A User Story
I enter the PCI compliant cleanroom at eleven o’clock with only a quinoa bowl from Freshie’s, and log in to Salesforce on my locked down computer. No cell phone, no scratch paper – and there are cameras. I wave to Peter on Camera #1 and start to dial. I do not have high hopes of reaching anyone in the middle of the workday. Amid all the DNRs, I may catch an inbound call off of our direct mail campaign, or someone out on the floor may catch it while I am dialing.
I log in to the dialer and it presents my first call. To save time, I hit “dial” and the phone rings while I paste the number into Salesforce and search for the Opportunity. Our Cisco dialer has a predictive mode, but I am not using it. For low volumes, preview dialing is supposed to be a better experience. The Ministry of Commerce prefers it, too. This number is guaranteed to be in Salesforce, with a prospect status, because the dialer file is generated nightly from the Opportunity table in Salesforce.
Bonjour et félicitations pour votre achat d’un véhicule Nissan
My first call goes to voicemail, which is par for the course. I recite the voicemail script, which I know by heart, and log the status in Salesforce. I really wish the dialer could leave that damned message on its own. I must recite it a hundred times a day. I will dial this number three times before dropping it from the file, spread over a two-week period, in case my prospect is away on vacation. Salesforce applies this business logic when it generates the dialer file.
For the next few hours, I get voicemail, no answer, not interested, and never call me again, which I duly note in Salesforce. This last category will be added to the phone number filtering logic, along with the Do Not Call list we purchased from the Ministry. I recognize the next number. Merde! It’s Dave Duncan. I try to cancel the call, but too late.
Dave proceeds to grill me about my affiliation with Nissan. No, I do not work for your local dealer. If I did, we would have an “existing business relationship” and we wouldn’t have to honor the DNC list. No, I do not work for the factory, its captive, nor the captive’s department of protection products – but we are the one and only factory authorized direct marketer of said products. That’s why it’s their number on your Caller ID.
By six o’clock, I have a live prospect. I alt-tab to my SPP system, which allows me to quote rates as well as set up a payment plan. I also have a custom Product object in Salesforce which connects to the rating API, but I find it easier to work in SPP because most customers will want a payment plan anyway. SPP calls the same API.
Things are going well until my prospect insists upon seeing the contract. I recite the talk track about cancellation and full refund within thirty days, but to no avail. I can also email a specimen contract and we can review it right now while he’s on the line (better odds of closing). I end up emailing a custom link, or PURL, from SPP that will open right to the rates and contract we discussed.
I flag this one for callback in a few days. It’s possible he will self-close on the SPP site, and then Salesforce will close the Opportunity automatically when it receives the file from SPP. In any case, I now have an email address we can use for the next digital marketing campaign. Speaking of digital marketing, whenever a voicemail greeting begins, “the Rogers mobile customer you’ve dialed,” I flag those as numbers to which the digital team can send text.
My next prospect, I actually close on the call. I am sitting in this fakakta cleanroom just in case I have to handle credit card information which, at last, I do. My guy buys a 72-month plan, which I set up for 24 monthly payments on SPP. Then, I download both contracts – the protection plan and the payment plan – and attach them to the Opportunity.
Salesforce won’t close the Opportunity, though, for another day until it receives confirmation from SPP that all is well with the credit card. If not, it will indicate that status, send an email, and I will have to call him back. Once the Opportunity does close, as a win, Salesforce Connector will pick it up and Marketing Cloud will include both contracts in a direct mail welcome package, ending the Customer Journey.
So, to summarize my workflow, I am manually pasting phone numbers into Salesforce and VINs into SPP. Salesforce and SPP are each capable of rating and contracting via API, and the customer can check out with or without my assistance. These tasks could be improved with some Computer Telephony Integration and an SPP interface. Instead of sending data directly to SPP, all I really need is the logic to generate that PURL and then Salesforce could either launch it for me or send it to the customer as needed.
At eight o’clock, the end of my shift, I doff my headset and run the job to generate tomorrow’s dialer file. This is basically a query against the Opportunity table, applying the “next date to call” rules. Without CTI, the best time to call is not supported. Jeanette will have to pick those out of the comments manually. Tomorrow is my day off.
Virag Consulting 