What's the Difference Between Inbound and Outbound?
When you think of customer experience, inbound telemarketing services are typically what come to mind. Those services include inbound calling, live chat, email, texting, and any other method you have set up where your customers can easily reach out to you. However, I’m willing to bet that outbound marketing or outbound teleservices don’t cross your mind nearly as much in relation to CX. And if you think customer experience and customer service are the same - think again and read this article that outlines the differences of each.
Because customer experience relates to the entire customer journey, you need to consider how both inbound and outbound marketing play a role in growth and customer retention. Or maybe outbound telemarketing doesn’t cross your mind because you’re not sure what it all entails. In order to ensure you’re educated on both sides of CX, we’re going to discuss the difference between inbound and outbound marketing and telemarketing.
Why should you focus on customer experience?
According to SuperOffice, the top 3 reasons companies invest in continual CX improvement are:
Improving cross-selling and/or up-selling
Improving customer satisfaction
Improving customer retention
All three of these areas include both inbound and outbound and a focus on them can drastically improve your revenue. At Incept, we help you with your outsourced teleservice needs so you can quickly scale to focus on all the above CX improvements and, ultimately, grow your revenue.
Related Post: Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Call Centers
What does inbound mean?
In general, inbound refers to all the activity coming IN to your organization. With inbound, current or potential customers are contacting your company (usually to get in touch with customer service representatives, marketing, or your sales team) on their own accord. There are two different categories of inbound that will take us a little deeper into the inbound strategy as a whole.
Inbound telemarketing services
Inbound teleservices include all the services that come to mind when you think of a typical contact center. Having inbound telemarketing as an option for your customers is a great way to improve or maintain great customer experience. Your customers want to engage with your company in a way that feels good for them, so meeting them where they are at decreases the barriers for an easy experience.
Inbound calling
Exactly what it sounds like - current or potential customers reach out via phone to get in touch with your live agents for any of the following.
Appointment scheduling - Inbound appointment scheduling can range from scheduling medical or blood donation appointments to setting up meetings for your sales team so they can spend more time on discovery calls and closing deals
Order processing - Inbound order processing involves a customer calling live agents (either internal or outsourced) to order a particular item. They could be calling to place an order for something they watched an infomercial about or something they saw in a newspaper or catalog. Offering order processing solutions via phone is a great way to boost customer satisfaction as well as sales because your customers are able to talk through any issues or questions with a human at the moment they are wanting to purchase a product.
Customer service and technical support - Although 67% of customers prefer self-service options, there are always customers that either would simply rather talk on the phone or have a problem that a forum or FAQ page can’t help them with. Offering inbound customer support and escalated tech support allows your customers to feel heard and valued when they can solve their issue quickly with a knowledgeable service agent.
Related Post: 5 Ways to Give Customer Support a Human Touch
Live Chat
From live chat on your website to Facebook messenger chat, automation is a key player in your live chat strategy. This not only saves your customer support team time, it also helps route the customer to either a quick answer to their question for self-service. If self-service live chat still can’t resolve the issue, automation will help to properly tag their concerns and route them to the proper live agent to help them directly. If you’re interested in learning more live chat, read this blog post on the 5 reasons to add chat to your CX strategy.
For less urgent concerns or questions, inbound email helps your customers submit questions along with attachments, such as receipts, invoices, or screenshots to assist your support team when working toward a solution.
Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing supports your inbound telemarketing strategy and campaigns by providing information for your current or potential customers to digest and direct them to complete the action you want, such as calling to schedule an appointment or filling out a form to receive a piece of content.
This strategy helps you attract customers when they are actively searching for information you provide, engage with them in a way that feels best for them, and work to convert them into a happy customer. Below are a few inbound marketing strategies that we recommend.
Website/blog content
Creating valuable, SEO-ranking content on your website helps you establish authority in your industry as well as help you reach new potential customers through search engines. Using specific keywords that your target audience is searching for and wants to know more information about allows you to help and provide solutions to current and relevant problems.
The key here is to provide as much information as possible to solve a problem - don’t worry about “giving too much away.” People will remember what business helped them with a simple question and will eventually return with a larger question (and quite possibly a sale!) because you’ve established authority. We always recommend a call to action (CTA) within or at the bottom of your content to encourage continued engagement with your brand.
Organic and paid social media campaigns
Regardless if your industry is B2B or B2C, social media will always help awareness, lead generation, and re-engaging current or lapsed customers. Depending on the goal of your campaigns, you can use social media to educate your target audience on your product or even offer a discount code through the link to encourage lower-funnel leads to make a purchase. We’ve also seen great success internally and with clients using paid social media campaigns to educate and entice an audience to register for an upcoming event.
Search and display ad campaigns
Search and display campaigns allow you to target specific keywords that your target audience is searching for (similar to SEO content, but this strategy involves marketing spend). The benefit of search ads allow you to appear in search at the top of the page before organic listings so you’re top of mind and more prominent on the page.
What is Outbound Marketing?
Typically, when someone thinks about outbound, they jump to defining it as the stereotypical cold-caller (someone that calls you out of the blue about a product or service that is far from relevant to you to try to convince you to purchase within the next few minutes). While there are still those types of outbound telemarketers, here at Incept we’re evolving that definition toward outbound teleservices that work to solve someone’s problem rather than just to make a sale regardless if it helps them. After all, our end goal is outstanding customer experience, so it’s essential to put the customer’s needs at the forefront.
On top of outbound cold-calling campaigns, outbound marketing consists of lapsed customer re-engagement, B2B lead generation and list building, cross-selling or up-selling current customers, trade shows, webinars, and more.
B2B Outbound Marketing
Outbound B2B marketing always starts with defining the target audience and developing a high-quality list of potential customers that either work with a competitor or have been tagged to need the product or service you offer. Then, through a multi-channel approach, your team of lead generation specialists begins to work the list to connect with right-party contacts and decision makers to build awareness. Outbound B2B can also work together with your inbound marketing strategy by following up with your inbound leads.
As targets move down the funnel, your lead gen team will then set appointments or sales meetings for your sales team to close the deal. Because the sales managers close out the deal, it’s essential for the inside and outside sales reps to be aligned on targeting and funnel movements - communication is key!
Related Post: How Outsourcing B2B Lead Gen Helps Business Growth
B2C Outbound Marketing
A company can use outbound B2C marketing for campaigns that generally fit within 3 buckets:
Build awareness and convert new customers
Cross-sell or up-sell current customers
Re-engage lapsed customers
This type of outbound campaign can have the potential to be more disruptive if your target isn’t anticipating your call, so we recommend pairing outbound calling with paid ad campaigns. This allows your brand/ product or offering to continue to get in front of your audience on the platforms they use without interrupting their typical day. Then, when your sales representatives call, your potential customer will be more familiar with you and be more likely to continue the conversation.
ABOUT INCEPT
Incept is an outsourced call center service that brings true conversational marketing back to customer experience. Our team of customer service representatives and experts partner with your team to improve the outcome of customer interactions and satisfaction, promote and protect your brand, and accelerate growth.
We’ve worked with some of the largest brands in the world to develop CX campaigns with one main goal - strengthen relationships at every touch point. From inbound phone calls and technical support, to organic and paid social media campaigns, to live chat, Incept is one of the best call center outsourcing vendors to assist all your CX and lead generation needs.