The Multichannel Customer Experience (Part 2)

If for-profit education companies and other companies focused on outbound consultative sales are going to pay more than lip service to interacting with potential customers via multiple channels, we'll first need to get our 3rd party lead vendors on board. For online education companies, insurers and financial services companies a good number (if not majority) of leads come from 3rd party online lead vendors like Quinstreet, LowerMyBills and Advertising.com.  There are several ways to generate these Internet leads but a typical process might be as follows: 

1. Lead vendor buys a keyword, say "online debt consolidation" and drives customers to a portal like lowermybills.com
2. Customer has to enter a lot of personal information including email and phone number
3. Lead vendor delivers leads to its client companies and receives a price per lead

This process only captures a fraction of potential customers. What if I am someone who doesn't want to give my personal information to a stranger? What if I don't want to get "spam" calls and emails? What if I want to use another channel - chat; eStara (where I enter my phone number to receive an automated call); SMS or send an email. You just can't do it now with many vendors (see LowerMyBills screenshot below).

Lead vendors now charge companies like AllState or UOPX on cost per lead generated through the type of lead form pictured below - but this has to change and become cost per action, depending on the action taken. For example, cost per traditional lead form, cost per chat, cost per eStara, cost per SMS. The traditional lead form is easy to track but it's harder to quantify these added channels. However, ultimately you could measure conversion rate off any of them and work backward to get to pricing. This is increasingly important as Generation Y becomes  the newest wave of consumers. As I wrote in my blog post Gen Y and the Changing Contact Center,  "As Gen-Y (12-29 year olds) becomes the next generation of consumers, these industries' strategies will need to change. Gen-Y uses the full gamut of multimedia tools to communicate - they will demand their product information via live chat, company/customer blogs, SMS, podcasts and social networking sites like MySpace. They do not want to fill out a form and wait for a call - Gen-Y wants many ways to access information and companies can no longer approach the customer acquisition process on their own terms."

Comments

[Dan]

Interesting post, Jason. We're seeing a trend where more and more publishers and agencies are experimenting with cost-per-call as a way to prove ROI to advertisers and deliver qualified leads. In one case, we're taking forms similar to the one you show above and delivering instant phone leads to advertisers, as opposed to just an email, which often leaves consumers waiting for days to get a response.

Not only does this help the customer experience (no more waiting for a response from vendors), but it extends the utility of the online advertisement because the advertiser knows exactly what they're paying for and will have a much better idea of where to spend their money.

While CPC has revolutionized online advertising, and been a great way to generate traffic to Web sites, with complex products and services -- such as loans for example -- people are much more likely to convert if they speak to a human being. In these situations, thinking beyond the click and delivering leads to the phone makes perfect sense.

[Jason Stoffer]

Dan,

I agree that cost-per-call is a valuable channel to communicate with customers and ought to be on any Internet lead form. My point is that every possible channel should be on every lead form, like the one from LowerMyBills on the post. The experience should be customer-centric, rather than centered on the easiest way to gather, track and pay for a lead. Some cusotmers may want a phone call, as you suggest, but some others may never want to talk to a human being during their transaction.

Every potential Internet inquiry should have the option to communicate by IM chat, click to call, by calling an 800 number, by getting emailed information or by completing the lead traditional form. The tricky part for the lead vendor and lead buyer is tracking and figuring out how leads from each of these channels convert and then figuring out an appropriate cost per lead by channel.

[Carolyn Allen]

In B to B, a PHONE CALL has been the preferred method of contact for serious prospects -- for many years. I'm struggling with how to marry online information to generate leads...and the reality of phone actions. Any clues?

[Carolyn Allen]

In B to B, a PHONE CALL has been the preferred method of contact for serious prospects -- for many years. I'm struggling with how to marry online information to generate leads...and the reality of phone actions. Any clues?