Actuellement notre équipe travaille sur un projet touristique très intéressant rattaché au système IVR. Je partage donc avec vous cet article sur l’utilisation des IVR d’un point de vue marketing, ce qui n’est pas très commun au Québec et Canada.
Marlon Bowser, CEO of
HTK,
explains how integrating text messaging and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) can help increase campaign response rates
The battle for the hearts, minds and airtime spend of the UK’s mobile phone users is fierce. Customers will not hesitate to change their network operator if they can get a better deal or service. And without contract tie-ins, the pre-pay market is the most aggressive.
HTK has been working closely with one of the UK’s largest network operators since 2003, helping it hold on to its position as pre-pay market leader with the highest customer satisfaction rating. The Christmas period is always a busy time for generating new customers, but many network operators experience a higher than usual level of churn in January and February. In 2009, the pre-pay marketing department at this large network operator wanted to concentrate a retention campaign on 225,000 customers acquired in December through one of its largest UK retail partners.
The focus of the campaign was on subscribers who had not taken a ‘free allowance’; with the implication being that those customers were more likely to churn than subscribers who had. This would be one of the first pieces of marketing communication to those customers, so it was vital to get it right. In order to test the outbound SMS campaign, the operator decided to send a different message to two pools of 10,000 customers each. The most successful response rate over a 7-day period would determine the message to be used for the remaining large pool.
Tariff options
The SMS was compelling. Subscribers were reminded of their tariff options and asked to respond for more information. In the first test-group of 10,000 customers, the call-to-action was simply to reply to the text message. Conversely, the second group was asked to dial an interactive voice response (IVR) line, hosted by HTK.
The results were startling. Of messages successfully delivered to the handset, the SMS reply was 33%, an impressive figure, but not unexpected for such a compelling offer. However, the IVR response was even better at almost two-times the SMS figure, a response rate of 59.5%.
Over the 7-day test of 20,000 subscribers, the conversion rate of customers actually taking-up a new tariff, and therefore showing a loyalty that would help protect against churn, was 24.5% for the SMS channel and 36.9% for IVR. Again, this was a spectacular figure for the IVR response channel.
The SMS-to-IVR campaign trial was deemed a massive success, and was subsequently applied to the entire population of 225,000 subscribers. Over the following three-month period, this resulted in over 61,000 successful conversions. That’s 61,000 ‘at risk’ customers who were actively retained.
Personalisation
So let’s think about this for a moment. IVR is typically thought of as dull, monotonous and even irritating, so how can it work so well for marketing? Firstly, it comes down to personalisation. By uniquely identifying the caller through their mobile phone number, the ‘campaign IVR’ is able to make an attractive offer straight away, without the need for the caller to trawl through menus in search of what they’re looking for.
This approach of rapidly presenting the most relevant content, individually tailored to each caller, can be extended to two or even three propositions in a single call. Compared to the 160-character limitations of SMS, IVR is a phenomenal way of delivering targeted content. And because the right content is offered straight away, calls are shorter and the cost of marketing is reduced. It’s a win-win formula and a great example of how combining channels can work so well.
IVR has now become a cornerstone of the network operator’s pre-pay marketing activity, handling over 30 million calls per year. Not only does the IVR provide great marketing results and more loyal customers, but it has been proven to help steer calls away from the contact centre too.
And it’s not just for mobile network operators and large service providers. Dynamic and personalised marketing IVR can work for any company with a large number of customers and a diverse range of propositions; whether in retail or finance, insurance, leisure, real estate or utility services.
Unlikely as it may sound, IVR has emerged as a marketer’s dream
