Thursday, May 12, 2011

Monday mornings

Monday morning 10.30 am meeting in progress- the phone rang persistently. Answered the phone to find the call from Matrix Cellular to ask if I would be travelling overseas and if yes they would like to offer their services . I've used their services several times. Their calls every fortnight to remind are a waste of their money and my time. ( I'm glad the co that issues the forex has not decided to call every fortnight..I would probably plan a trip overseas to escape such calls )

Monday mornings are not the best time to market services like these. The start of the week tends to be an important time for most folks - planning , review etc . To call customers then is an unappreciated interruption that could actually work negatively . In fact , even emails should be prudently sent especially in a b2b context. Send the marketing/ biz proporal mail later in the day (I.e on a Monday) * or week.
* exceptions being time bound proposals/ tenders or if already pre agreed to send in the communication asap.

The lady from Matrix who called was visibly disappointed . I felt sorry for her. In this case the call was unnecessary and the timing couldn't have been worse. Planning sales calls better would help the morale of the sales person too thereby opening up the possibility for better results ( there are cos that need to introspect and analyse whether they should be calling the customer at all or at the frequency they currently are e.g would an email do the job just as well or better)

Realigning sales calls to an appropriate time will make for a better week and better results for all involved.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

KYC - Know Your Customer

My mobile service provider of 12 years kept sending text messages "Your invitation to join Loop M-Channel - a service for best offers and promotions expires in 10 days. To join reply to this SMS with yes". Out of curiosity I texted 'Yes'. After which followed the most bizarre question a company could ask a customer after 12 years - "are you 1. Male or 2. Female ? " . This was then followed by a question about age group and interests.

The fact that the questions are easy to answer via sms and that the replies are free - possibly gives the company the feeling that they can ask pretty much anything.

Maybe they should use the facility to ask more pertinent questions " Do you intend to remain our customer ? Text 1 for Yes , 2 for No "