Capturing customer information at the point-of-sale (POS) is a critical ingredient in creating repeat business. That being said, efficiency at checkout is also important to both customer experience and operational efficiency.
A solution many retailers are implementing today is to find addresses by phone number at the POS terminal. This means the customer service representative only needs to ask a customer for their phone number. Solutions like StrikeIron's Phone and Address Lookup Service will find and quickly retrieve the correspondiing address by phone number via an instantaneous Cloud lookup. The service can even append email addresses and other demographic and socioeconomic data for later segmentation.
For example, a 1200 store automotive products and service company, uses StrikeIron's Reverse Phone and Address Lookup Advanced Service to append contact information at the point-of-sale. The customer service representative enters the customer's phone number in the POS terminal and the solution finds addresses by phone number. This expedites the entry of the data, as well as ensures the data entered is accurate.
In regards to this use case, the automotive products and service company's customers give them mobile numbers to contact when the work on their car is complete. Thus, there was a need to have a solution that covers both landlines and cell phones.
We would like to hear from you. Are you collecting customer information during checkout? If not why? If so, what has been your experience?
Organizations collect leads in many different ways. Leads are collected when prospects respond to offers, fill out forms in websites, or send email inquiries. Leads can occur simply by word of mouth or other lead capturing tools as well.
Once a database of leads has been created, what can be done to improve the value of this asset that helps drive all future sales? How can the data be leveraged to optimize the time of the sales organization before they receive these leads?
There are 3 main ways to improve the value of lead data:
The first is to eliminate bogus or phantom leads. One way to do this is by validating the existence of email addresses for leads. This not only removes obvious fake email addresses, but also filters email addresses from domains that are not operational and have been turned off or cannot accept email. Other data such as phone numbers or mailing addresses can also be used for lead validation. Lead filtering such as this can prevent the sales organization from wasting valuable time on these phantom leads. It can also reduce spend for marketing campaigns and keep an organization off of spam lists.
Secondly, improving the quality of lead data is also important. This means ensuring that phone numbers are correct, addresses are accurate and do not contain typos, any missing information like zip codes or area codes is added, and correcting anything else that require members of the sales team to waste time chasing down a lead. Incomplete or inaccurate information and associated lost time hinder a sales force from understanding and meeting the needs of actual prospects.
Third and finally, appending additional information to each lead can help provide data points that can be used for segmentation, personalization, localization, and other forms of targeted marketing. For example, appending latitude and longitude data can help with market visualization and opportunity identification. Combining that data with census and other demographic information help score leads for sales to prioritize opportunities.
Sales leads are the lifeblood of revenue generation. The smart organizations recognize that and treat them as such.
A lead, as we all know, is an individual or company that has indicated some level of interest in potentially buying a product or service. This is an important first stage categorization of any sales process.
Technically, a lead is represented by data, and the potential value of that lead is dependent on the level of accuracy, how current the contact information is, and the comprehensiveness of the data that constitutes the lead. In other words, a lead is only as valuable as the data that comprises it within a CRM application or other sales-driving system.
Fortunately, lead value ROI is generally pretty easily obtained as a function of the sales line. It is very measurable, and one can see over time that the more accurate, complete, and timely leads are likely to drive the most revenue and have the greatest value to the sales organization. Therefore, investing in the quality of lead data can have a measurable and rewarding payoff.
This is one of the primary reasons many organizations come to StrikeIron - to enhance the value of their lead data. Our real-time customer data quality offerings can validate email addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers to ensure a lead is accurate, and it can even correct missing or inaccurate contact lead data where possible.
We can also add a sizable list of additional data points, including company demographic data points, residential information (from sources such as the Census Bureau), latitude and longitude coordinates, and other data points that add some additional value to the lead and optimize it for the purposes of a sales organization.
Best of all, our easy-to-integrate APIs are available out in the Cloud (meaning no reference data maintenance and a flexible subscription model), making it easy to plug into just about any CRM, marketing automation, or other lead management system via the Internet.
So as we are in the sweet spot of need for a large number of attending organizations at LeadsCon, we have found much success in the past with this conference. As a result, we will have a pretty sizable contingent of folks at the event in New York City this week.
