The optimism of #Purpose & science of #design in forging #digital customer experiences! Opinions my own!

A lead used to be a simple thing. Anyone who raised his or her hand in response to an offer qualified as a lead. It’s not that simple anymore. To pass muster with the sales department, you need to give them leads they feel are qualified and ready to talk turkey. To do that, you need to get inside the thought process of your sales team. You need to engage them and find out what they consider a qualified lead – I suggest running sales workshops, and picking a few branches (if you’re a Bank) to pilot the concept. Make sure you make a poster boy out of the branch managers who participate, let word of mouth do the rest. Most marketing professionals fail to do this, to take time to get into the psyche of the sales force. Do a survey, don’t inundate the front lines with “too many” leads per sales rep ~ instead ask them what’s “the right amount”; take that number and subtract some. You distill some really small (but meaningful, symbolic) hurdles the sales reps will want to take on, and more importantly, they feel they are involved in the planning process.

The disconnect between marketing and sales is the main reason most direct marketing programs break down on the back end. Getting response is one of direct marketing’s great strengths, especially if you know how to use it. If you have salespeople, their great strength is closing deals. Use them for that. The No. 1 obstacle to moving leads through to the sales team is the perception that leads are not qualified and not worth working. Perception.

Implementing an Enterprisewide customer contact strategy is hard – but respecting customer preferences and ensuring communication relevance is mandatory. The reasons aren’t hard to discern: Virulent and vocal customer backlash, shrinking mail files, and a renewed focus on campaign bottom line all force marketers to pay more attention to when, where, how, and why they communicate with our customers.

Respecting customer preferences and ensuring communication relevance is a hot topic among

marketers. The reasons aren’t hard to discern: Virulent and vocal customer backlash, shrinking mail

files, and a renewed focus on campaign bottom line all force marketers to pay more attention to when,

where, how, and why they communicate with their customers. Countries like Singapore are setting up national Do-Not-Call (“DNC”) Registries, and mis-contacts are penalized, sometimes as much as $1000 each time. The numbers quickly add up.

What’s required is a coordinated and consistent approach to customer communication across lines of business and channels, designed to both improve customer experience and maximize profitability.

A win-win if you will, for both the Bank and the customer.

Challenges are still aplenty: marketers still face formidable challenges like centralizing customer data, achieving organizational alignment (possibly the toughest hurdle), coordinating line-of-business and enterprise objectives, and overcoming product silos. These are non-trivial tasks. Taking away potential contacts from your credit card or unsecured head would irk him or her – I assure you – even though those contacts are best allocated to another department for optimal Bank-wide revenue impact.