Prospects and customers contact
your organization every day for many reasons.
Following up with each of these responders in a
prompt, courteous, consistent way which adds
value to them is the definition of good response
management. By executing good response
management day in and day out, year after year,
while being able to report on results, will
result in the ability to leverage your
responders to generate revenue for your
organization.
The implementation of response
management can take many forms. Consider:
You are launching a campaign and need a process
to receive the responders
You have multiple initiatives and need a
central unit to be able to compare results
You have no idea of the quantity, satisfaction
or service level of your responders
You receive responses from various media (phone,
email, fax, web, BRC)
You need resource to handle level 1 and 1.5
support for your products
You have key members of your team on extended
leave and need a back up plan
Common sense tells you that
answering the phone professionally, responding
to inquiries quickly and providing contact
consistently shouldn't be difficult. But
it is. A common sense approach also
provides an answer. The answer is four
pronged.
|
Element |
Description |
Result |
|
Setting the standard:
Service Level Agreements |
A Service Level Agreement
(SLA)
is an agreed period of time or an
acceptable quantity of responses to be
handled a certain way. Sample SLA's include:
95% of inbound phone calls handled live
75% of emails replied within 30 minutes
80% of BRC's called on the same day
received
Expectations of times and acceptable quantities like these are key to providing timely follow up.
When the resources providing the response
management know they are being graded on
this service, follow up times will
improve. The clock is running! |
Timely
follow up |
|
Everybody
sells:
Dedicated, professional
staff |
Since
each responder is either a customer or a
prospective customer, each should be
handled with the greatest of care and
consistency. Every member of your
team responsible for following up should
have the training, experience and
sophistication to handle situations with
confidence and care. |
Increased satisfaction |
|
Database
and reporting |
Once
there is an agreed level of response,
there must be a method and process to
measure the response. Capturing
the times and dates of responder events
must be done in a database to ensure
consistent results and efficient
reporting of the service level.
Set up a database system to capture each
responder with the appropriate
milestones documented for the record. |
Efficient follow up |
|
Documented procedures |
Most
organizations make the common mistake of
assuming the process is so easy that
anyone could handle it. It is
because of this perception that each step
of the process must be well documented
so each response is handled the same way
every time. This is especially
important if you have multiple marketing
campaigns in process at one time.
|
Consistent follow up |
If you have implemented all of
these steps across your organization,
congratulations!
Most times, organizations lack
either the "critical mass" or the dedicated
focus to put a response management team in
place consistently. And consider the
constant battle to get resource to handle these
functions with vacations, holidays and sick
days. Your organization still needs to
provide consistent service over these times.
Take the
Response Management Self
Assessment to see how your organization stacks
up in this area.
