By Tom Aiello
Media campaigns targeting military and veterans are a regular occurrence. They either are branding, transactional (sales), or some combination of those two goals. Despite optimizing media to better deliver clicks or leads, many advertisers are missing one of the most powerful mediums – a military veteran call center.
Call centers exist for customer service and sales. The latter is responsible for better refining and converting a lead to a sale. Customer service support makes itself available for feedback from customers to include managing complaints. If deployed right, call centers use different technologies to communicate and apply CRM best practices.
Call centers help save companies time so that they can improve their productivity and increase profit. But, call centers can also enhance a military veteran media campaign in key ways.
In a series of recent case studies, veteran-targeted lead generation campaigns added a veteran-staffed call center and the results were impressive. There was a 30% increase in conversion to a sale, when the veteran customer learned they were talking to another veteran – this also held true with veteran family members.
There’s a familiarity and inherent trust shared within the military community. And this exists if veterans, military spouses, or national guard members staff the call center.
Website clicks and leads are great but refined or converted leads are better. These veteran call centers evolve media campaigns, because the end ROI is so much greater.
Operations, location, training, and integration are keys for a veteran call center to deliver. First, the operations must be done in a replicable, learning methodology to leverage insights along the way. Technology must be locked down whether it’s secure computers, multi-line phone systems, headsets, or CRM software like Salesforce.
Location becomes a factor for recruiting. Close proximity to a military base ensures a reoccurring flow of talent transitioning out of the military. Standardized training gives veterans the skills they need and sustainment training updates technology and demographic insights.
Training tailors to the veteran audience & product, and builds on the collective learning of the call center, so you’re not starting from scratch. This collective learning is critical to establish the contact methodology and the right order of contact by mail, text, social, app, and phone call… which varies by age.
Integration is one of the most important aspects because the feedback from the call center can become a powerful data source for media optimizations. This is really a best-case-scenario to integrate the media and call center, because it produces real-time marketing that delivers the best results.
MARCH Marketing LLC is a veteran-owned company that operates a 70-person veteran-staffed call center for commercial, government, and non-profit clients.