±±¾©Èü³µpk10

It's well documented how direct mail, that trusty old war horse of solicitation, has an array of data tools at its disposal to refine its targeting and ensure better response rates.

Less well known is the fact that call centres, too, are in on the data act. Transactional, lifestyle and geodemographic data can be pumped live to an agent's screen to enhance the call for retention, acquisition or upselling purposes. Outbound campaigns have led the way in using data enhancement, with inbound following behind.

"Client companies are not yet employing the same level of targeting in call centres as they are in direct mail, but that gap is closing," says Nicholas Turner, sales director at iSky.

With the Indian subcontinent providing real competition for UK-based contact centres, Gareth Smith, marketing director of 2Touch, believes that, though in its early days, "data will prove to be a real differentiator for UK call centres".

So how is data being used in call centre environments? Data's journey can be divided into three phases: before, during and after the phone call.

1. Before the call

A lot of work goes into preparing data in call centres well before the agent makes or receives a call, so that only relevant data is presented on screen as the conversation takes place.

Before a single call is made or received, call centres will have geared up with universal name and address files embedded in address management software - essential for fast data capture and validation. Call centre software vendor Noetica, for example, interfaces with Capscan's Matchcode name and address management software, which in turn uses Royal Mail's Postcode Address File (PAF) as its base file.

Transactional data then offers an added advantage for call centres, particularly for outbound activity. "There's no question that for outbound cross- or upselling, transactional history is the strongest type of data," says iSky's Turner. "It's knowing who bought what product and who has stayed with that product."

For outbound calls, lifestyle survey data has been popular for insurance renewal or any product with specific purchase dates. Another, more recent, trend in outbound is to overlay external profiling and demographic data on top of transactional files. Contact centres may hold licences to the major classification systems, provided by the likes of EuroDirect, Claritas and Experian, for segmenting a client's database prior to the call.

Amongst inbound telemarketers the effectiveness of external classification systems is a moot point, because of their reliance on postcodes.

"Behavioural or transactional data is much more powerful for inbound," says Paul Miller, business development manager at Prolog Connect. "On inbound, the worst thing you can do is assume the profile of your caller.

For outbound, on the other hand, you're often dealing with suspects rather than prospects, so that's where geodemographics kicks in."

More powerful than profiling, some say, is pre-call database analysis.

"Clients need to learn more about what's worked for them historically, and that means data analysis," says Broadsystem data planning director Guy Bracewell.

Some clients will segment their call lists before the call. "We then might recommend a further segmentation, based on our expertise in the best times to call people," says iSky's Turner. Charge card customers, for example, tend to favour being called at work. These segments will be linked to a script and then loaded up into iSky's power dialler.

Not all clients want similar levels of pre-call preparation, however.

"Some clients just present us with huge chunks of data, with the instruction to 'call that'," says Turner. "But we're quite strong in saying, give us a million records and we'll work it down to 100,000 and make it more cost-effective."

Paul Kennedy, account director at MM Group, believes another obstacle is a misconception about the complexity of such activity. He points out that tools from companies such as Alterian allow call centres to juggle million-plus databases with ease and link them to sets of business rules.

These are the rules that, once programmed into the call handling system, drive the outcome or offers presented during the call. "The rules need to based on permutations and combinations of past customer transactions and behaviours," Kennedy says. For example, agents would be offered a ranked series of offers which are tailored to a customer's interests, implied from analysing their previous transactional data.

2. During the call

Once a call is live, be it inbound or outbound, those all-important business rules kick in. Systems will offer preferences in real time, based on permutation combinations. At MM Group, Alterian analysis software and the company's own CRM system can analyse transactional data to prompt a list of possible offers to pop up on the agent's screen.

For inbound non-customer calls, where no transactional history exists, general demographic data can be overlaid on to that incoming call. Experts believe this to be the new frontier in telemarketing effectiveness. "You can write business rules to trigger different screens for the inbound operation, so that nobody is ever a cold, inbound call," says Turner.

One mortgage company uses response advertising to drive prospects to iSky's call centre. The in-bound response is handled and the resulting data compared with overlaid geodemographic postcode data. The system calculates a propensity to convert, and each prospect is treated differently according to this calculation.

Similarily, 2Touch agents can access the likes of Acxiom's InfoBase Enhancement database of several million records and rank callers according to their lifestyle variables such as occupation and socio-economic classification codes. "We have the ability to treat customers in different ways, depending on their propensity-to-buy ranking," says Gareth Smith of 2Touch. "Call centre technology, such as Caller Line Identification, can then pass relevant customers to specialist key account teams."

But this is not something all clients want. "At the moment, clients seem to prefer to do their profiling offline," says Danny Singer, MD of Noetica. "Yet online profiling would ultimately save money in call handling."

Most call centre software has the ability to query remote databases in real time, too. When a customer calls Ford Motor Company's in-house call centre to renew an order, the car giant uses Noetica to query the DVLA's Bristol-based database of all UK registered motorists.

3. After the call

Once an agent has captured a customer's data, for example an order, their interests or preferences, the call centre can update its client database in order to customise the output, be it a confirmation, application or a fulfilment pack.

The real-time environment of the call centre presents particular challenges in using data to help sell to customers, though these are being overcome by technology. The only real obstacles appear to be client awareness of call centres' data capabilities and, of course, a willingness to pay for them.

LEGAL TIPS: DATA IN THE CALL CENTRE

1. You must have in place a written agreement with the call centre that sets out exactly what the call centre can do with the personal data relating to your customers and prospects. In the agreement, the call centre must provide certain guarantees about its security measures and the reliability of its staff.

2. Call centre staff should receive training in relevant aspects of data protection law. For example, they should be trained to make security checks before disclosing personal data to callers.

3. If customer and prospect records include free text fields, then make sure staff are trained in filling in those fields properly. Individuals have a right under the Data Protection Act to see what information is stored about them, so disparaging remarks might come back to haunt.

- A call centre may only monitor or record calls for very specific purposes (eg, for training) and only if it has taken steps to inform both callers and its own staff. This can be done using a brief recorded message prior to connection to an operator (to notify callers) and through internal training (to notify staff).

- To prepare for the new law relating to e-mail and SMS, agents should get specific consents from customers and prospects for future marketing using those means - opt-outs will no longer be good enough.

Source: Daniel Pavin, partner Taylor Wessing. E-mail at: d.pavin@taylorwessing.com.