Telemarketing Software Featured Article

Effective and proactive customer contact, or PCC, will help reach out to customers by delivering personalized service messages and sales offers, according to a recent piece on ITBusinessNet.com. The system will use customer and product information garnered at various departments of the enterprise to develop profitable relationships.

Shaheen Haque, territory manager, Middle East and Turkey at Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert), said that companies should not wait for customers to make calls for information but the company’s contact centers should instead contact those customers, in order to be competitive in the Mideast.

A contact center strategy is considered outdated if it expects customers to make calls first, or if outbound calls are designed for mass markets. Such efforts will not translate to enhancements in customer loyalty nor an increase in sales.

Customers in the Middle East region have started expecting more from companies, and global companies are falling in line to maintain effective communication channels with them. Effective interaction can be sustained by PCC, also known as “smart outbound” initiatives.

Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) conducted a survey in 2010 involving contact center professionals. About 51 percent of the respondents declared that their collections, sales and marketing volume will be same while almost 65 percent expected their PCC to increase. This highlights the way businesses are going to use outbound contact centers to change the way in which customers will perceive outbound PCC initiatives.  PCC can leverage several channels including telephone calls, email, text messages and postal mail.

However, PCC goes beyond traditional sales and marketing programs, and “up-sell and cross-sell” activities that depend on inbound customer calls and are considered reactive and not proactive, said officials.

PCC applications are chosen to show that businesses care for its customers and their preferences. Contented customers stay loyal and also turn marketers by spreading their positive feedback via social channels and by word-of-mouth. PCC strategies can help in various industries like collections, insurance, the medical supplies industry and more.