Ex3 Café

An RFID Chip in Every Cell Phone by 2010?

   

This recent blog post from The RFID Weblog caught my eye.  Given that we are in the middle of 2009 and (to the best of my knowledge) none of the top cell phone manufactures currently have RFID chips embedded in their phones, the pace better pick up if we want to reach this prediction by next year.  Predictions aside though, I wanted to throw out a few marketing use cases that could be enabled with this marriage of cell phone and RFID.

I'm Here, Start Spoiling Me Now

In this use case, a customer could associate their RFID enabled cell phone with their loyalty/rewards account for a particular merchant or service business.  Then, when the customer enters a participating location (and their cell phone is picked up by an RFID reader at the entrance) a personal greeter/assistant could be alerted to greet the customer upon their arrival.  A good example of this use case could be a "high roller" at a Casino.  Upon entering the casino location, the high roller could be greeted by a personal assistant who could pro-actively attend to their every need.  "Hi Mr. High Roller!  Here's your favorite cigar and drink.  Your table is already for you."

Tell Me More...

In this use case, a customer could hold their cell phone next to a product (with an RFID tag on it) to get additional information about the product.  The information could include detailed product information that's not on the product label or surrounding signage.  Other information might include:

• Complementary products.  For example, cheeses in a store that go with a selected bottle of wine.
• Nutritional information for a food or beverage
• Product ratings.  For example crash test ratings for a particular car.
• Any related discounts, rebates or coupons associated with the selected product.

Please Don't Make Me Dig For My Rewards Card

This is a common occurrence at any check out line where a reward/loyalty card is "swiped."  Here the customer has to find their rewards card in their wallet or purse.  If they can't find their card, they instead need to enter their phone number or other identifying information into a keypad to pull up their loyalty/rewards account.  This can be a bit of a hassle for the customer.  If the customer has a cell phone with embedded RFID associated with their rewards account though, their rewards account can automatically be pulled up when they enter into the check out area.  This saves the customer time and increases the likelihood that the rewards card will be associated with the customer's transaction.

These are just a few use cases, at the top of my mind, that could be achieved by embedding RFID chips into cell phones.

I'm not sure if every new cell phone will have an RFID chip in it a year from now.  What I am certain of is the marketing use cases that will be enabled by this cell phone/RFID integration will be game changing.

Service-to-Sales Sounds Great But...

It makes so much sense when you think about it.  The customer is already engaged in a conversation with your customer service department, why the heck wouldn't you seize the opportunity to cross-sell the customer a complementary product ("you want a new bank account to go with that brokerage account?") or up-sell the customer into the premium level product or service ("how about 10,000 additional text messages for only $5.00 more per month?")?  The devil is in the details though so make sure you come prepared when you pitch this "no-brainer" idea to the Customer Service department.  That said, the following are a few key questions and concerns you will likely be confronted with when you finally make your pitch.

This Messes Up Our Metrics

Because customer service reps are evaluated mostly on call stats (i.e. number of calls answered, average talk time, after call wrap up time, etc.) adding a sales pitch to every inbound call will most certainly effect all of these key metrics.  To address this issue, you should be prepared with estimated increases (or decreases) for each metric.  Here's a few examples:

• Number of calls answered per shift will decrease by approximately 20 calls
• Average talk time will increase by approximately 30 seconds
• After call wrap up time will increase by 1 minute

Of course, to offset the negative impact your proposal will likely have on the key metrics above, you will want to have the estimated increase in sales in your back pocket.

What's In It For Me?

This will most certainly be in the minds of the customer service reps and line managers.  To address this, you should have an incentive program in your proposal, otherwise there will be little motivation for the customer service reps to add a sales pitch to each call.

I know How to Fix Problems, Not Sell

Because most customer service reps are not sales people, you will need to provide a service-to-sales training course.  The course should focus on:

• Identifying cross-sell or up-sell opportunities
• Training the customer service rep how to transition from the customer service portion of the call to the sales portion of the call in a "soft" and unobtrusive manner (obviously stressing that the customer service portion of the call should come first).
• Training the customer service rep how to enter orders into the sales order system and/or enter leads into the CRM system

These are just a few key topics to cover in the training course.  The important thing to know here is service-to-sales training is essential for your program to be successful.  As such, you should have this covered in your proposal.

Having a well thought out and realistic service-to-sales proposal and implementation plan will greatly assist you in getting your proposal accepted as well as having a successful program launch.  Without this, your career advancing service-to-sales idea will likely turn out to be a service-to-headache disaster.