As an international call center consultant, I have had the opportunity to travel the world and review many call centres' attempts at moving from a service only environment to a customer-focused service and sales environment. I am often asked about the differences.  While there are many differences between countries, I am more often struck by the similarity in the challenges regarding the cultural difficulties of introducing sales to an already overwhelmed staff, the lack of defined sales strategies and how companies cope with the introduction of a whole new set of skills.

While I have managed many call centres that cross-sold or up-sold customers on service calls over the years, it was not until I recently wrote a book on the topic, that I needed to call my global colleagues who were also selling on service calls, to ascertain what else was working.  I wanted to move my sales to a new level, from merely adding an upgrade suggestion at the end of every call, to introducing a solutions-based selling approach.

I called, literally, a hundred call centre managers and executives world-wide, and asked them two simple questions:  First, what were they doing that was sustaining peak sales performance? And, second, how did they know they were obtaining the sales results without hurting quality, customer loyalty and long-term revenues?

Their answers were interesting.  With recent studies indicating that over 70 percent of all call centres worldwide sell on their calls, I was prepared for a lot of great ideas.  My informal interviews revealed that some call centres that were purported to be at the top of their game in service, were often grappling with similar issues.  They were trying out many different strategies and techniques, and many had limited or short-term success in driving revenues. When it came to selling in a service environment, certain industries—financial and telecom—seemed better positioned and at a higher maturity level.  They simply had been at it longer and had more sophisticated analytics, which allowed them to know when they were successful.  Recent studies also show that some telecoms derive as much as 25 percent of all company revenues from cross- or up-selling through their call centres.  I recently encountered a company who actually derived 50 percent of all revenues from their call centres.

In short, of the hundred companies I interviewed, only 15 appeared to be showing sustained sales performance, as well as being able to validate that they were selling in a way that did not hurt quality, and in fact, improved long-term customer loyalty.  While not all the 15 companies had the same service to sales philosophy, or subscribed to the same sales or incentive techniques, most agreed to similar guiding principles for success.  The top four keys to success can be summarized as follows:

 

1.  They picked their sales strategy and created a highly structured offer.  Frequently, many centres begin selling by trying to upgrade or offer an additional product to any customer willing to listen.  This approach is doomed to failure.  Successful centres have performed the return on investment analysis to pre-determine:

• Which customers should be eligible for a cross or up sell offer? How often should a customer be made an offer?  Unless they were dedicated inbound sales centres or order centres, most service to sales call centres had determined to sell only to selected customers—those who were in good credit standing, who had not recently received an offer (e.g., within six weeks), those for whom the company had a product that would be beneficial to them (based on their demographics and current products) and those customers who did not have a very difficult complaint (unless the sale would actually solve their problem).  More often than not, companies were choosing to sell on only 30-60 percent of their calls.  They tracked, and really understood their close ratio (sales to calls) by call type.  In other words, they did not attempt to sell on every call- they knew there was not a positive return on investment (ROI) on every call.

• Which channel (phone, IVR, Web or direct) should attempt to sell, cross-sell or up-sell each product?  In certain circumstances, several of these companies cross-sold product on their IVR service calls.  One financial company shared that they produced $100 million in annual revenue by offering an insurance product on their IVR service calls. For other companies, when call centre call volume was lower than forecast, selected customers with IVR-bound calls were redirected to service reps that answered their questions and then attempted a cross-sell.  Successful companies sometimes chose to redirect web customers to the call centre on some products, due to high margins and the higher close ratios of the call centre compared with the web.  Additionally, with the attainment of successful inbound cross-sell at very low cost per sales point, some companies elected to almost eliminate their outbound selling to existing customers.

• To which country (off-shore or on-shore) should calls with potential for cross sell be sent?  Best in class selling companies were highly analytic and selective when it came to deciding where to route service calls with potential sales.  A large electronic retailer chose to retain high-ticket, high-margin product in its domestic centre due to higher close ratios, but sent lower margin cross-sell potential calls to its offshore outsourcer.  The retailer had the offshore operation take the calls that were going to have a lower margin cross-sell (pre-determined, of course) because they had lower labour costs.  In fact, if the off-shore company was not in place, this company would not have been able to sell their low margin cross-sell product, due to a negative cross sell ROI.

• Is the company’s sales philosophy going to be “top down” or “bottom up”? Will reps perform “add on suggestions” to service calls or only perform “solutions-based selling”? Some companies assumed that the customer might want all of their products.  For example a communications company that sold cable TV, phone service and web services, had a philosophy that they wanted the maximum share of their consumer’s entertainment wallet.  They started out with the assumption that their customers could want every product they had in their portfolio, and then eliminated products that the customer did not want.  This is very different from an “add on” or “solutions-based” selling approach.  The point is, you must determine your sales philosophy and align all recruiting, rep selection, training, coaching and incentive programs with it.

 

2.  They recruited and selected staff differently.  All of these peak-performing centres had wrestled with the ubiquitous cultural problem of trying to get service reps that did not want to sell -- to want to sell.  They all gave up. If a rep thinks "sales" is a dirty word, rarely can training or reasoning get them to believe otherwise.  The fact is 50 to 80 percent of people, including call centre reps that sell, are in the wrong job.  The answer to the age-old question—are sales people born or made? -- is finally answered by these top centres!  Strong service to sales reps are born to sell, and with great training and coaching can get to their peak potential.  All successful centres interviewed, that were large enough, split “service only” and “service to sales” into two separate groups via skills-based routing.  This is why it is important to decide the percentage of calls on which you do not want to sell. Reps who do not want to sell can take service-only calls.

