Turning customer service into a profit centre

Customer Service Centres provide a critical link between you and your customers, and can assist in boosting sales. The steps below offer some guidance on how to go about achieving this.

• Service quality and efficiency are top priority
  Most customers change providers for price and/or service. Assuming your price is competitive, you need to ensure that service quality and efficiency will remain a top priority to retain customer loyalty. It's far easier to sell to existing customers then find new ones.
  
  
• Define a revenue generation strategy
  Track which customers are loyal to your brand, are high value customers and are more likely to buy from you. A large Financial Brand I work with has over 80% of its revenue from 15% of its customers. That's a high percentage of income, which needs to be tracked, retained and should be the first point of call when you are actively marketing a new product.
  
  
• Find the appropriate technology
  Agents need access to accurate information. This must be information on your customers, such as their profile, demographic and products/services that have or have not been purchased. Or, include a knowledge base that provides agents with the right information at the appropriate time to better qualify or sell to your customers.
  
  Make use of a technology that can deliver accurate information to your agents, enforce your methodology and track all communication between you and your customers. In addition, agents need to be able to update customer information, which can then be used to analyse and improve future sales and marketing initiatives.
  
  
• Integrate your solutions
  The need for customers' data to be viewed in one place or reported to multiple databases will require integration between various solutions. Complexities in a company's infrastructure may require an ERP solution to integrate with a Sales Solution, which, in turn, might need to integrate with a Call Centre Application.
  
  
• Bridge the knowledge gap
  Develop a methodology that can be used by agents to ensure that you bridge the gap between their customer service knowledge and sales. Ongoing training of sales techniques could also assist. In addition, track individual sales success and where leads are being generated to determine where the strengths and weakness of each agent lie - and to plan training accordingly.
  
  
• Motivate the ranks
  Motivate your staff by restructuring their reward programme from the traditional call volume vs. time incentive, to include a financial or lead generation reward. Existing incentives that focus on customer service should remain, where the initial step might be for the Service Centre to take the role of a lead generator, and then hand over the actual sales process to the sales department. By involving the Service Centre in the sales process and giving them the ability to better understand the opportunities that exist, agents can provide necessary resources or expertise to close the deal.

In the Insurance sector, for example, where specific products and services are provided to a niche markets through a network of external broker companies, the Service Centre can take a more proactive approach in dealing with brokers and engage with them on all deals by having a single view of broker opportunities and related information.

Most organisations have an unknown number of data repositories containing a variety of information on their customers. This information needs to be consolidated into a single point where all information is correct and up-to-date and can be viewed by the Service Centre.

In any project of this nature the business needs to participate in the implementing processes. IT often takes the lead with little, if any, business involvement, but business must own and drive the process if the project is to be successful.