Everyone in the retail ecommerce industry eagerly awaited Cyber Monday 2012, which was expected to be the best ever. And it was.
Online spending on Nov. 26, the first work day after the Thanksgiving weekend and considered the year’s busiest online shopping day, reached a record $1.5 billion, according to market tracker ComScore.
That was a rise of 17 percent over Cyber Monday of last year.
Here on the front lines of customer service and order processing, OnBrand24 felt the impact of the boost in Cyber Monday consumer activity. Our company set a single-day record for inbound call volume.
These are calls from customers of our retail and ecommerce clients seeking to place orders, ask product questions, find out how long their orders will take to arrive and other customer service and order processing-related inquiries.
In short, we were a beehive of call center outsourcing service activity.
Cyber Monday was just one day in what has been a very active November. We have been busier than ever so far this holiday season, as reflected in increased online sales on Thanksgiving Day (a 32 percent increase) and Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, (up 18 percent).
All of this has resulted in a significant expansion of our staff and the expansion of our floor space at the Cummings Center in Beverly, MA, 20 miles north of Boston in eastern Massachusetts.
With November closing so strongly, we’re looking forward to a record setting December.
Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Call Center Services
Beverly, Massachusetts
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Clients of call center services outsourcers have a right to know the details about the program their vendors are providing. In fact, clients and vendors need to work in close partnership to build, maintain and continually adjust successful call center services programs. And the basis for this is detailed, frequent reporting.
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Oct. 16, 2012 - At times I question the value of some social media, but there’s one site that I find consistently invaluable: LinkedIn. Among its best features are its groups, which let members exchange ideas with other professionals in your industry.
For anyone in the call center services industry, I strongly recommend the group called “Contact Center Operations & Management.” Here’s a recent discussion topic, which those of in customer service outsourcing will find interesting:
If you had to identify the top three most important customer service skills that are a must have for your service reps when interacting with the customer- what would be your top three?
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We heard the good news this morning that consumer confidence rose in September to levels well above economists’ expectations. Rebounding from an August decline, the index, which measures how Americans feel about the economy, rose to 70 percent.
This is good news for the U.S. economy because confident consumers are more willing to buy new cars, homes, consumers goods, and to extend their lines of credit. This creates a virtuous circle of higher growth, more production of goods, higher profits and more jobs.
A key contributor to the rise in confidence: Consumers are more optimistic about the employment picture.
Here at OnBrand24, we’re seeing both phenomena – rising consumer confidence and improved employment – up close and personal. Demand for our customer service and order processing call center services is growing because consumers are becoming more active; as a result we are hiring aggressively.
Since August 1, we’ve added 30 employees, bringing our total staff count to 170. We expect to hire another 25 agents by year’s end.
Our hiring reflects the strong growth OnBrand24 has enjoyed all year. So far in 2012, we have added 29 new clients for inbound call center services (customer service, order processing / order taking, help desk, sales) and 19 clients for outbound call center services (B2B lead generation, appointment setting, customer win-back, inside sales, customer list scrubbing and data hygiene).
While it’s true the overall economic picture, particularly the global economic outlooks, is mixed, we are glad to see Americans are more confident about the U.S. economy. Historically, our economy leads the way globally, so let’s hope rising American consumer confidence is a leading indicator of good things to come.
Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Call Center Services
Beverly, MA
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A few months ago we blogged on famous quotations about customer relationship management that we picked up during our sessions with the local office of Sandler Training.
Now we thought we’d take a look at quotes about salesmanship and great sales techniques, and this quote from Morris Hite caught our eye:
“Advertising is salesmanship mass produced. No one would bother to use advertising if he could talk to all his prospects face-to-face. But he can't.”
Exactly right. No one person can talk to every prospect. But besides advertising there’s another way to quickly reach thousands of prospects: using an outsourced B2B lead generation and appointment setting call center services company.
That’s the beauty of an outbound call center: it goes where no single salesperson can go and delivers explosive market outreach. When you engage with a B2B lead generation call center, you hire a team of salespeople to cold call thousands, even tens of thousands, of prospects in a matter of days or weeks.
They can call a list of potential new customers with the characteristics appropriate for a given product or services. Or they can call a list of old customers who have grown inactive, and may need to have their buying motivation re-charged.
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The Internet Retailer Conference & Expo (IRCE) is coming up next month in Chicago, and OnBrand24 will be there. We are not regulars on the trade show circuit, but IRCE is a “must” on our annual calendar and this year is no exception.
We attend IRCE for two reasons: to meet retailers and e-commerce companies, to learn about their latest concerns and opportunities and to talk with them about their call center services needs – both for call center customer service and order processing, and also for B2B lead generation, appointment setting, customer surveys and other outbound call center services.
The other reason is to attend IRCE sessions, which are consistently excellent and educational.
The major theme at IRCE this year: understanding the “frequent web shopper.” What they demand from online stores, and how best to reach and service them so they remain loyal customers.
This year’s conference will have more than 100 sessions and 175 speakers, who will lay out the marketing, merchandising and operating strategies for meeting the demands of web-committed consumers who are dictating the new rules of retailing.
One of this year’s primary themes: Perfecting order management and fulfillment practices that keep online customers coming back. Here’s where retailers need excellent call center services. When customers have questions about an item on a web site, or if they have trouble ordering online and wish to process their order via human interface, or if they want to get an update on the status of their order, speaking with a friendly, helpful and informed customer service specialist at an inbound call center is critical to delivering a quality customer experience.
While it’s true that the emphasis at IRCE will be on new technology – mobile devices, social media, web site optimization and so on – IRCE proves each year that the role of call center services remains a critical piece within a successful retailing strategy. At last year’s show in San Diego, our booth was crowded with retailers who wanted to discuss outsourced call center services strategies.
It proved once again what we already knew about the enduring value of the telephone.
We hope to see you in Chicago next month!
Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Call Center Services
Beverly, Massachusetts
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Cold calling is an acquired taste and an acquired skill. Few of us in the outsourced call center services industry are born great cold callers. Rather, most of us have cold calling thrust upon us until we:
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A bill working its way through the Massachusetts legislature would require utilities to provide customers up-to-date information during power outages.
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We have talked with many managers about hospital call center services, and we found that they have concerns aplenty. Among them:
• Agent quality needs significant improvement.
• Extra charges for basic services amounting to thousands of dollars per month.
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