Premier wins Gold at the MARCE Awards
The prestigious MARCE Gold Award
Premier Business Audio, specialists in managing the caller experience, won Gold for their work for Orient Express at the annual MARCE Awards, presented in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The prestigious awards – the ‘Oscars’ of the audio messaging industry – are presented by the On Hold Messaging Association (OHMA) for creative and production excellence in audio marketing for caller management. Premier Managing Director, Nick Findlay, said “The Awards recognise the creativity and value provided by the industry. We are delighted to be recognised as innovators in the field; our creative writers and studio team have hit gold yet again!”
The award-winning entry, ‘Orient Express’, combines factual information and customers’ own travel experiences to provide an engaging and entertaining audio track to be heard by callers in queue contacting Orient Express. Nick Findlay explains, “Orient Express provide a range of luxury travel experiences and our brief was to raise awareness of the product range among customers who were waiting for assistance from the call centre. Rather than testing customers’ patience with standard on-hold music and repeated ‘comfort’ messages, Orient Express was able to engage, inform and whet appetites for further luxury adventures.”
A MARCE Gold Award was also presented to Australian based company 1.800 OnHold, leaving the US providers looking to the rest of the world for inspiration.
The best of European audio marketing practice will be recognised at the annual conference of the Audio Marketing Association (Europe) in Daventry in November.
Set your brand apart with scent marketing
Most people underestimate our sense of smell and the overall effect it has on our emotion and behaviour.
For example, picking the right scent for your business can influence the customer into coming into your shop or purchasing certain products, whilst the wrong scent can drive a customer away and even put them in a bad mood.
Our sense of smell is very individualized but tests suggest that certain scents can cause changes in our behaviour.
According to research conducted by Neil Martin, Human Olfaction Labratory- Middlesex University “pleasant and unpleasant ambient odours can have an effect on human behaviour such as stress, anxiety, depression and mood.” Martin explains. “Whilst we’re still continuing the experiment, so far it seems that the smell of chocolate really does make people less stressed and anxious, and more relaxed.”
Martin also says “People can use scents to improve alertness, wellbeing and anxiety,” he says. “For example, another study showed that women in a dentist’s waiting room that had been scented with orange reported less anxiety than those in an unscented counterpart.” (Guardian, 2010)
Other UK research has also found that certain smells trigger positive 
memories and feelings, thus influencing the buyers purchasing decision. For example, subjects presented with a piping hot baked potato reported an uplifted mood and a rush of childhood memories. The head researcher, Dr Avinash Kant, further enlarged his findings beyond the potato to other food smells. This explains
the tactic of baking cakes or fresh bread
when perspective buyers visit a house for sale.
Studies also indicate that vanilla is considered a buying scent. According to Alan Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment research foundation, if a product smells good it’s perceived to be a good product.
A recent case study with Premier Business Audio and Simply Chocolate, World of Duty Free – Terminal 4, indicates through the use of targeted fragrancing, revenue and foot traffic can be significantly increased. Charlotte Graves, Store Manager, commented “We have found that using the chocolate 
fragrance has been a great way to build rapport with our customers, find out more about their tastes and identify their favourite chocolate. Also if they hadn’t thought of buying chocolate as a gift, the smell triggered the idea to buy a token for a friend, a loved one or someone they will be staying with whilst on holiday. Overall the Premier Fragrancing service has proved to be a great success to Simply Chocolate, resulting in a positive effect on the business, by increasing footfall and revenues by 15% and helping to motivate the team who run it.”
With this research in mind, it is important for businesses to consider their company’s “smell” as it can make a big difference in the consumers buying power – after all getting and retaining customers is imperative for any business.
Read more on how scent can benefit your business, or call Premier on 0845 279 7200.
Give your company a voice
Marketing campaigns often focus primarily on the sense of vision, even when they have associated sound like in television commercials or retail environments. Whilst visual marketing gives your company a face for your business and brand definition, the lack of an audio dimension can deprive your company of its full marketing success. Sound is possibly the most powerful medium we could use in the marketing mix, significantly because sound and audio sticks.
Audio marketing, in particular On-Hold, In-Queue and In-Store productions stand out as an important marketing medium because visual marketing is everywhere. Audio / Sound marketing gives organisations the opportunity to differentiate their marketing from their competitors. Audio can also lead to an emotional connection as people tend to recall events or past memories when they hear a particular sound or piece of music.
Research shows that businesses spend 94% of their marketing/advertising budget on trying to get new business, with only 6% dedicated to handling these calls. With this in mind, is it any wonder businesses fail to convert new leads?
Did you know the average person has the ability to memorize more than 2,000 songs, none of which they ever intended to learn. Sound has the ability to tap into our subconscious, in turn making Audio Marketing an important element of your companies approach to consumers.
Audio can help you to achieve the following objectives:
Brand Reinforcer – Audio is used as part of the same tool box as corporate logos, trademarks and strap lines.
Behaviour Influencer – This is where sound is used to influence the audience’s or consumer’s behaviour.
Information Distributor – Use audio to educate/inform your audience or consumers.
