Why Your Forecasters Should Always Talk to Marketing

Marketing campaigns often create sudden spikes in customer contact, and if these aren’t planned for, they can quickly overwhelm a contact centre.

In this instalment of our video series on the key concepts behind accurate forecasting, Call Centre Helper’s Jonty Pearce explains the importance of linking marketing activity to call demand.

It’s a step many overlook – but it can make a big difference to forecast accuracy.

Video: Forecasting Fundamentals: Correlate Marketing Activities

Watch the video below to hear Jonty explain what you need to know about forecasting – focussing on why you need to correlate marketing activities:

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The Link Between Marketing and Call Volume

One effective forecasting technique is to correlate call volumes with marketing activity, as Jonty explains:

“Another technique that is very useful in forecasting is to correlate marketing activity. For instance, what we see here is we look at two weeks:

Week one has this profile, a typical profile that starts higher on a Monday, tails off towards the end of the week, and drops down on Saturday and Sunday.

And what you see here is the second week where you’ve mailed out 45,000 brochures, and the number of calls into the call centre increases following that mailing hitting people. That tails off for a couple of days, and then it sort of returns to normal.”

To see how this works, take two weeks as an example. In the first week, call volume follows a typical pattern — high on Monday, tapering off by the weekend.

In the second week, 45,000 brochures are mailed out. This causes a noticeable spike in calls to the contact centre as people respond to the campaign. Over a few days, call levels rise, then gradually return to normal.

Calculating the Impact

By comparing these two weeks, you can calculate how many extra calls were driven by the brochure drop.

Once you have that number, you can divide it by the total number of brochures sent, giving you a calls-per-thousand-brochures figure.

“So what you can do is you can actually work out how many extra calls that generated, and you can divide that by the 45,000, and you can work out how many calls you get per 1,000 brochures.

And then you can apply this and say next week we’re going to put out, say, 30,000 brochures. You can then factor in for whenever that goes through, a call arrival profile based on those brochures.”

You can then apply this ratio to future campaigns. For example, if marketing plans to send 30,000 brochures next week, you can predict the additional call volume that will follow and build this into your forecast.

Gaining Better Visibility

Marketing activity is often one of the biggest unknowns in contact centre forecasting, and without visibility, it’s easy to be caught out by sudden increases in demand.

To avoid this, work closely with your marketing team, to get early notice of campaigns, whether they involve physical mailings or email sends.

“And that can be very useful to correlate marketing activity, and certainly one of the big unknown factors in what’s happening within the contact centre is what marketing are doing.

And I’d encourage you to speak with your marketing colleagues to get as much early visibility of when they’re sending out mailings, either physical post, or typically through sending emails out to customers.”

Even a simple heads-up can help you factor in expected changes to call arrival patterns – and reduce surprises on the day.