The development of the call center sector has revolutionized the daily operational routines of business and has made it a need for businesses to invest in agents that can carry out call center sales. Now more than ever, customer experience is seen as the primary differentiating factor for businesses in the acquisition and subsequent retention of customers with the world becoming a global village. Call center sales are organized in such a way that customers get to experience continuous and extended service provision which is facilitated by the wide array of service capabilities and access to various media channels that is available through the modified call center tools available.
It is however very evident that despite the numerous benefits that a business can expect through immaculate execution of call center sales, that it is no mean feat. It takes a dedicated and motivated team of sales representatives who have been fueled by an unshakable vision with a steadfast call center manager to dare to even dream about achieving this feat. It goes without saying that the most important aspect of achieving any sales target within a call center starts by ensuring that you have the right team on the ground. It is then and only then that you can then apply the below recommendations that will see your call center sales soar exponentially off the roof. The agents that you seek to recruit into your call center should be adaptive to both rapidly changing technologies as well as customers’ needs and wants and have the ability to exercise their emotional intelligence and use it to always be one step ahead of the customer.
Proven Pointers for Call Center Sales Success
Make your agents a Product Knowledge Powerhouse
It is of paramount importance that the agents that you have employed have the nitty gritty details about the slightest variation in the products that they are dealing with. First and foremost, the tool that has been provisioned for the call center should be able to support a knowledge base center where the agents can easily look up anything whilst speaking to the customer. This makes sure that there is an inflow of information which is bound to impress the customer being served. In addition to that, incorporating AI functionalities within the tool changes the game altogether by guiding the agent on the patterns of the customer and what would be the best way to handle them. Lastly, a really prepared call center manager would enable and promote a robust relationship between the technical team and the call center sales agents that would allow real time exchange of information between the two functionalities and this would go a long way in ensuring that there is no obsolete information being passed on to the customer. The benefits of gaining deep Knowledge of the products and services on offer are limitless and should definitely be the top most prioritized action.
Empower Agents to Lead and Steer Conversation
When an agent has been empowered fully with product knowledge, then the next step is to guide them on how to use this to lead a customer effectively. The knowledge already acquired gives them the ability to anticipate customers needs and are thus capable of predicting the next possible query that may possibly occur and when they surprise a customer by raising an issue that was still in the formative stages in their head and offering a solution to that particular issue. A customer feels thoroughly understood and valued and the effect is that they will probably choose to make the purchase and stay for even longer with that particular organization.
Let Relationship Building be your Focal Point
The easiest kinds of sales to make are to people who already trust and like you. The aim here is to enable your agents to see the bigger picture. Spend time allowing your customers to buy into the vision that you have and their specific needs that you’re focused on servicing and why they should choose you as their preferred provider. Once this has been established, then the sales process becomes seamless. Agents discover that once this is implemented, the conversion time significantly reduces.
Encourage Adaptive Selling
Adaptive selling is a humanized approach that allows the agents to acquire a unified view of customers’ interaction across various channels thereby giving them insights on that particular customer. The agent is able to access information on every touch point and acquaint themselves with previous conversations that the customer partook in. With these gathered insights, it is therefore upon the call center sales agent to utilize the information to make customized recommendations that are bound to solve the needs of that particular customer.
Adaptive selling also encompasses the need for the agent to take up the communication style used and preferred by the customer and continue with it. This allows the customer to feel comfortable and allows them to see that they are understood and seen just as they are.
Implement Process Optimization
It is important to effectively check on your Key Performance Indicators and evaluate whether the customers that you are serving are staying on queues longer than they need to. Armed with this information, it becomes easier to decide which techniques to apply to reduce call queues, reach SLAs and overall make the customer experience an optimized one.
When keen attention is placed on process optimization, the agent is able to work efficiently with unnecessary bottle necks removed, therefore enabling them to focus on their primary job of sales.
Practice Customer Categorization
When you are able to group your customers into identified clusters with a KYC program (Know Your Customer), it becomes easier for an agent to figure out which style to use to approach a particular customer.
Conducting a thorough analysis on your customers and sharing this analysis in the form of training for the agents fills a void that had been existing before. It becomes easier to recognize a need that cuts across an entire group and even easier to replicate a methodology that has been proven to work for that particular group of individuals. Agents know better in terms of what the pain points are and what are the red zones that should be avoided.
Customer categorization is more like having a blueprint, and with it, sales are most definitely bound to rise.
Encourage Cross Sells
When a customer has already been convinced of taking up one product or service, it is at this juncture that an agent can smartly introduce other products or services on offer without being too forward about it and ensuring that there is always a correlation between the two.
As a forward-thinking organization, it is in your best interest to incorporate cross selling strategies within your overall training program for agents. It is important that there is an understanding of what products can be bundled up together and that would make both economic sense and increased value to the customer in question. When such techniques become second nature to the agents, sales benefits immensely.
For the agents, let their train of thoughts be geared towards them making helpful recommendations to the customers from a knowledge point of view rather than just trying to make the customer spend as much money as possible without any thoughts of the long-term effect on the organization.
Offer 24/7 Support
Regardless of the means that will be implemented in ensuring that your customers’ problems are solved in real time, whether it be actual agents or the use of artificial intelligence using chatbots, 24/7 support is necessary. Issues do not have a specific time slot in which they are slated to occur and therefore it becomes imperative that your customers are aware that no matter the time of day or night, that if and when they need assistance, it will be accorded to them within a reasonable time frame.
Sales are bound to dip when it is common knowledge that as an organization you have very rigid timeframes within which a customer can contact you about a problem that they are experiencing. Liberate your sales by ensuring that this essential factor is highly considered.
Practice Customer Appreciation
The customer is the core reason why you are in business as an organization. It is key that the customer is made to feel that they are highly valued, their input is needed and welcomed at all times, that they are at the forefront of the concern of the business when any major decision is being made by offering them this information among many other perks that a business can offer its customers.
Sales is a continuous process that just doesn’t stop when you acquire the customer. There has to be consistent efforts made to retain that customer so that they can stick with the business. The recommendations offered here seek to help you achieve just that. Implementation of this pointers will yield roaring sales for any organization as they have covered all the bases that are necessary to achieve a high performing call center sales team.