Generating enquiries from potential customers is what drives marketing managers. But do you really know what the enquiry experience is like?
A marketing manager’s job is to generate marketing that drives leads and sales for the business. We sweat over the wording in ads, images used, ad placements, brand messaging, websites, search engine rankings, where best to spend the marketing budget, and more. All of it designed to generate enquiries for the products or services we offer. But what is the enquiry experience for new customers actually like?
Before starting Duoplus, I was the National Marketing Manager at a large tertiary education company. We had one course in Christchurch that needed a boost in enrolment numbers, so I engaged a digital marketing company to run a campaign specifically for that course. As part of their service they provided recording of the inbound phone calls so that we could assess the calls and the quality of the enquiries.
One week into the campaign they sent me a call recording that broke my heart.
A person had seen the ad online and phoned about the full-time one-year course. Our campus receptionist answered, and would normally have put the enquiry through to the enrolment manager, but unfortunately he was out for lunch. So, she instead put the caller through to the course tutor. When the tutor answered the phone he thought the person was enquiring about a 6-week night class and told them, “All the information is on the website. Just read that and fill in the form if you want to come” – and then hung up!
No details collected. No explanation about how good the course was. No information pack sent. No enquiry added to the CRM. With all the effort and expense that we had put in to marketing the course, it was heart-breaking to listen to the call recording.
I’ve found over the years that I was not alone.
When companies are small, the owner is often hands-on involved in the enquiry and selling process. They know intimately that selling well, and treating potential customers like gold, pays the bills. But as companies get bigger, the owner or marketing manager gets more removed from the coalface of customer enquiries, and there can be a big disconnect between their expectations and the actual experience potential customers receive.
Recording inbound phone calls and reviewing the calls is an excellent way for managers to assess the actual experience potential customers are receiving. But it can also be a quick way to break a marketing manager’s heart.
We offer our Duoplus customers call recording for phone calls that come from Google Ads or Facebook ads. Two of our customers who turned on call recording in recent months had a similar heart-breaking experience. One is a medium sized company with a receptionist answering the calls and directing enquiries to the right department; the other is a large company with a call centre answering the calls. For both of them, the call recordings revealed some terrible experiences for the enquiries we had fought so hard to get. While many of the calls were heart-breaking to listen to, the good news was it gave the managers clear action points of what needed to be changed to grow sales.
So, if you’re a marketing manager, general manager or owner who is removed from the sales process, ask yourself, do you really know what the enquiry experience is like with your company? If you don’t currently have a system in place to spot check enquiry phone calls, try turning on recording for inbound calls and check some random calls. This can be especially useful for calls coming from Google Ads or Facebook ads, since they’re more likely to be new enquiries. It will bring you much closer to the customer experience. You might find some absolute sales stars in your business. You might also find some areas where improvements can be made that will help turn your enquiries into sales in greater numbers.
