| What is your
company's specialty and mission statement?
infoUSA is the premier compiler of business and consumer information in
the United States and Canada. infoUSA's database of 14 million businesses
and 250 million consumers supports our customers through the application
of compiled data, dynamic online tools and market intelligence to their
sales, profiling and marketing efforts. Content is the essential
ingredient in every marketing program, and infoUSA has the most
comprehensive data in the industry, and is the only company to own a
proprietary database of 250 million consumers and 14 million businesses
under one roof.
What makes your services unique and how can users benefit by using
them?
InfoUSA believes that data drives all organizations. If the core
information is aged, incorrect or not relevant, the foundation for all
applications and decision-making rests on a faulty base. As a result, it
is a business imperative to ensure that the underlying foundation contains
data that are accurate, timely and up-to-date. infoUSA is the only
organization that telephone verifies all the business data in our file.
The telephone verification process ensures quality while at the same time
enriches the file with unique data elements.
InfoUSA's CallerID++ ASP service leverages the quality and robustness
of infoUSA in a teleservices environment. Through a simple API, clients
can provide infoUSA with an incoming phone number directly from the ANI or
workstation, to which infoUSA will append name, address and other
demographics. This all happens in real time. Further data enhancements,
such as age, income, length of residence for consumers; and category,
contact name and years in operations for businesses, can be made available
through the same service. Clients using CallerID++ can gain efficiencies
in their selling efforts through reduced call times, while automatically
collecting valuable demographic information to support their back-end
marketing at the same time. Further ROI is gained through reduced
keystrokes and error-free data entry.
What is your vision of the future of the CRM/contact center/teleservices
industry, and what are the challenges?
Obviously, the FTC Do Not Call Legislation will change the face of the
industry today. Telemarketing companies will be unable to recover from the
loss in business, and conservative thinking estimates that millions of
jobs will likely be lost. The negative impact that comes from the FTC
ruling will have other results as well. Marketers will continue to
integrate their contact centers in all aspects of their promotional
activities. Traditional direct mail and advanced e-mail services will gain
a larger mind share for corporate marketers, and will be emphasized as
companies develop their coordinated marketing program.
Intelligent marketers will need to coordinate their activities to
leverage their existing teleservices business. Each channel will need to
complement the other; it is no longer acceptable to consider your email
marketing separate from your teleservices unit, just as businesses can no
longer treat their catalog marketing separate from their contact center.
Each channel needs to reflect upon the others. This accomplishes the dual
goals of unified messaging and improved customer service.
Successful companies will need to focus on coordination at every point
of customer interaction. The most successful marketing efforts relate to
the ability to interact on a complex level and provide a one-to-one
service engagement. Successful contact center operations share the unique
strength of allowing for relationship-building between the customer and
the call center employees. A businesses marketing efforts, whether through
e-mail, direct mail, radio, television, etc., should continue to drive
contact point back to the teleservices center, which should then be able
to maximize the customer relationship. If your marketing efforts reflect
back directly to the call center, and the call center is enabled to handle
complex customer interactions, you have the recipe for customer
satisfaction and loyalty.
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