Retail and e-commerce businesses spend untold millions of dollars tracking consumer spending, and the analysis is particularly intense as the holiday buying period approaches. That’s all well and good, but we know of another highly reliable and much less expensive way to gain insight into consumer spending:
Visit our call center.
At OnBrand24, we’re finishing up the best year in our 30-year history. It’s the fifth straight year of best-ever growth for our company. As I write this, our call center is a beehive of activity, every cube on the call center floor occupied, our customer service specialists taking one customer call after another. Over on the outbound side, our agents are busy with B2B lead generation, appointment setting and telemarketing sales.
Our high level of activity reflects a recent announcement from comScore, which reports that U.S. online sales in the holiday season to date are up 15 percent, to $24.6 billion.
Whether this means the Great Recession is finally ending is anyone’s guess. But I know this: companies that maintained strong customer service are much more likely to have survived the recession intact. Companies that laid off customer service employees, or eliminated their outsourced customer service and order processing call center services, have put damaged customer and brand loyalty. And during a recession, you need to do everything you can to keep the customers you have.
In any case, we are heartened by comScore’s announcement regarding consumer spending growth. But knowing how busy our outsourced order taking agents have been for the last two months, we already knew that.
Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Beverly, MA