ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008 - (Page 32)

S T R AT E G Y These results show promise for centers that are blending sales with service, but industrywide, those numbers could stand improvement — for the sake of the businesses, as well as their customers. How can you successfully transition from cost center to profit center? CMI talked with industry experts and executives who have made the shift in their companies’ contact centers. There are a good many practices that every call center with a cross-selling or upselling element can put in place to succeed in generating profits without alienating customers. Hiring practices should be revised to include selling skills; coaching and training must take into account new selling mindsets and technologies; incentives need to carefully selected and executed to motivate agents; and everybody — everybody — needs to communicate. DEFINING CROSS-SELLING AND UPSELLING Successful blended centers go beyond hawking a product or service just because they have the customer on the line. Their agents are hired for their ability — and trained — to help the customer discover needs — both stated and unstated. “Where you’re really going to see reps improving the customer experience and cross-selling and upselling very successfully is when they ask several questions to determine if there’s a need for a product that they potentially could sell, ” says Stanfill. The realization that sales can actually enhance the service experience is a necessary cultural shift for companies seeking to turn cost centers into profit centers, says Angie Fyfe, senior vice president and chief growth officer for LifeMasters, and a former contact center executive at Deluxe Corporation (where operations were rated world class by The Brady Group). “We really believed [at Deluxe] that sales was a byproduct of doing the right kinds of things with the client: active listening, effective discovery and engagement, finding their respective needs and targeting our relevant offerings to those needs — not trying to just be canned and pitchy, and hoping that something would stick, Fyfe says. ” PROFILING AGENTS WHO CAN SERVICE AND SELL Bringing a sales mission into the One reason why contact centers that sell do not realize their revenue potential is a misunderstanding of what selling means, says Tom Stanfill, founding partner and CEO of Aslan Training and Development. “Everybody — from executives to managers to reps — has to understand that the customer drives your ability to cross-sell or upsell, he says. “It’s not simply a ” case of, ‘Do you want fries with that?’” Sure, you’ll be able to sell a few extra orders of fries just on timing, adds Marc Lamson, who joined Aslan after Stanfill helped him to guide the service center at his former employer, American Power Conversion, into a sales environment. But are those really the kinds of numbers you can depend on? icmi’s insight M The Four Agent Barriers to CrossSelling and Upselling There are four barriers that prevent service reps from becoming sales reps in the service center, says Tom Stanfill, founding partner and CEO of Aslan Training & Development. But there is a way around each. 1. Selling does not align with the rep’s value system and/or selling does not fit with his or her personal goals. Service reps went into the business to help customers, not to serve company profit. SOLUTION: Communicate to the reps that selling can enhance service if you can offer someone something that they need. 2. The rep lacks the skills or the talent to sell. SOLUTION: Train reps in the skills they need. Screen reps and rep candidates for selling talent. 3. The rep views selling as not worth the effort: They are paid to do more/do a different job for the same compensation. SOLUTION: Put in place carefully constructed, consistent and fair incentive programs. 4. Selling is simply not possible given job constraints. (For example: Service level requirements are demanding and seemingly impossible to meet — how can they have time to sell?) SOLUTION: Don’t worry so much about such requirements as call times — answer the question the customer called about, then take charge of the call to discover stated and unstated needs that sales can fulfill. Most companies using this method find that call times don’t run amok. www.icmi.com | APRIL 2008 32 http://www.icmi.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008

ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008 Operations: Small Call Centers, Big Potential Ad Index Contents Editor's Page Contact Center Spotlight People: Assessment Tools Recommended Reading Technology: Speech Recognition Special Feature: Best of Show Strategy: Service-to-Sales Success Expert's Angle - High Volume, High Stakes: A Better Strategy for Hiring Experts Angle - Secrets of Recruiting Success/Job Brands: Changing Applicant Reactions to Your Openings Experts Angle - Speech Analytics: Uncovering the Voice of the Customer

ICMI's Customer Management Insight - April 2008

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