Customer Experience

I have been exploring possible partnerships with service providers in order to offer a broader array of solutions.

In the past 3 weeks, I have contacted the top 10 service providers in two completely different niches.

I have submitted the online inquiry forms, chatted online with a live salesperson and called their toll-free numbers.

To date, 25% have responded to my online inquiries.  Of those that responded, 50% have done so by telephone and email.  The rest have done so strictly by email.

Of those I called, only one followed up with more than a single email, and that one disappeared after that auto-response.

One sales rep has taken to calling me whenever he has the free time – and he seems to have a remarkable ability to pick times where I am in a meeting or on another call.  He has left 4 voice messages stating his name, company, phone number and a brief message telling me he is trying to follow up on my inquiry.

He doesn’t suggest scheduling a specific day/time – he just ends with “I will try back later…”

I did return his call the first time and I got his voice mail – I left him a few choices of days and times where I was available to talk, and I asked that he get back with me and confirm a specific day and time.  He has elected to just call – I can only assume he’s a gambler.

Of those I have spoken with, I have been bombarded with email attachments.  These brightly colored multi-page PDFs restate what’s on the website, offering very little new, motivational information.  There seems to be a need to bury me in the same information…as if I will buy in order to make them stop sending me more reading material.

It won’t work – especially since a great deal of that material is written with jargon that I do not totally understand and when I don’t understand information, I tend to delay my buying decision until I feel as though I understand what I am buying.

Only two representatives have asked me a series of questions that were obviously designed to uncover my  needs so that they could make well informed recommendations.

The rest simply respond to my inquiries and give off this vibe that they are waiting for me to say “OK, let’s write up the order!”

So, dear CEO, might I suggest that you take a look at your sales process?  How are leads gathered and entered into your sales stream?  How are they contacted?  How are they qualified and prioritized?  What information is gathered and how does it help close the sale?  How does it help identify opportunities for additional sales?  What’s the contact strategy?  How do you test timing, channels, messaging, offers in order to improve performance?