Your On-Hold or In-Queue productions should also achieve the following goals – reduce caller abandonment rates (hang-ups), improving the overall caller experience and increase sales/customer base.
Matching the audio for your business:
Creating a message with which your product, services and sound can identify is a good start. You should also start to think of the tone of your company and the mood in which it appeals to.
Listen to a few examples of our voice and music samples and see if we can help match your production with your brand. We also have a large library of music and a wide variety of professional voice artists to choose from.
Know your audience – It is extremely useful to know how your audience can be made to react, thus evoking a positive response.
Selecting the right voice artist will serve as the voice of your company and your brand. This voice will not only inform/educate your callers but you also need to make them feel comfortable and entertained whilst they are waiting On-Hold.
Use a memorable Audio Style Guide – The longer you use a style guide (i.e the same sounds/voices etc) the more recognizable your brand, therefore the more trustworthy your brand becomes. Every sound asset used for your On-Hold, In-Queue Message or In-Store Production should be easily identifiable as the ‘voice’ of your company.
Audio / Sound Marketing is not about forcing your business on your callers – but about giving your business a professional image, creating brand awareness as well as telling your customers what you do and how good you are.
Audio Marketing will help you create a great first impression. Your business may look great, but how does it sound?
Click on the link now to find out more about Audio Marketing.
Alternatively, call us on 0845 074 4068 and book a free Audio Audit of your current marketing activity to establish how audio can be used to build your brand and maximise customer contact.
Need help marketing your dental practice?
In today’s society, there are many ways in which a patient can contact your practice. In most instances, patients still prefer to pick up the phone and call your practice to book an appointment or make an enquiry.
Recent research shows that the number of practices who greet patients with an answering machine, an engaged tone or leave the phone ringing is dramatically increasing.
In the survey conducted by Converso, researchers discovered that of the 3,557 dial-outs made over a 128-hour period, they reached 718 answer machines, 630 busy signals and 202 no answers, which equates to a staggering 44% of all attempted calls. (dentristy.co.uk)
In conclusion, research shows many practices are failing to maximise these point of contact touch points and are failing to meet even the most basic demands of their patients.
The Dental Call Handler is the solution for dentists who can not meet this very basic of demands and require a simple, yet effective telephony solution. The Call Handler answers up to 3 calls at any one time in your practice. It greets patients with a professionally recorded and customised message, and then continues to play messages about your practice with soothing background music until you are able to pick up the phone.
The Dental Call Handler will also automatically switch into night mode when your practice is closed. Patients will hear your opening and closing hours, emergency contact numbers and if applicable your web address. It will then direct them to your answering machine for those patients wanting to leave a message.
With an average of 7 out of 10 patients also being put on-hold, why not utilize this time with up-to date relevant messages, rather than letting them listen to silence or ‘elevator’ music? When a patient calls and is asked to hold, those next moments are essential to your practice’s image – as first impressions really do count.
Research shows that 60% of callers put on-hold with silence, will hang up within 40 seconds. However callers who were put on-hold with music and an informative message will stay on the line on average 3 minutes longer.
You have a captive audience when your patient is put on-hold and a unique opportunity. Leave a strong impression by entertaining patients. Give them tips on a healthy lifestyle, promote new procedures or give them relevant practice information.
From the above statistics, giving the wrong message and the wrong tone could actually damage your reputation and potentially result in lost patients. Many people spend money on visual branding, but neglect their telephone audio.
Lee Pritchard states “Your sonic branding is as important as your visual branding!”
Are you making the most of this marketing opportunity?
Premier are currently giving every principle dentist who takes out their Call Handler service will get a free generic web presenter video for their website worth up to £250.
To qualify, the principle dentist needs to visit http://www.premierba.co.uk/dentists.htmand input the unique reference code: webofferfeb.
Last year we paid out £’s in dealer commissions. Would you like a share of this?
In today’s market place new business is becoming more and more difficult to find. On-hold marketing helps businesses to cross sell products and services as well as improving brand and product awareness.
We work in association with telecoms dealers nationwide to provide their clients with excellent on-hold marketing solutions. We know from experience, this can add value to your customers and happy customers buy more from you.
Businesses large and small are adding a new dimension to their marketing efforts and improving customer communication by using on hold and transfer time as marketing time; they are really getting their phone systems to work for them!
Audio Marketing:
Did you know that less than 10% of UK businesses are using Audio Marketing? So many of your prospects could reap the benefits of this service and happy customers will buy more from your!
If every one of your customers had a professional audio message, the telephone system supplied by you would be in the ears of every single caller!
On Hold Marketing can help your client’s sound professional to their callers whilst strengthening their brand and customer perfection.
If your clients don’t already have on-hold messaging, have you thought about what opportunities you could be missing out on? How do they currently handle a surge in calls following recent marketing campaigns, or seasonal changes?
Click on the link now to find out more about On-hold Audio Marketing.
If you fancy earning commissions and rewards for putting your clients in contact with us, why not sign up to our dealer referral scheme?
We have many free resources and incentives available to you for using our scheme. Find out how our referral program works by clicking on the ‘get more info’ button below.
