Ofcom has finally ruled that 0800 or 0808 numbers should be made free to call from mobile phones; with many believing the decision is long overdue. It’s great news for the UK consumer – used to spending a total of £900m a year on 250 million calls to service lines – who will no longer be penalised for choosing mobile over landline use.
Savvy contact centres should see this ruling as a first step in adapting the old contact strategies to meet the needs of the modern customer. I’ve written previously about some general contact centre processes that will help meet the expecations of the mobile customer, but how should you adapt your outbound strategy? Developing robust contact strategies to determine the right time and channel to contact mobile customers streamlines processes, speeds up resolution time and personalises the mode and time of contact, providing better customer experiences which are likely to improve your conversion or sales targets.
Intelligent call backs
For instance, if a customer has submitted an enquiry on your website at 3am, a call to their home landline at 9am is unlikely to be successful. Instead try options like an SMS to ‘warm’ the contact at 12pm, followed by a call to a mobile at 2pm.
Remember, the customer uses a multitude of devices and platforms and is becoming increasingly sophisticated in switching between channels according to what is convenient for them (e.g. voice, email, web, social media and messaging). So your contact strategy needs to adapt accordingly.
Mobile screening
Ironically, calls to the ‘always on’ mobile owner typically suffer much lower connect rates for outbound campaigns. With one in three mobile phones typically being invalid, switched off or roaming overseas, avoid wasted time by using a mobile number screening feature which eliminates time wasted trying to connect those calls and only dials the numbers that are on and available.
The contact centre industry is still struggling to apply communications strategies built for landline calls to today’s multi-channel mobile customer. It is time to shift from a one-channel reactive strategy, to a multichannel, interaction-driven system to create a consistent personalised customer experience across every channel. The brands that embrace the Ofcom ruling as an opportunity to communicate with mobile consumers on their terms are most likely to create strong customer relationships and long-term loyalty.
