Are your customer service people salespeople? Brand Ambassadors? Efficient Administrators?
This episode takes a deep dive into the fascinating world of customer service at 'Bob's Insurance', a company whose customer-centric approach has revolutionised the way their agents handle sales. We dissect a fictional customer service call, demonstrating how to balance customer satisfaction while also promoting the company's additional add-on offers.
That's not all! We also explore how a shift in recruiting strategies and team structures can steer your contact centre towards a more sales-focused approach, and how this can significantly benefit a company's bottom line. Putting the spotlight on the often overlooked aspect of incentivising customer service personnel, we discuss how such a strategy, with training, can motivate them to make additional sales, leading to increased revenue.
So, let's change the way we view customer service calls, and start seeing them as golden opportunities for upselling and reselling the brand's value to the customer. This episode promises to be an eye-opener, blurring the lines between customer service and sales!
Find more useful and essential contact centre development from realitytraining.com
Are your customer service people salespeople? Brand Ambassadors? Efficient Administrators?
This episode takes a deep dive into the fascinating world of customer service at 'Bob's Insurance', a company whose customer-centric approach has revolutionised the way their agents handle sales. We dissect a fictional customer service call, demonstrating how to balance customer satisfaction while also promoting the company's additional add-on offers.
That's not all! We also explore how a shift in recruiting strategies and team structures can steer your contact centre towards a more sales-focused approach, and how this can significantly benefit a company's bottom line. Putting the spotlight on the often overlooked aspect of incentivising customer service personnel, we discuss how such a strategy, with training, can motivate them to make additional sales, leading to increased revenue.
So, let's change the way we view customer service calls, and start seeing them as golden opportunities for upselling and reselling the brand's value to the customer. This episode promises to be an eye-opener, blurring the lines between customer service and sales!
Find more useful and essential contact centre development from realitytraining.com
Bob:
Hello, you're through to Bob's Insurance. How can I help you?
Jeremy:
Yes hi, very simple but a bit annoying. I've just been given my post by the postman. It's been going to a nearby town that has a street with the same name, so you've got my post going wrong by one number.
Bob:
Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that. Okay, let me just log into your system and find your account on here. Let's have a little look. So can you give me your name? Yeah, it's Jeremy Blake. Okay, and what's the first line of your address?
Jeremy:
For Busby Lane.
Bob:
Okay, and which? What's the town it should be in?
Jeremy:
Well, should be in Buckingham, but you're sending it to a house in Winslow because I'm MK18 and you're sending it to MK19.
Bob:
I've got the right. I can see that here. Okay, good, I'm just amending that now. Thank you.
Jeremy:
That's very simple.
Bob:
Right, that's that. I've amended that so that should all come to you right now. Can I just ask you, do you have any breakdown cover at the moment?
Jeremy:
Yeah, I do.
Bob:
Yeah, okay, and you're happy with that.
Jeremy:
Yeah, I get it as part of the bank actually. Yeah, it's fine Okay okay, that's fine.
Bob:
I'm supposed to ask you that, so that's fine, okay, well, thanks for calling and enjoy the rest of your day. Bye, okay, thanks a lot.
Jeremy:
Cheers.
Bob:
So, listeners, that was the example of how, perhaps, not to do a service call. Let's try another way. So, ringy ring, ringy ring, hello you through to Bob's insurance. What's led you to call us today?
Jeremy:
Hopefully a simple thing, but a slightly annoying thing my post is going to the wrong town.
Bob:
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. You're through to the customer service department. What I'm going to do is log into your account. Then I'm going to find your details and amend that for you so that you get it from now on. So let me just take down your name. Yeah, it's Jeremy Blake. Okay, and the first line of your address for Busby Lane Okay, that's good. And what town should your post be going to?
Jeremy:
It should be going to Buckingham but you're currently sending it to Winslow. You've got one number wrong. Can you see? It says MK19?
