In 2018, in the U.S alone, Black Friday brought sales of $3.7 billion. This beat expert forecasts by nearly 70%. Of the 165m shoppers, 89m shopped both online and offline. This group alone spent $93 more than a single-channel shopper1.
In 2019, Black Friday will occur on the 29th of November and is expected to outperform last years revenues.
As brands now invest in omnichannel experiences, it’s clear that being everywhere your customer is during this shopping-frenzy is crucial. Either in-store, online, via phone, or even live chat. If your customer is there, you should be there.
Brands will have begun optimising their sites ready for heavy web traffic, and product demand. Bricks and mortar shops will have most likely coerced their staff into Black Friday overtime and have begun assigning discounts to specific collections of merchandise.
But, how do you get ready for Black Friday if you operate over the phone?
And, are one of your competitors are already prepared?
Here’s your 3 step Black Friday survival guide to prevent you from experiencing Black Friday Fomo.
Or, Call Track Friday FOMO.
finger gun click
Failing to prepare means preparing to fail. This is no different for Black Friday. By focusing your attention, pre-Black Friday, on which channels, keywords, and PPC ads are generating highly valuable sales calls, you can ensure these are firing on all cylinders for your launch day.
Infinity’s strengths lie in its ability to reveal which channels, keywords, and even marketing campaigns are generating sales calls. From click, to call, to conversion, we can tell you your customer’s entire journey.
Everyone’s got one, right? Your customers certainly do. And it’s important to know what they’re saying. Marketing research enables you to connect with prospects quicker and helps you to identify what they want exactly.
You still have time to conduct surveys that will help you understand what type of deals are the most likely to resonate with your audience ahead of Black Friday (and of course, any major gift-giving event that may also be around the corner…).
A recent survey by American Express presented a mix of hypothetical points-based benefits and used a Likert scale to determine what their audience’s opinions were of each option.
Doing this and identifying what’s going to get fingers clicking and phones dialling saves you a lot of time making mistakes and missing opportunities.
But surveys aren’t the only way of learning what your customer thinks. Infinity’s Conversation Analytics suite helps identify what prospects are saying over the phone. You can use it to gather insights about callers at scale such as:
What did they call about?
Did they use certain keywords related to an offer, product, or service?
How do they feel about your product?
Was a competitor mentioned?
Were they happier at the end of the call than the beginning?
What could you do with this invaluable data?
Just because it’s Black Friday, doesn’t mean your customers won’t be calling about topics other than purchases. Operational calls will still exist, but can sometimes take up too much of your agent’s time. As Black Friday is especially time-critical, it’s important to ensure all available sales agents are free to take as many orders as possible to maximise your success on the day.
Infinity’s call tracking software can streamline your operational efficiencies in the following ways:
Jump the queue
Say a customer has between £500 - £1000 of products in their basket. Should your customer decide to complete the transaction over the phone, call tracking data can allow you to set up a rule that identifies this customer has a higher purchase intent and needs to be automatically pushed to the top of the caller queue to complete their sale.
Behaviour dictates call routing
A customer’s journey on your website may include browsing your current stock or viewing service pages. Depending on the journey they take, call tracking can give you the data to make certain rules about which department the customer is connected to in the first instance. Saving them time, freedom from lengthy “Press 1” commands, and contributing to more enjoyable customer experience.
Call deflection
If you do receive a high volume of support calls, that risks swamping the phones, lowering the standard of service you can offer, and potentially increasing the chances of people hanging up before they’ve made a booking, purchase, or enquiry.
Infinity is a key part of call deflection projects, which look to reduce the number of basic support calls by improving the user experience on your website to help them find solutions before picking up the phone. This is not an overnight project but it has saved some of our clients millions, so if you begin now you’ll be seeing the benefits come next Black Friday.
Get in touch today to find out how Infinity can prepare you for Black Friday.
References
1.2018 Black Friday Sales, Forbes, (2018)