One reader asks for advice about approaching the delicate prospect of upselling in a service call center:
This is a very difficult question to answer, but a question that must be addressed. In my experience in transforming a service-oriented call center to a sales and service oriented call center, I was under tremendous pressure to produce results quickly. Senior executives underestimated the level of change management that is involved in taking an entire operation from pure service to an operation that was cross-selling/up-selling to customers where it made sense.
Here are some things that I have learn and done in the process:
1. Develop an overarching strategy for service and sales and communicate that strategy constantly to your team and the customer service agents. The way I had to break upselling down to my team was to ask them if they ever have been asked to super size a combo at a drive through restaurant. That is essentially what they are doing: determining if the customer is in a "super size mood" today. If not, move on, if so, give them the bigger fries and coke!
2. Develop a visual sales process - Everyone in the call center must get a visual picture of the sales process end to end.If you have Microsoft Visio or Excel you can map that out pretty easily.
3. Listen, Listen, Listen. You will find out that there are some customer service agents that are not fit for sales, and that is okay. You have some decisions to face if it is required for the entire call center operation to sell. But you will be surprised what agents will say/not say that impedes their ability for sales.
4. Start slow and establish quick wins. You may want to start with a simple tag line at the end of every call or start with an easy product/service in order to start momentum.
5. Make it fun. In our environment, the Operations Manager created a literal mountain that hung on the wall and superimposed his face on a person that is hiking up the mountain, representing our maturity in the transition.
6. You Need QA (Quality Asurance) and You Need Sales Coaches. This is a "both and" type of deal and not an "either or." QA should listen for the opportunities capitalized as well as missed; sales coaches should be on the floor shadowing the reps and giving them pointers. You may want to take one or two of your best sales agents and make them the coaches if you don't have the budget to hire additional coaches.
7. Need to establish KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) at a strategic and tactical level. A good strategic KPI is cost of service - it is an efficiency measure that will let you know how efficient each rep is in asking for the sale. Another good one is number of cross sells per 100 calls handled. There is a benchmark in financial services of 3 products/services sold per 100 calls. I am not sure if there is a benchmark in your vertical. At a tactical level, measure the agents on number of units sold - it's easy and they can control it.
8. Re-think your incentive compensation - if you are a B2C (Business-to-Consumer) shop, I would extract learnings from B2B (Business-to-Business) companies that have a mature and defined incentive compensation plan and use that to develop your compensation plans and incentives (both monetary and non-monetary).
9. Set up recurring sales meetings with senior execs so that they can understand how well your organization is adapting to the change and the challenges you are facing. This helps level set expectations and establishes your credibility BIG time!
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