20-Oct-2022
Quite a few times while designing or ideating, we at UC come across situations where we need some assured hunches, which are more than assumptions yet not as expensive as qualitative research insights. In these situations we resort to cold-calling customers.
What is a cold call?
Cold calling is when a customer is solicited by an employee with whom they have had no previous interaction.
Why cold-call?
It is quick, it is inexpensive, it is easy. You can get answers to what you ask in a day, without any cost. Plus anyone in your company is equipped to conduct a cold-calling exercise.
When to cold-call?
In the design team, we use this technique for gathering quick non-opinionated information from our customers. Below are some situations where we used cold calls to our benefit.
To collect possible reasons for the non-booking of high-intent users
To collect reasons when low-intent users placed a booking
To collect requirement patterns for a specific service like an Ayurvedic massage
This blog is a collection of tips & tricks that we use in the team to efficiently conduct cold calls.
1. Get a different number for cold-calls
Getting a different number helps in many ways. One, you can clearly distinguish between a customer call and a personal call. Second, you can build a community of customers who can give you feedback through that number (pt.7). Third, it builds trust & clarity for your customer to see the company name as a reference on Truecaller.
We noticed significant rejects when we called from a personal number versus when we called from the Trucaller ID reading Urban Company design & research.
2. Make a log sheet
We make sure to create a google sheet with all the information you need about the customer before we start calling. This aids reference during the process of making & taking the calls. Basic information like the name of the customer, their phone number, etc is a must. Other than this you may want to fill in details that may give you context during the conversation.
For example, we use users’ previous bookings & any previous feedback that they might have shared to gain further context of the basis of the feedback being shared. This not only made our users feel cared for but also in turn improved the quality of the feedback received.
3. Record
We document every bit of it. This helps to have multiple perspectives on a conversation & convince key stakeholders of what you found from the study. Do this by recording the calls so you can share them for analysis & reference. However, make sure to convey to the user that you will be recording the conversation and using it only within the team for strictly research & development.
When stakeholders can listen to the conversations you had with the user, then the conversation itself can communicate the message for you. Whenever I shared a compilation of voice recordings with the research report stakeholders were aligned almost instantly.
4. Make it clear you are not a salesman
Customers do not want to talk to another telemarketer. Therefore we have experienced better success rates when we use the first minute of the call to communicate that we are not selling anything. You can do this by mentioning that the call is from the design team or the research team and that you are only interested in asking a few questions. This communicates to the user that they are talking to you to benefit a higher purpose which makes these calls more effective.
Our success when we mentioned that we are from the design team post the feedback was approximately 3/10 calls. Now it has improved to 6 to 7 / 10 calls.
5. Leave the user with something
This does not necessarily mean any monetary incentive. We tell our participants that they can call us back at any time if they have any queries, inputs or feedback about the application. This will also help build a community of users who are always enthusiastic to share feedback proactively.
We have 5–10 enthusiastic customers who share the responsibility of gathering feedback about the application along with me. Whenever they come across a problem or a bug, or a screen that they think could use a little design solution, they make the initiative to reach out to me.
6. Note Immediately
Always take immediate notes. Note what you felt was the tone of the conversation, rate whether the user was being genuine, and note the top questions you were trying to get an answer for. This accelerates the analysis process since there is always a starting point. Now I can complete a cold calling exercise of 10–15 participants in all of 3–4 hours which initially took almost a day.
7. Make a community of enthusiastic customers
Save contacts of those customers who are enthusiastic and keen to share feedback in the future. This helps because the next time you need to run an interview or need participants you can leverage this community for credible & willing participants.
This led me to have a list of 40–50 users who I could call ad-hoc to gather quick validation in case of any urgent project.