Bob:
Should be MK18. Great, well, I've made that amend now. I'm very sorry that that's happened. Yeah, thank you. Okay, well, I've changed that for you now. Now I can see on our system that you've been with this for five years, so thank you for staying with us all that time. What sort of car do you run at the moment? This is a mini. Oh, okay.
Jeremy:
Yeah, great Feeling. It's a slightly, but it's okay.
Bob:
Okay, okay, and has it let you down much in the past? A couple of times but nothing too bad.
Jeremy:
I'm hoping to get another sort of three years out of it.
Bob:
Okay, you may be interested to know that we also offer a very competitive additional coverage for breakdowns and for a car of this type. I think it might be worth looking at because, as you're a policy holder, you can get a very good deal by adding this to your policy. Who is?
Jeremy:
it with out of interest, because I've got one with a bank, but I don't normally get a sort of leading breakdown Company picking me up. I've had two who's yours run through.
Bob:
This is a full cover with the RAC, including home start and relay, and it's in its only additional 11 pounds a month on top of your insurance policy.
Jeremy:
Yeah, fine, stick me down for that. I'll do that.
Bob:
I take those details down now and you'll receive a confirmation via email in the next 20 minutes. Does that sound?
Jeremy:
okay, just one thing to check on that Is that a 24 month contract or a 12 month? How long is that? Is it for a year?
Bob:
It's 12 months. We'll include it on your next renewal when we come around next time.
Jeremy:
But I can have it from now. It will actually start now.
Bob:
It starts a day.
Jeremy:
Okay, good, okay, thank you for offering that.
Bob:
It's good. Thanks very much, mr Blake. Enjoy the rest of your day, cheers, thanks, bye, bye. Contact Center Focus the Reality Train Podcast.
Jeremy:
You're listening to an episode of Contact Center Focus, and what was the difference is the mindset of Bob. But Bob's insurance was quite simply that he realized, even though a customer service label was placed above his head, that really he's working in sales. And this is really our episode today. Is that really, if you're a contact center, you are in sales?
Bob:
We've been working in contact centers for many, many years now and we work with different departments. So some of those departments are clearly sales departments, ie new business. So the phone's ringing and people want to buy or retention. The phone's ringing and people are querying what they're paying and may or may not stay with you. So it's still a reselling job. Or we will have people who are in other departments and some of those departments are labeled service okay, so they're there to deal with an admin call or a complaint or a technical call, something which is not necessarily to do with sales. And yet those people are being paid to talk to a customer and, as we saw within that conversation, there is an opportunity to add an additional sale to that conversation. Now it's much easier to do that if that customer service person has been trained to sell and realizes that they are actually a sales person. What do you think, jeremy?
Jeremy:
I think it's deep and far reaching in that, if we look at the people you're recruiting, the titles that you give them, the teams that you put them in, the main core functions that they're given, if they are labeled in a certain way to only act in one channel, then they will follow the label.
Jeremy:
What companies have to do to get growth is to remove the labels, to employ multi-channel people, but ostensibly, whether it's retention, prospecting, inbound, whatever you want to call it you need to go right to the heart of it that your role in retention, prospecting, it's selling.
Jeremy:
It's selling the business, selling the range of services you have, selling the range of products you have. It has to be a sales role, and one of the problems that we see in our work and looking at UK contact centers is that this just isn't clear, and so you have disparate teams. You have people not wanting to sell, and where do you lay the blame? Is it at recruitment store? Is it at the strategic planning stage that the senior directors are earmarking which teams do what? One way to cut through this is when you employ new people, you make it very clear that their job is selling the business, selling the organization and selling the wares that it exists to do. It sounds simple on paper but I know to make that actually happen is going to mean different induction training, different training and managers becoming sales managers stensibly huddles and buzz sessions.
