When the going gets tough, the tough get creative. Research has shown customer expectations are rising, with 90% of customers saying customer service is an important factor in their choice of, and loyalty to, businesses. It’s up to call centers and sales teams to go the extra mile if they want to meet their revenue targets.
Fortunately, there are several ways that your call center can boost sales and keep customers happy. Customer-centric data, which already exists in your business, is the secret ingredient to improving the efficiency of your call center selling.
In this blog, we’ll look at 4 innovative and creative strategies to help you convert most customers and increase sales using call analytics software.
What are the benefits of closing a sale over the phone?
Every time a potential customer picks up the phone, you’re presented with an opportunity. 86% of customers say they prefer to speak to real people versus bots, especially for those big-ticket sales, and phone calls give you the chance to upsell and cross-sell your products, increasing the average order value of your customers.
Other benefits of closing a sale over the phone include:
- Answering questions in real-time – You’ve got a potential customer and they’ve got questions. Closing a sale over the phone allows you to answer questions and alleviate concerns in the moment, which speeds up the customer journey.
- Increase average order value – Taking the time to chat to your customers on the phone also gives you the opportunity to really listen to their needs and potentially make recommendations. For example, upselling a customer to first class by offering them more legroom as you help them book a long-haul flight.
- See what really triggers purchases – Every purchase offers a wealth of data and phone calls in particular can help you pinpoint the language that persuaded a customer to convert. With call scoring and monitoring, you can assess the quality of each agent call and use these to deliver more value for customers.
Innovative ways to improve sales in your call center
We’ve gone over the benefits of closing sales over the phone, but how can you actually improve sales in your call center? Call tracking and analytics software is designed to help you monitor, log and analyse conversations at scale. With this data at your fingertips, your agents have everything they need to close sales and increase average order value. Let’s take a look at 4 different ways you can use call monitoring in your sales strategy.
1. Use your best calls to develop your sales tactics
Every time a customer phones your call center, it’s an opportunity to make a difference. It’s not just about making the sale, it’s about delighting, reassuring and helping. With call analytics software, you can make your best people even better and share learnings quickly, across both your inbound and outbound calls.
Use real customer insights and scenarios in your agent training to create more personalised, persuasive sales strategies. Features like Agent ID allow you to isolate your best calls and gain important intel on how your best people are closing deals and upselling products.
Upskilling your contact center teams has never been easier.
2. Exploring opportunities based on customer needs
Customers expect you to anticipate their needs and with call monitoring, you can do just that. Call analytics can help you identify common pitfalls in your calls and help you turn those make-or-break moments into a win. It can also point out blind spots in your offering that present sales opportunities that you may not have considered.
For example, thousands of people book an eye test with Specsavers every day. But when a customer moved offline, they had no visibility of which campaigns, channels or keywords encouraged customers to act. Using call analytics, they were able to analyse over 150,000 calls and they noticed that due to changing needs, more customers wanted home visits. They were able to refine their messaging to raise awareness of their home visit services – better supporting customers. This led to a 25% increase in home visit bookings!
3. Understand the words and phrases that drive conversions
With call monitoring software, it’s never been simpler to unlock real audience consumer insight, at scale. The right call center software doesn’t just take a sample of customer calls, it’s able to monitor every single call – in or out – at scale. Using call monitoring, you can identify keywords that are likely to trigger conversions and use these to polish up your sales scripts.
Plus, with complementary tools like Smart Match, you can link those valuable calls directly to campaigns, allowing you to be more strategic when it comes to budget allocation.
Take control of the customer journey
Customer journey mapping is the process of understanding how and why your customers choose you. Mapping the journey clearly shows you how and where your customers interact with your brand. Whether that’s through a Google search, a targeted PPC campaign or word-of-mouth on social media, identifying key channels is the best way to streamline the customer journey.
Having this kind of data at your fingertips can help you convert leads faster on the phone. It could also make your customers more profitable in the long run, given that around 40% of customers would be happy to pay more if they received a better customer experience.
How Conversation Analytics can boost sales in your contact center
A common challenge for call centers is the ability to extract customer insights that can increase sales at scale. With Infinity’s Speech analytics suite, Conversation Analytics, your call centers can begin surfacing hidden insights, highlight topics and keywords, and analyse sentiment in every call.
With Conversation Analytics, you can evolve your tactics based on real data from your customers. Being able to identify the finer points of conversation quickly and easily using call categorisation gives you the context and nuance that can be difficult to track when you’re handling high volumes of calls.
When you put Conversation Analytics and Agent ID together, things get even more interesting. You can gain actionable insights in to how engaging the calls coming in, and going out, of your contact center are. You can uncover the best calls to use for training, rapidly upskill your teams and decrease average handling time, all while increasing conversion rates and ensuring that your customers are truly satisfied.
Plus, Conversation Analytics integrates seamlessly with many contact center technologies and CRM systems, including Vocalcom. This allows you to harness rich data automatically and draw links between marketing data and customer data.
Want to find out more about how to take your contact center to the next level? Start a conversation with us today about Agent ID and Conversation Analytics.
