HUGE turnover rates keep call centers in the dark ages
Contact centers typically have a notoriously high turnover rate, between 25-upwards of 100% per year. With such high turnover, it’s impossible to deliver reliable good customer service even with the weasel words of management claiming “empowerment” of the agents. No amount of training can provide consistent customer-service training, much less additional sales training.
On the agents’ side, the atmosphere of high turnover doesn’t lend itself to a long-term commitment to the company. Without that kind of commitment, it can be difficult for agents to sincerely sell your compan’s products. This is not to demean the dedication of the agents. By nature, they are often short-term employees. They are great at handling customer issues but they may not necessarily be great salespeople. So how do you equip these agents who may have limited experience, limited training, and limited motivation to successfully up-sell and cross-sell?
There are those that could sell anything to anyone and others who sell cookoo clocks to birds as a condo! LOL
Inbound Call Centers Can Become Outbound Money Generators
Many companies that have developed in house call centers for customer service and support have found that these assets can also add to the bottom line. The way to get this done is to train phone agents and reverse the flow of calls. That is, change from getting incoming calls to processing outgoing call connections.
Consider this…
Many credit card companies have call centers that generate more than half of all new revenues and income.
Retail banking is starting to move from a service to sales model.
At the very least, many companies are testing the idea of cross selling or promotional selling to customers who call in for service. The risk of course is alienating the customer who asks for help with a product and the focus back on selling something else. Of course, cross selling can be a benefit to the customer if, after satisfying the customers initial issue, other offers or products are discussed.
To be truly effective, companies must first focus on delivering consistent and high quality customer service. All the happy talk and “your important to us” fluff sent to customers must have a solid infrastructure of good customer service behind it. It’s not enough to sent a greeting card to the customer claiming how important they are to the company only to provide poor service when there’a a problem .
It’s only after a positive experience can anyone expect a customer to consider additional products from a company. Unfortunately, today’s business focus is on doing LESS for the customer which in many cases limits the up sale potential to current customers calling into a contact center.
More ways Call Centers are Evolving!
Just when you thought the call center juggernaut was at it’s zenith, along comes VOIP and DSL for commercial use.
As we know, call centers are becoming more contact than call centers today. Contact centers are now offering email response, VOIP 2 way communications with customers and the proverbial telephone contacts. Although this may seem a bit intrusive at first, imagine shopping for a new wheelchair and can’t get around. having a way to contact and review potential products using the web and these communication types are wonderful. I personally don’t like some of the contat methods but consider if someone is disabled. Think of the variety of possible ways they an communicate and get the information needed.