Onetel positions itself as the UK’s leading alternative communications company. Part of Centrica, which also owns British Gas, it provides telephone and Internet services to over 50,000 business customers.
LBM approached Onetel in mid-2004 with a view to handling an outbound campaign to increase its market share in the B2B sector, and, in particular, the SME market. Onetel agreed to run a test campaign with 10 operators, including LBM. Successful completion of the pilot campaign would lead to a wider UK roll-out.
From tactical to strategic
The pilot campaign was a success for LBM and within six weeks the outbound team, which started at 10 agents, had been ramped-up to around 40 operators. Initially the campaign was an out-and-out land-grab to increase Onetel’s share in this market. Michael Winniczuk, business development manager at LBM, comments, “In the beginning it was targeting SMEs, large businesses – absolutely everybody – but the approach was tailored appropriately after analysis.”
LBM carried out research using its UK Business Contact File in addition to its telecoms model, which is endorsed by the Manchester Business School. In other words it combined LBM’s call centre knowledge with its data and modelling techniques to offer a more targeted customer acquisition campaign enabling far more precise prospect definition. At a basic level it gave the Onetel team the ability to size, segment and prioritise its target market.
“The campaign started off with straight telesales but then we dug deeper and it emerged that we needed to target better customers,” Winniczuk comments. “The problem with this marketplace is that many customers aren’t loyal – they’ll leave when a better deal comes along. We had to seek out the customers who would stay longer.”
Hey big spender
With LBM’s data intelligence,Onetel was able to identify higher spend customers and the average spend on telecoms of each potential customer. Winniczuk says, “It makes sense to get highest spend customers – we had to understand who spends most and who’ll stay longest.”
LBM brought in its analysis team, which provided campaign analysis and identifed the strongest and weakest sectors. This was achieved by building a model which was used to append a customer’s spend and usage potential. LBM also had a dedicated quality team that worked closely with Onetel to assess and monitor the campaign on a daily basis. Eddie Buxton, sales director at Onetel, says, “LBM hits sales targets but more importantly, they maintain a high quality of customers and in the telecoms market that is essential.”
Additionally LBM was asked to run an inbound campaign as part of a benchmarking exercise to test the client’s own in-house team.
Essentially, Onetel used it as a yardstick to measure the performance and disseminate best practice in-house and when dealing with other agencies.
Winniczuk explains, “We monitor the calls and go through call recordings and then we score them based on key variables. Onetel also carries out this process.
“Then we hold meetings on a monthly basis where the scores are calibrated and we grade how far adrift we are of each other,” he adds.
A happy partnership
Onetel has streamlined its agencies and LBM has been retained as its main partner within the B2B sector. This is testament to the data and contact centre specialist’s commitment to effecting a good working relationship with its clients, which it cites as a key part of its success. Winniczuk, “We work closely with clients to develop the right tactics and strategies for each campaign.”
There is now a strong two way relationship between Onetel and LBM with the latter becoming an integral part of the marketing campaigns. In fact, Onetel uses LBM to test campaigns before rolling them out across the organisation. As Eddie Buxton concludes, “One of the most important skills is LBM’s account management. It is the strength of the relationship between Onetel and LBM that is a major part of the success.”
