Was on a website, then called cust serv and they.

[Acternaweb]

I was on a website for a leading vacuum company in the US and had a question so I called their customer service. They told me that I just visited their website. How did they know? Is it legal?

Hope I explained this clear enough.

[briggidere]

they could have a separate telephone number for their website with a different team dealing with these calls. we have separate numbers on all our websites with different teams dealing with these enquiries so we know the call is generated from the website.

briggidere

[ken_b]

Could you have mentioned an offer that was web only?

If so, it might have been a pretty good indicator that you had visited the site.

Did you register at the site and give your name or phone? If so that might have shown up on their customer service system.

[jwolthuis]

They may have software that lists the current visitors on their site, and the web pages they've visited.

If a customer service rep sees a customer browsing "purple vacuum cleaners", then receives a call from you asking questions about "purple vacuum cleaners", it's easy to connect the dots.

Is it legal? Sure, if you download a web page from their server, they have the right to know about it.

[Marketing Guy]

Lot's of big brands have unique phone numbers for their sites - major banks for example, might have dozens of phone numbers - one for each product.

MG

[Acternaweb]

I understand having a special phone number, but the person I spoke with knew of my web presense before I asked anything or even said hello. His exact verabage was that their records had shown I just visited the webpage. It struck me as change and as a new method but I guess it was old school tactics.

Thanks

[MrFishGuy]

If their phone number is only on one page, like a "contact us" page, they may be alerted when someone goes to that page and therefore expect a phone call.

[jsinger]

Acternaweb, call them back and ask them how they knew. They'd probably tell you. I'm curious, too.

[shri]

Did you have to dial any codes after the phone number? A number of stores generate "discount / offer codes" to track buyers.

[Wlauzon]

Lot's of ways - for many items we have different prices on our website than in our store or print ads, for example. We also sometimes run a "coupon" discount that is only available if you visit our site.

[fiu88]

Liveperson lets you see everyone on your site at any time....
If there arent too many people on, you can determine that the i.e 212 area code now calling was ip xx and voila...

[sugarrae]

My guess is on the phone number...

Did you have to dial any codes after the phone number?

That wouldn't even be neccessary. Toll free numbers are not actual "numbers" - they just forward to an actual number. You can have eight toll free numbers going into the same base number. Big companies can have computer/phone systems that grab the inbound call, determines which "source" it came from and display that on the customer service agents screen. You likely called a number that told the CS rep you got it from the website.

For those in the states familiar with distinctive ring type services, it is along the same lines (for those who aren't, distinctive ring services allow you to have multiple phone numbers coming in on the same phone line and you know which of your phone numbers is ringing based on whether the phone does one solid ring, a double ring or a triple ring). Many home based business owners use this service to identify "how" to answer the phone (such as saying hey vs. John Doe Marketing, John speaking).

Toll free numbers are hugely cheap now a days and using seperate toll free numbers for seperate marketing efforts is but a drop in the bucket to know their conversions, etc. Think of how much companies can spend on web analytics. Toll free is a way to track offline marketing efforts. Just like we as Internet marketers want to know which search engine our visitors come from and on what keyword, they want to know which marketing efforts are producing results.

Some affiliate companies do this as well for "big affiliates" - instead of having a promo code after the main toll free number, they give them a unique toll free number that is set up in their system to "belong" to you and the computer identifies it accordingly when the calls come in.