Service Providers should be utilizing smart marketing to reach prospects, upgrade customers and provide optimal CX. Leveraging data, providing simplicity and personalizing communication helps ensure the best possible experience.
Utilize Data + Make it Simple + Personalize = Smart Marketing
Use Data to Target
Providers should analyze billing data to view revenue. Identify growth areas based on the estimated revenue per location. Messages can be sent to prospect addresses with instructions for online, mail and phone signup, giving prospects flexibility to sign-up whenever and wherever they wish.
Brian Weis, Customer Success Manager at Innovative Systems, explains the ways in which providers leverage technology to delight their customers. “While mailings and bill stuffers used to be the most effective way to reach customers, in today’s digital world, your online presence, your tech tools and your ability to reach customers on their cell phones using texting is key.”
Customers Need Simple
Customers are looking for simple and straightforward solutions to make their lives easier. ebills, online payments and eSigning paperwork all reduce the need for in-person visits or mailing back and forth. Giving customers the power to sign up, on any device, at any time is the epitome of simplicity. If it’s too hard, if it takes up too much of their time, customers will take their business elsewhere.
“In recent years I’ve found a dramatic shift in Broadband marketing from being solely focused on upsell opportunities and more towards creating a self-sufficient customer. I have seen incentive programs, bill messages, etc promoting automatic payments and paperless billing signup. This helps drive costs down for the company and provides a better experience for the modern customer,” said Kelsey Ruml, Professional Services Manager, Innovative Systems.
Personalize and Delight
Marketing doesn’t end with prospects. It carries over to the communication that providers give to their customers. Providers should use customer insights to send personalized communication on Birthdays and Signup Anniversaries. Customer appreciation promotes brand loyalty and differentiates providers.
Personalized communication is essential when fixing individual customer issues. Customers are busier than ever and giving them a multi-hour or half-day window to be home for a service call isn’t as exact as it could be. Instead, Technicians can message the customer when they are on their way, and customers can watch the technician’s progress (similar to Uber). After an issue is resolved, the customer can be sent a satisfaction survey. Customers feel that their opinion has been heard and their provider is striving to improve.
Utilize Data + Make it Simple + Personalize = Smart Marketing
Innovative Systems has witnessed dramatic increases in customer NPS scores because of smart marketing. One customer, South Slope Communications Cooperative, collects over 400 eSignatures a month and utilizes eLation’s integrated texting to contact customers and prospects. Their Net Promoter Score has gone up 17% in the short time since they’ve implemented eLation.
Smart Marketing combined with tools that make the experience simple for the customer are a service provider’s ammunition for growth.
Post originally published in Telecompetitor’s Insider Insight Series.
