Here are several excerpts from an article by Lauren McKay about a recent study conducted by InsideSales.com, Can I Call You Back Later?:
Has phone-based customer service lost its value? One might think so from the results of a recent study conducted by InsideSales.com. The research team sought to investigate lead response management out of the top 500 web companies. After filling out web-based inquiry forms, researchers awaited responses. Surprisingly only eight percent of companies responded to by phone. Forty-seven percent responded by email, but forty-five percent never responded to any inquiry at all.
Where has the phone contact gone?
“I think it’s [the lack of phone contact] mostly because Web-based organizations haven’t made the leap back to using the phone as a media,” says Ken Krogue, founder of InsideSales.com. “When they first rolled out the web marketing, they intentionally tried not to put phone information on the web.” Yet, research shows that telephone call response has as much value as ever, Krogue speaks of one particular company that found so many people wanting to call with questions about its website that it finally put up a number on the page. On an immediate basis, sales increased 20 percent.This is InsideSales.com’s first study on Web-inquiry response. Last year paired with Dr. James Oldroyd of MIT, the company conducted research on lead response management, ultimately finding that quicker response times lead to quicker sales.
“We found there was an interesting effect if you called back really quickly. If called back after five minutes, sales increased tremendously. If you wait 30 minutes, it’s different,” Krogue says. “Things are moving so fast on the web that even awhile later people have moved on to something different.” Data shows a 90 percent increase in contact rate when responding within five minutes to a Web-based inquiry. In what InsideSales.com refers to as the “Wow Factor,” responding on immediate basis increases the likelihood of contact because shoppers are more often near there phones. The customer also has the intended purchase close to the top of the mind.