Bob:
Please use these short podcasts to train, coach and inspire your people. Reality Training specialise in change programmes that improve the working lives of contact centre people everywhere. Find out more about our work at realitytrainingcom. Now another thing to consider is remuneration and incentives, because I may be a customer service person employed on a salary with no additional commission or bonuses paid to me because I am doing ostensibly an administrative role. However, it doesn't take a great business mind to think okay, let's offer a small incentive to our customer service people to make sure they talk about additional products and services on every call and offer them in a way which is enticing and interesting to the customer by asking them questions, uncovering a need and then presenting something which is an attractive proposition to that customer. And if you can make that incentive worthwhile, then it adds a bit of a frissal, a bit of interest to that customer service person's day and it will definitely add additional revenue to your bottom line.
Bob:
And remember, that customer has come to you because of an administrative reason which is something you have to deal with. There's a cost attached to that administrative reason. So if you can make a sale on that, then you are getting some of that money back from the cost that it is. It costs you to deal with it. So I think it's a really good thing to think okay, there is nothing dirty about the word selling or sales. There's nothing wrong with it. It's something people should be proud of that they have the skills to communicate with customers, find out what it is they need and make sure they have something they can sell them which will be motivational and positive and will also be good for them and the customer.
Jeremy:
And also, if you looked at that example and you dissected it, you'd see that the customer was in a sense complaining because their postman's handing them posts that's been redirected from a same street name but in another town, and it was potentially what Steve Jobs would call a withdrawal a withdrawing from the bank of that brand I'm not particularly happy with. I'm making withdrawal. I'm taking some of my loyalty away. However, not only on the call is it fixed and then it's okay. Back into deposit mindset. At the same time, I'm physically depositing £11 a month into their bank account now to receive a breakdown cover on a car that is of age that may well require it.
Jeremy:
He's also been able to give me a mini proposition of the company that will be involved in providing that breakdown service. So what's wrong with selling that to somebody who needs it? And so many people we come across have the mindset of getting it done as quickly, closing it down, being efficient, being task-based, but not really thinking holistically about the overall services that they provide and the profitability and value that comes with them. So we could argue fundamentally it's a mindset thing, but, as Bob has hinted at, it's got to be looked at far more strategically because, as a company gets larger, everything gets put into departments and that's where you start to specialize. But sometimes the specialism is what hurts you the most.
Bob:
If you are a professional sales organization, you understand that every time you speak to a customer it is a sales opportunity. Regardless of what the reason is for them calling in, it is a sales opportunity. And even if you don't sell something on that call, it is an opportunity to resell them the value of the brand so their loyalty remains high. It's an opportunity for you to be an ambassador for the brand, to show integrity, to show you believe in what you're doing, to show you appreciate their custom. All those things are part of the sales process.
Jeremy:
And the only final thing I'd say is that a bit of a buzzword in the nineteen nineties was this concept of portfolio selling, where Most customers will buy. Up to three was the research at the time. Three products and one organization. We deal with organizations that probably have eleven, twelve Products and services to offer. To expect your customer to buy all of them is unreasonable because they may have loyalties placed elsewhere. But to expect each of your customers in your database to only have one product or service from you is the norm. It's something like one to one point eight or something is very, very low. So if you are offering more brand extensions, additional products and services that are natural, why not put them under the same roof? It's so simplistic and an easy way to grow your portfolio of sales and grow your revenue.
Bob:
So remember, if you're in service, you're also in sales. If you are a team leader, you're a sales leader, and if you are a team leader in service, you are also a sales manager, a sales leader. You're there to promote and grow sales. I think it's a really motivational way to think about the job that you do and I think it's a great thing to involve your people in motivational and let's be honest, it's going to make you some more money.
Jeremy:
Yeah, and human beings don't thrive on purely transactional conversations or transactional relationships. We thrive on something more intricate and something more personalized. So if you're bored with your job but you're resisting selling, you're actually stuck in a rut. You're choosing to be in a form of transactional behavior that isn't particularly fulfilling and it's not very bespoke, it's kind of task based, whereas if you make the leap to say, well, actually, I'll learn more about them, I'll ask more questions, I'll be more curious, you'll generally enjoy your work far more Well. Thanks for tuning in on this little session of Contact Center Focus. We'll see you and hear you and you'll hear us on another one soon. See you soon.