Sell through your contact center

Contact centers are increasingly being used to up-sell and cross-sell products. They offer an excellent platform to do so and gain valuable topline for the company. Since contact centers are a major cost center, it is in the best interests of a business that it tries to drive revenue through contact centers. The launch of a live up sell and cross sell program should be preceded by adequate employee training and a pilot program as well. Training is crucial in imparting the soft skills that can make or break a sales pitch. Agents need to say the right thing at the right time.

The first step is to initiate a process whereby a shift in contact center agent mentality can be achieved. The idea is to move away from offering purely service to offering service as well as sales. Up selling and cross selling can be achieved only if the agents have thorough product knowledge; this is to be allied with customer information that is made available to them at the time of a customer’s call. Incentives can be offered to meet certain selling objectives. Certain metrics should also be tracked, especially when the program is first implemented, in order to monitor the number of offers, percentage of up-sells, overall quality of service provided, caller satisfaction, and calls per hour.