Viral IVR Campaign

Email + IVR Integrated Campaign

IVR / CRM integration

Both the Marketing and Technical skill sets together really are required to optimize these systems. Here’s an example from Tootie:

The original VRU opened up with “Enter the item number”. That’s a pretty logical thought on the engineering side; after all, it’s an order-taking interface. But as a Marketing person, I understood the behavior of the customer. First, I thought that most all orders would be placed for the item on screen. Second, I thought it was possible many folks would not have a phone in the same room as the TV (this was 1991 and cordless phones were not a big deal yet). So they would have trouble accessing the item number and this could supress buying impulse.

So I asked the engineers, “Do we know what percentage of orders are for items not currently on the TV screen?” Sure. Answer: 1%

Knowing many of our systems were keyed to current item being sold, I asked, “Can we have the VRU look for current item and just speak it to the customer?” And of course, the answer was yes, that would be easy. I also wanted the VRU to be a bit friendlier, which was also easy enough.

So the new open became: “Hi, this is Tootie! I’m currently taking orders for the (product name). Press One to order this item or press two to order a different item”.

That simple change reduced the “bounce rate” at the initial open by 90%. You see the same kinds of dramatic changes in web site optimization, where a very simple change in the logic flow creates huge improvements in conversion rate.

Engineers and Marketers should get together more often…