brand destruction centre
On Friday I got another of those calls from an offshore call centre flogging a product I did not need or want. Some poor person obligingly named “Kevin” whose first language was not English, scrolling through a prepared screed that bore no relationship to the situation he found himself in talking to me.
What a waste of everyone’s time, and money.
Meanwhile, there are thousands of blogs, learned papers, and stories demonstrating clearly the power of social media, all being ignored by the enterprise stumping up the cash to make the useless, brand destroying phone call.
Why is it that the outsourced marketing unit called a “call centre” still uses C20 technology to waste my time when there are plenty of opportunities to pick up information about me on the various social C21 platforms I inhabit?
Why is it unreasonable to expect that the investment made in these centres would be better spent on some activity that did not piss off 99% of those unfortunate enough to answer the phone?
The available technology easily supports the scraping of social media to build a profile of individuals that can then be targeted with a message that at least has a better chance of being welcome than an annoying phone call from a “Kevin from Mumbai” who is simply reading a script that bears no relation to the circumstances of the callee.
Turn your Call centre into a Social centre, and I bet the results will improve.
Outsourcing selling and support services to the other side of the world continues to be a favoured strategy of large corporates, based on the idea of the money it saves, however, the potential or existing customer is hostile to such tactics, and the brand gets damaged.
Alex, I agree. My basic point is that investing to save money, a short term objective, without considering the long term consequences of that investment is nothing short of corporate vandalism.
July 8 is still a very long way away, and the articulation of the point I need to make is still evolving.
So no, but that is not a concern, at least to me.
Allen
Lets build a list of companies indulging in brand destruction. Telstra is the first one that comes to mind.
It will be a long list!!
Hope you are ready for July 8th talk!!