Increasing Customer Contactability - Part 3

The third tip of this series will consider the alternative methods of communication that organisations can employ in order to increase customer contactability.

Traditional Methods of Communication
Most organisations primarily use letters and telephone calls to communicate with their customers.

However, a large number of organisations, both in established and emerging markets, are finding it more difficult to establish contact with their customers by means of the traditional channels of communication. Some of the challenges that organisations are faced with include:

• Lack of postal delivery to certain physical addresses especially in rural areas;
• Customers that are slow to retrieve post from their post office boxes;
• Customers that fail to open and/or read their mail;
• Inability to contact customers at work during the day due to a large number of customers working in factories, on industrial sites etc. and
• Customers’ ability to ‘screen’ inbound calls on mobile telephones.

Alternative Methods of Communication
Because of customers’ growing ability to ignore and/or prevent being contacted through the traditional methods of communication, organisations have been compelled to find innovative ways of communicating with their customers in order to ensure successful ‘delivery’ of their collection message.

SMS text messages and emails are tools that a number of organisations have embraced and used with great effectiveness as a way of communicating with their customers. Both SMS text messages and emails are direct and instantaneous and can virtually ensure the successful ‘delivery’ of the collection message. SMS text messages and emails rely on a person’s natural tendency to be curious.

Besides the fact that it is almost certain that the customer will receive the communiqué, there are a number of other benefits of using SMS text messages and emails:

• Reliability – both emails and SMS text messaging use robust and stable technology.
• Guaranteed delivery if address/number is valid.
• Both inform sender in the event that address/number is no longer valid – serves as an early warning of change in contact details.
• Bulk communication – it is possible to send bulk emails and bulk SMS text messages.
• Cost-effectiveness – both SMS text messages and emails cost less than normal letters or telephone calls.
• Timing – both SMS text messages and emails can be instantaneous or set for a specific time to optimise contactability.
• Increased contactability – both SMS text messages and emails are direct methods of communication with the customer.

It takes no stretch of the imagination to realise that the use of SMS text messages and emails not only increases customer contactability but also delivers several other quantifiable business benefits to the organisation.

In the next tip of the month we will consider the best time for an organisation to phone its customers in order to ensure an optimum customer contact rate.

Charl Van Rhyn is a Senior Consultant at PIC Solutions, the largest customer management solutions company based in the Southern Hemisphere. He has over 8 years of credit and risk management experience as a practising attorney, specialising in collections during all stages of the delinquency life cycle. At MBD Attorneys, a leading South African debt collection law firm, he served both in the capacity as Director Litigation and Senior Accounts Executive. Key responsibilities included the management of key business relationships within the banking, financial services, furniture retail, telecoms, utilities and health & leisure industries. He holds a B. Juris and LLB degree from the University of Potchefstroom. He is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa and a member of the SA Institute of Credit Management.

About PIC Solutions
PIC Solutions provides customer management solutions to a wide range of blue-chip organisations. We are experts in the fields of credit, risk and marketing and have an established track record of success powered by solutions.

For more information on how PIC Solutions can optimise the credit life cycle of your business please visit www.picsolutions.com.