A quick guide to Customer Acquisition as a Service

The growth of any business is related to its rate of customer acquisition. And it is no secret that expanding one’s customer base is a sure-shot and fast way to meet the short-term goals of an enterprise. In general, acquiring a new customer costs around 5 times more to a business in comparison to the cost of retaining an existing one. Hence, it is imperative that modern businesses look into alternative ways and strategies to increase their regular rate of customer acquisition.

Many reputed bpo outsourcing companies struggle to lend equal emphasis on customer acquisition as well as customer retention, both of which plays a dominant role in determining the growth of a business. Acquiring new customers in order to augment one’s current market share is an arduous task that requires an efficient sales force and a well-planned and structured approach.  There are many outsourcing companies that offer customer acquisition as a service. These companies help businesses to make more informed decisions by building data-driven customer-centric processes.

The following is a list of various customer acquisition and retention related services offered by bpo outsourcing companies.

Custom built telesales services- It involves agents making custom outbound calls and also answering inbound calls regarding one’s business efforts. It helps businesses to always keep on top of every potential customer and their queries.

Multi-media campaigns- Outsourcing companies run telesales campaigns which are well-planned programs that use a variety of media platforms such as print and electronic media to influence a targeted audience.

Lead generation- To ensure more definitive appointments for the sales team, businesses need to create a focused message, research the target market, and make sure that the value proposition is clearly defined while approaching customers. And service providers excel in delivering services that are adapted to cater to such minute nuances.

Online market research- It is of paramount importance for businesses to perform a detailed market research in order to grasp the dynamics of the market. Outsourcing companies can facilitate various market research techniques so as to help businesses customize their offerings as per the consumer demands.

Customer retention services- BPO companies also help organizations to retain their customers from competitors. They implement certain last-step retention strategies on-time before the client is lost forever.

Cross-sell and up-sell- Cross-selling and up-selling are one of the few tactics that businesses employ to sell to their existing user base. It is 5 times cheaper and easier to conduct than the task of acquiring new customers.

Search engine marketing- It is another way through which bpo outsourcing companies can effectively help businesses to reach out and target a wide demography of customers within a short span of time.

A well-planned customer acquisition and retention strategy allow enterprises to scale up their sales and marketing efforts by powering multiple prospective processes in-house. The following is a concise four-step process that utilizes multiple interactive channels such as voice, email, chat channels etc. to acquire customers.

Create the apt database-

Various bpo outsourcing companies work with their clients to identify the best possible list of prospective clients based on data analytics and past history. Depending upon the requirements one can to create a database of strictly local people, or a global list so as to target multiple countries.

An Omni-channel approach

Once the list is ready the next step is to reach the prospects and this is achieved by the agents not only through calls but also via the chat, email and social media channel depending upon the requirement of the client.

Nurture leads through marketing automation

Lead nurturing is an important step in the conversion of leads into closable sales. Based upon the nature of the leads, some are easier to secure while others may take a while to qualify. It is the job of the call center executives to nurture the business leads and to ensure that minimal leads are lost in the process. A lot of BPO companies are increasingly adopting marketing automation techniques so as to limit the redundancy of repetitive tasks. These tools and techniques are utilized to specify criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes that are then interpreted, stored, and executed by pre-programmed tools.

Strong CRM pipeline

The present market narrative requires a strong CRM and marketing tool that is high-tech and industrially-recognized. It allows businesses the ability to have a bird’s-eye view on all that is going on in the customer acquisition process. Through a powerful CRM BPO firms can manage their client’s leads, directly collaborate with their sales team, monitor campaigns, nurture customers and business relationships etc.