, Video/Television Service, Wireless Packages, and other vertical product lines were offered to help increase customer retention. Marketing objectives included increasing access line retention, improving customer loyalty, minimizing the loss of revenue per local customer and increasing product sales penetration.
Issues
Due to a slowing economy and an increase level of competition from cable providers and wireless companies, many telecommunications
companies are experiencing access line churn at record levels.
Solutions
CMR's fully integrated project team organized resources and implemented a business process outsourcing plan that included:
- A training module to help Call Center Agents diffuse irate callers, build loyalty, "right-size" customers, and ultimately sell more effectively.
- A Quality Assurance system utilizing digital recording technology, KPI reporting, and comprehensive development plans to drive call center agent success.
- Skill-based and priority-based routing technology to ensure that the agents with the highest conversion performance responded to the majority of retention opportunities.
- Workforce management strategy to ensure that 95% of all calls were answered and 60% were answered in 120 seconds or less.
- Market intelligence that assisted the marketing teams to better understand which customers were leaving the business, why, and what counter-marketing offers would be most effective to minimize access line loss.
Results
Successful results were achieved by exceeding the client's total projected retention goals from a 6% retention rate to 40%. CMR
additionally was able to increase product penetration for high-speed Internet, video services, and local and long distance telephone.
Corporate Call Center Process Improvement
CMR was awarded the Agreement to become a client's corporate call center and customer service organization - a task that requires processing approximately 25,000 calls per month as part of new order processing, customer service, and professional request of fulfillment information.
Specifically for this project, CMR designed a transition plan to close the existing client corporate call center in California and phase in the CMR facility for call center processing. In preparation for this, CMR successfully designed a network to manage over 500 different toll-free numbers for call routing, advertising tracking and customer service. Calls are processed and reported by call.
Issues
After receiving 100 percent of the client's traffic, CMR identified a problem. Based on direction from the client, all calls were
treated equally in order of priority, meaning lower-converting calls were answered in the same manner as higher-converting calls.
However, we quickly uncovered that Internet calls converted to sales at a much higher rate than those from a television source.
During peak periods when CMR was busy handling television-sourced calls, Internet calls were sitting in a "holding pattern," which
causes some callers to hang up. This approach caused the client to lose sales and revenue and left our available agents to spend
time with customers whohad a low propensity to purchase.
Solutions
CMR designed a highly complex, intelligent-based routing call configuration to field the client's calls. Basically, Internet calls
were given a higher priority than those from other sources. This process affords CMR the ability to route an Internet call to the
first available agent regardless of how many calls are in queue.
Results
After quickly implementing this process improvement, the conversion rate quickly escalated, and CMR achieved 37% conversion on
sales calls offered. In addition, the client recognized lower abandon rates from their highest-converting customers, increased
customer satisfaction, and quicker fulfillment turnaround times.
Outbound Services - Case Study #1
Increasing Sales for a Telecommunications Company
A leading telecommunications company partnered with CMR in a "winback" campaign targeted at former customers. IN addition to providing high-quality customer interactions, marketing objectives included increasing access line share, vertical services share, top line revenue and average revenue per access line.
Issues
Increasing competition and the advent of alternate technologies has negatively impacted the number of land-based telephone lines
served by the local telecommunications companies. The client developed a targeted campaign that included lower price points and
services packages that bundled local access lines, vertical calling features, high-speed Internet, satellite TV and other ancillary
products.
Solutions
CMR's project team organized resources and implemented a marketing communications program that included:
- Providing top-quality customer interactions.
- Initiating and maintaining direct Virtual Private Network (VPN) connectivity to client-housed order management tools.
- Utilizing PGP software to provide secure file transfers of customer data.
- Implementing a mutually agreeable volume ramp-up plan that provided sufficient staffing.
- Training agents to perform beyond the client's quality and productivity standards.
- Implementing agent commission plans designed to incent the cross sale of vertical products, including satellite TV, additional telephone access lines and high-speed Internet.
- Assuring quality interactions by working closely with the client to determine program quality objectives and agent monitoring requirements.
- Implementing a best-in-class sales verification process
Results
CMR immediately proved our worth as a partner by producing the highest conversion rate among the clients' multiple contact center
vendors. Our client also took note that in the first 90 days after implementation, CMR had not generated a single customer
complaint that required client follow-up. CMR continues to both nurture this strategic relationship and provide stellar sales
results and top notch customer interactions.