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chapters we’ve demonstrated the difficulty of getting a message through to a customer, whereas only those who wish to be undisturbed will ignore a ringing telephone. Buying a 60 second advertisement slot on a major network can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, whereas the cost of setting up a telephone marketing operation particularly when the operation is outsourced to countries like India, is much lower.
Outsourcing, however comes with a potentially new set of headaches. For one thing your customer’s private data are now in the hands of another company. Outsourcing very well may violate company privacy policies. Furthermore, there are sometimes language difficulties to contend with. Typically a customer contacts a company when they have a complaint. If the agent doesn’t fully understand what the customer is saying, that certainly is going to aggravate the caller even more. Normally this issue could be resolved with additional training for the agent. But the reality is that being a customer service representative is not a career path that leads towards riches and fame. The turnover rate is high irrespective of the country, which in turn means vendors of outsourcing services are not going to be putting the bulk of their resources into the training budget. In the UK, some firms now advertise that their call-centres are fully operated and staffed in the UK.
DiRecT-MaiL MaRkeTing
Direct-mail marketing entails sending a marketing offer, often unsolicited, to a prospective customer residing in a particular geographic region. Messages can travel through the mail, Internet or through the telephone system in the form of a fax or voicemail. Whichever medium is chosen, the message sent to the customer will be customized to their wants, as determined by the database that contains their information. A critical success factor is the quality of the mailing list; firms exist which provide, for a price, mailing lists, though the quality of their lists varies. Though many people in the developed world don’t like direct mail, for the right person at the right time, the right direct mail piece is right on. For example, if you are a big fan of golf club making, you love to get direct mail about golf club making equipment. The lesson, find the right person and