Successful centres who were sustaining peak sales and quality generally utilized:

• Predictive hiring assessments and behavior interviewing.  These assessments (mostly off-the-shelf) were created by industrial psychologists for each specific job (inbound sales, outbound sales, and inbound service to sales tests were all different).  They included hard skill and soft skill testing, and most importantly, content-valid job simulations.  The combination of all these tests, allows a centre leader to predict who will be the top and bottom performers with a predictability of over 80%.  These assessments allow centres to hire reps with no sales experience, but who are sales inclined.

• Predictive hiring tools to assess supervisors and all support groups (e.g., HR). A number of executives admitted that as many as 30-50 percent of their incumbent supervisory talent were not up to managing and retaining top sales performers.  Top talent demanded stronger leadership.  The best reps often did not make the best coaches or supervisors.  They needed different skill sets.

• Top sales performers to find peak performing talent in the marketplace. Instead of opening up a referral system to everyone, peak-performing service to sales companies sometime used top producers to identify talent like themselves.  In my role as a call centre executive, I often identified exceptional talent at the cosmetic counter in department stores.  I watched how they served me as well as other customers, and how they solved my problem through selling me the right product for my need.  I then offered them a business card, and a fast-track interview.  This was even better than a job simulation -- this was a job demonstration.  I wanted to make sure they cared enough about customers to sell to them in the right way.  Then I taught my top sales staff to recruit using similar techniques.  I gave them their own business cards, with the job specification on the reverse side.

• Minimum standards for sales performance.  Predictive hiring assessments increase your odds for selecting top service to sales talent.  But you are still going to get it wrong at least 5-10 percent of the time.  Many top performing centres set minimum sales and quality standards that could be reasonably attained over the course of several months. 

 

3.  They intensified their training and coaching efforts, not only with their reps, but with their supervisory and management staff. They did this by:

• Investing in a sales training budget. Most peak centres increased post-new hire training, recurrent sales up-training and sales training/coaching for management.

• Ensuring their first-call resolution (FCR) rates were at 80 percent plus overall, and at least at 80 percent at a rep level.  According to SQM (a Canadian quality benchmarking organization), most companies are at a FCR of 60 percent from the customers’ point of view (independent survey methods).  However, if the centre could increase the FCR to 80 percent (best in class), the close rate (sale to call) generally increases by 20 percent.

• Increasing their coaching to 70 percent of the supervisory role.  SQM reports a linear correlation between the amount of coaching and close ratio.  It is important to ensure, however, that supervisors are correctly performing root cause analysis and coaching the right metrics.  In underperforming service to sales centres, this is often not the case -- the coaching is not effective, and results do not improve.

• Slightly reduced their supervisory ratios.  When top performing service to sales companies were questioned regarding what was next on their improvement plan, they often mentioned slightly reducing the supervisory to rep ratios -- but only after they ensured the supervisors were coaching at 70 percent.  These managers concurred with SQM that coaching was key to sustaining peak sales performance with quality.

 

4.  They created incentives that changed lifestyles.  In fact, 14 out of 15 companies that were reaching peak sales and service performance cited their incentive plan as instrumental to the sustainability of their efforts.  They made changes in their plan and ensured it was aligned to all the right metrics. 

Common recommendations include:

• Pay them enough to change behavior.  If you want to sustain performance, pay them enough to matter.  Most centres’ incentive plans payouts were averaging 10 to 20 percent of base pay.  But you must do the math and make sure you have a positive ROI on the plan.  Generally, according to the American Compensation Association, if you are paying less than 10 percent, it is not enough to change the behavior.

• Keep it simple.  Avoid the tendency to overcomplicate and introduce complex weighted point systems.  Ensure, however, that there is a quality hurdle as a qualification to participate in the incentive.

• Pay as close to the behavior as possible.  Most centres paid at least monthly for the rep, and quarterly for supervisors.

• Leverage pay on the top performers.  Most centres’ top 10 percent of performers earned three times the incentive pay of the average performer. Most centres also did not pay the bottom 10-15 percent of service to sale reps any incentives.

Obviously, driving peak sales performance in a manner that is sustainable, while at the same time improving customer loyalty, is a true challenge.  It is not for the faint of heart.  Improperly executed, a service to sales program can reduce customer loyalty by 20 percent.  Executed properly, offering a customer new information or a product they can really use, can increase the “likelihood to recommend” by 30 percent (source: TARP). Selling in a service environment demands a true partnership with marketing, operations and HR, since many of the changes require their sponsorship or approval.  It requires strong leadership, analytic and execution skills.  However, the rewards of a successful service to sales program can be significant—to your company, your staff and your customers.

Mary Murcott is a business transformation executive and consultant, leading high performance teams in attaining best in class technology, service, sales and economics.  She is the author of Driving Peak Sales Performance in Call Centers (ICMI Press).  Mary can be reached at +1 972-998-6734 or at murcott@performancetransformations.biz.