1to1 Magazine Demo

EXPERT INSIGHT industry authority David Boulanger, Research Director, Aberdeen Group Contact Center Agent as Trusted Advisor Empowering front-line staff can help build profitable service operations. A key differentiator between best-in-class and other firms is the empowerment they give to CSRs to sell products and services. c ontact center managers have for years been using tried-and-true efficiency-oriented key performance indicators, such as average call handling time and cost per call, to measure contact center success. But evidence shows that companies are moving away from efficiency metrics and more toward agent empowerment. Aberdeen Group recently completed a survey, “Cross-selling and Upselling in the Contact Center: Transforming Your Contact Center Into a Profit Center,” that examined the trend of Fortune 100 best-inclass companies that are elevating their contact centers from cost centers to profit centers. The findings reveal that best-in-class companies are achieving trusted-partner status with their customers, but to reach this new level, they had to rethink success by focusing on their contact centers and turning them into profit centers. Aberdeen’s findings indicate that under the corporate mandate of providing trusted-advisor status delivered via the contact center agent to the customer, and empowering these agents to cross-sell and upsell, these best-in-class companies have also reaped additional benefits: • 81 percent have increased brand awareness; • 78 percent have increased customer retention; • 76 percent have increased average revenue per customer; • 68 percent have increased customer satisfaction. monitor their performance, and provide the oversight coaching and selling they need to develop. The best-in-class companies we interviewed are using, or are planning to implement, these best practices: Hire (for highly complex, technical or engineered-products industries) former product or service road warriors who want to limit their time on the road yet possess a collaborative problem-solving approach. Implement regular informal coaching designed to provide examples of the dual customer approach where the agents provide service as well as sell products and services. Implement performance metrics to measure overall customer satisfaction, initial sales over an extended time period, and increased cross-sell and upsell conversion rates. Enable 24/7 access to contact center agents. Empower agents to decide when the time is right to sell. Use analytics integrated with baseline CRM systems. Measure cross-sell and upsell performance, customer satisfaction, and initial sales. Create “buddy lists” of subject matter experts outside the contact center in other parts of the organization to bring them into conversations in real time to answer customer questions for deep technical cross-sell and upsell discussions. Script agents through the customer sales process. Provide a knowledgebase of product, marketing, and engineering materials to quickly and accurately find relevant information used to cross-sell and upsell. A key differentiator between best-in-class and other firms is the empowerment they give to CSRs, not only to solve problems, but also to sell products and services to address customer needs. These best-in-class companies are far more likely to allow agents to decide when to cross-sell or upsell. This is a critical capability and timing is everything. If an agent realizes an opportunity to make a sale, but is not empowered to act on it, a sale could be lost. Transferring the call to a sales rep increases the time the customer spends on the call and decreases the likelihood of a successful sale. The technology trap As with any contact center transformation, mistakes are inevitable. Companies may be rewarding agents more on the amount of sales than on issue resolution. They also may not be training them on the full suite of products and services that the company offers. Of course technologies, such as incentive systems, can help to balance issue resolution. And a unified communications tool that integrates IM, chat, wiki, and other collaborative technologies can assist in empowering agents in their selling. But don’t fall into the trap of solely relying on technology to help make the transformation. Companies need to hire the right people, In the words of the CIO at a Fortune 20 chemicals manufacturer, “They aren’t manufacturing more customers for my business, but my customers are buying more and more from me and their questions get harder and harder each day.” You don’t have to throw out everything you’ve learned about contact center management to make this work, but you do have to build on your existing strategies. Contact Boulanger at david.boulanger@aberdeen.com 46 1to1 magazine www.1to1media.com http://www.1to1media.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of 1to1 Magazine Demo

1to1 Magazine Demo Contents 1to1media.com Editor's Note Feedback Putting Care in Patients' Hands Loyalty at Work Redefining the Contact Center Agent Introducing Enterprise 2.0 Cigna Dental Drills for Loyal Customers On the Beat 19 Ways to Succeed Miami Heat Schools Its Staff on Sales and Service Marketing Lends a Helping Hand More Than Meets the Eye Customer Service by Committiee Textron's Business Soars by Tracking Customer Loyalty Resources Contact Center Agent as Trusted Advisor Mastering Global CRM Face to Face with Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.