CASE STUDY
Background – A major software organization was looking to reduce the lag time on service renewals and improve cash flow. It was decided to include maintenance renewals as part of the sales team’s responsibilities. An email program, with messages going out in each reps name was undertaken and the sales reps were also charged with calling customers to remind them to renew on time.
Challenge – The sales team was not making enough calls to have a noticeable impact on renewals and the emails were not driving enough responses.
Alternatives –
- Increasing the number of emails was rejected due to concerns with over saturating the customer base with emails, since this was also the preferred communication tool for others groups within the company.
- Penalizing the sales team for not meeting a renewal calling quota was rejected as maintenance renewals were a lower priority than new software sales – their main mandate.
- Shifting the calling to an inside sales team was rejected since the team was too small to meet the volume and not trained to deliver outbound calls.
- Outsourced telemarketing/telesales was rejected due to the high cost to contract enough callers to contact the large lists in a short time period.
Solution – The Company contracted Boxpilot to execute an outbound voicemail program
. The messages not only altered customers to the renewal emails to be send within one day of the campaign, they also drove responses to the inbound call center which was well equipped to manage the inbound renewal requests. Boxpilot was selected because:
- Having the sales reps record messages to their own client base supported renewals and an improved relationship with the reps.
- The guaranteed delivery timing allowed the voicemails to support the emails and increase the email responses as well as inbound phone
- Guided voicemail was considerably more cost effective than adding or outsourcing outbound telemarketing
- The large customer base could be completely covered by voicemail over 1-2 day campaigns.
- The delivery speed and low cost allowed for multiple voicemails to support responses.
Results– Within 60 days, inbound requests for maintenance renewals increased from 500 to 1200/month. This volume was sustained as long as the voicemail campaigns ran. Over the period of the program the cash flow lag time decreased from -60 days to -50 days.