Drop by and say hello (booth 202) and learn more about how to rev up the value of leads. Oh and by the way, we will be giving away some iPad2's. Hope to see you there!
As Point of Sale (POS) systems move to the Cloud and ecommerce transactions continue to grow at double digit rates, utilizing external APIs to optimize and essentially outsource functionality that isn't a core part of your business makes a lot of sense.
Leveraging Cloud-based business functionality not only provides short-term and long-term cost-savings, but also helps getting systems and new capabilities into production sooner rather than later. Using external resources also frees up internal resources to focus on those requirements and activities that are core to the business.
For example, when a product is sold over the Web, the automated ecommerce transaction can kick off a series of calls to external APIs that swiftly and accurately:
- obtain the required tax rate of the buyer based on geographic location
- verify the shipping address against constantly-updated postal data to ensure proper order fulfillment
- validate a customer provided a correct phone number and valid email address for communication purposes
- obtain other demographics for customer profiling purposes
In addition, prices can be shown in local currencies using live currency rates for greater accuracy, and shipment notifications can be sent via an SMS text message for enhanced customer service.
In each case, the functionality can be achieved either with an in-house system and all of the software, hardware, and ongoing data management ($$$$) that goes along with it, or an external API can be called, typically with a single line of code, as part of the automated business process triggered by the transaction. Hopefully, it is fairly obvious which would be easier, less costly, and more quickly achieved in most cases.
All of these capabilities, accessible in the form of SOAP and REST APIs, are available from StrikeIron for easy integration to many different ecommerce systems and development environments. This is why ecommerce and POS systems represent many of our top use-cases, as the real-time and "Cloud ready" nature of our offerings represent a better ecommerce experience for many of our customers and their customers.
A critical component of the Master Patient Index is the Patient's current contact information. One of the most important aspects of a patient relationship is the ability to communicate with the patient. In order to do this, it is imperative that contact information be accurate, complete, and validated as correct, including mailing addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Unfortunately, this information in most patient information systems is inaccurate and incomplete.
While no Master Patient Index is likely to ever have 100% accurate contact information, the accuracy of contact data within the master record can be significantly increased by validating and ensuring the accuracy of patient contact data when it is captured from the patient. Data quality initiatives can be achieved by using real-time contact data validation capabilities that utilize comprehensive reference data over the Internet to ensure provided mailing addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses are correct and valid. This enables inaccuracies to be resolved on the spot before the information ever enters the Patient Information System.
StrikeIron's Contact Verification Suite for Healthcare is built for exactly this purpose. This “data-as-a-service” approach enables provided contact information to be validated in real time. Data is aggregated from multiple sources, frequently updated and maintained for accuracy. The architecture and subscription model requires no CapEx spending, no ongoing reference data to update, no additional servers to purchase or maintain, and 24x7x365 availability. Finally, the business model is very flexible as pricing is based on the number of patient records.
Implementing an integrated data quality solution as a core initiative within the healthcare organization can yield a broad array of benefits. Financial ROI analysis will demonstrate the potential for improved cash flow and bottom line impact. Less defined returns will include improved patient satisfaction, employee morale/efficiency, and customer service. Leveraging Data-as-a-Service will maximize the ease of implementing such capabilities and minimize interruption to current workflow. Data quality then moves from an attractive proposition to an imperative for the organization.
StrikeIron is excited to announce that we will be an exhibitor at Eloqua Experience 2010, Eloqua's premier user event, October 18th-20th at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco.
We will be demonstrating our Contact Record Verification Suite and how high quality, current, accurate, and comprehensive data about customers and prospects can greatly improve marketing campaign ROI.
We will also showcase the integration work Eloqua has done with our SMS Alerts and Notifications solution, enabling SMS-based proactive communication with opted-in contacts. SMS is a communication type in Eloqua's product offering that as part of a campaign or lead nurturing workflow program, a message can be sent to a contact. For example, for those contacts who have provided their mobile phone number as a method of communication, a reminder text message such as "Reminder: Webinar in 15 minutes" can be sent in an automated fashion.
A list of sponsors, including ourselves, can be found here:
http://www.eloquaexperience.com/content/sponsors