Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

As call centers have experienced increased pressures from managers to reduce costs and regulators to constrict calling activities, the demand for revamping processes has grown. As a result, many centers have focused on sales to deliver better customer experiences and help to drive organizational revenues to offset the cost of the center.

 

Best Practices’ Global Benchmarking Council (GBC) conducts focus group meetings once a year on customer service and call centers. A recent roundtable discussion focused on making sales happen in the call center. Key areas of discussion for this group included the most critical areas of service to sales, the view from the customer service representative’s (CSR) perspective, how to manage change, accountability for CSRs and how to recognize issues.

 

Areas that were identified as being most critical in service to sales environments included technology, errors, upselling, introducing change and presenting inadequate information to the customer.

 

Roundtable participants agreed that technology plays a key role in the call center. Specifically, the needs of the customer must be correctly matched to the proper technology to drive optimal call center success. Providing only IVR as a self-service channel will frustrate customers that prefer to do all their business online.

 

Another critical area is that of proper call routing. When a customer is placed on the line with an individual who is not capable of providing the correct information or assistance, both the customer and the agent can become frustrated, degrading the experience for the customer, even if the issue is eventually resolved.

 

CSRs also expressed that certain elements of their jobs were critical areas, including upselling a service warranty in order to drive profits, lack of adequate information available to the customer on a product that impacts the customer’s willingness to buy the product and changing the size of the center.

 

The CSRs involved in the focus group articulated their feelings that convincing agents that enhancing the size of the center is the best thing to do for the company is another critical area of consideration in a service to sales environment. If change is not managed properly, employees will resist that change, denying the organization the benefits that it was originally hoping to enjoy.

 

Generating sales for any organization can be a challenge. When it is to happen in a call center that has traditionally focused on service, the challenges can seem insurmountable. This does not have to be reality, however. Call centers can generate significant sales and profits, but it does not come easily or immediately.

 

 

 

 

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.