Alternatively, call Chris Taylor on 0845 279 200 and find out how you can join today!
Prepare your Call Centre for a ‘Big Freeze’ in 2012
Due to popular demand, we are holding a 2nd ‘Big Freeze’ Webinar on the 21st February at 11.00 am (GMT)
We have already seen sub-zero temperatures this week and the risk of places across the UK becoming bitterly cold are high.
Weather forcasters this week predict that Britain face a month-long big freeze. A quote from the Sunday Mirror (29.01.12) states “It makes it very difficult to predict precisely what will happen, but from today it will get colder. There is a 70 per cent change of severe cold weather.”
Forcaster Helen Chivers (Quote from the Daily Express 28.01.12) said “Cold weather is winning the battle for dominance and people will notice the chill carrying on for more than a few days.”
Unpredictable weather can impact directly on your business – with businesses from every sector affected right across the country.
Some businesses struggle to cope during adverse weather conditions and began to lose customers. Other businesses deal with it well. Within this webinar you will hear from businesses who coped well with the snow days and will learn valuable lessons on how to cope with the unexpected.
Unfortunately, we British never believe ‘servere weather’ will actually hit and have problems coping with the bad weather when it does. In turn, call centres can experience up to four times the normal level of customer enquires and more than twice the normal volume of inbound calls – often with customers calling in with the same questions.
Here are the main points of discussion :
1) The impact of inclement weather on business and the importance of effective preparation / anticipation at call centre level.
2) Real life experience of two industry leading businesses covering contingency planning, challenges and effects to their businesses when bad weather strikes.
3) Summary of the key factors and options available to Call Centre professionals
Is your core business put under potentially catastrophic pressure by unpredictable severe UK winter weather conditions. Join our webinar now and avoid damaging your brand!
All attendees will also recieve a free Benchmarking Audio Audit.
FInd out more about about our Call Centre Audio services.
Be creative with your marketing
When planning your marketing strategy for the upcoming year, why not factor in on-hold marketing? After all 94% of marketing budgets are spent generating calls, with only 6% allocated to call management.
Are you missing a great opportunity?
On-Hold Marketing can help you sound professional to your callers whilst strengthening your brand and customer perfection.
In a perfect world no-one would put their callers on-hold, but its now a way of life for most businesses- considering 70% of business inbound callers are put on-hold, in-queue or transferred. These buttons are the most used over any other phone system feature!
Being onhold can be annoying, so why not exploit this free air-time whilst callers are being transferred and turn frustrated customers into happy customers!! A silent on-hold message can be extremely cold and callers tend to hand up sooner than you want.
It is also a great way of cross-selling and up-selling new products or services.
UK iData statistcs show that 88% of callers surveyed preferred message recordings to the radio or silence. Furthermore, many who were placed on hold (with silence) weren’t sure if they were in a queue or being ignored.
What do your callers hear when they are on-hold or being transferred from one extension to another?
If you don’t already have on-hold messaging, have you thought about what opportunities you could be missing out on? How do you currently handle a surge in calls following recent marketing campaigns, or seasonal changes?
Turn this onhold time into marketing time and plan it into this coming years strategy. It is one marketing approach you really should not be missing out on.
Don’t just take our word for it…
“In a consistantly changing climate our on-hold messages give a good professional image for our company.” – Toni & Guy
“As a result, we have had a direct positive result from our on-hold service. ” – Whiting and Hammond.
“The audio element has been one of the most powerful parts of our marketing mix and one our customers and prospects particularly comment on.”- Selco
“The high quality audio really does add to our customer experience… perfectly ‘on-brand” – Nikon.
Click on the link now to find out more about On-hold Audio Marketing.
Alternatively, call us on 0845 279 200 and book a free Audio Audit of your current marketing activity to establish how audio can be used to build your brand and maximise customer contact.
Actor Richard Wilson slates poor UK Call Centres
Channel 4’s Dispatches program, presented by Richard Wilson investigated the use of automated systems and call centres in Britain. It also outlined the importance of the ‘customer calling experience’ and clearly showed that many companies do not get this right… with typical Victor Meldrew grumpiness. Watch the documentary now by clicking on the video link below:
During the documentary, Richard put automated phone systems of some of the largest services providers to the test and created his own call centre, revealing the best and worst for queue times.
In addition, Channel 4 also ran a simultaneous poll (in conjunction with Populus) asking people to vote for which automated service – or services – gave them the biggest headache.
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FREE AUDIO AUDIT:
In light of the documentary, Premier Business Audio, the UK’s leading provider of call centre audio and customer experience solutions are offering a free Audio Audit and bench-marking analysis to identify areas for improvement in your Call Centre caller experience .
For more information on what is involved with an Audio Audit please click here.
To book your Audio Audit, please click on the button below.
Or call Kate Harding on 0845 279 7200.
The winner of our iPad 2 competition is….
Susan Cross – Cambridge City Council
And the runners up are:
Martin Howitt – Nowy Styl UK Ltd
Kevin Newton – Interlink Express
Congratulations to our 3 winners and thank you to everyone who entered!
(please note: winners were selected via anonymous votes)
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