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Boosting sales in contact centres

10 Aug 2016

Call and staff costs are some of the biggest expenses in the contact centre. Further factors that contribute to diminished profit potential include agents that (despite making the most sales) may have higher default or cancellation rates or ones that sell products with lower margin and the ones who use the most leads.

This leads to a higher opportunity cost. The goal remains to boost the sales conversion rate, but there are of course a number of ways to do this.

Increasing sales potential

One of the simplest solutions is to speak to more potential customers. This can be achieved by setting up automatic dialling schedules to repetitively dial numbers until a contact is reached. As a result, only ‘live’ contacts are transmitted to the agents, leading to enhanced productivity, efficiency and most importantly, more potential sales for the business.

More effective lead allocation can also improve the conversion rate – by even as much as 30%. Applying business intelligence to data to dynamically prioritise, reprioritise and allocate leads based on the probability of success (eg lead source, agent conversion rates, customer to agent profile) is a highly successful and sought-after strategy to boost direct contact centre sales.

Macro and micro focus

One of the first areas to concentrate on is the workforce. Improving the knowledge and performance of agents is critical to enhancing the probability of closing a sale. By recording and evaluating their interactions with prospects, development areas can be identified and coaching or course material can be provided to help them improve – all of which have an impact on the bottom line.

However, having an eye on what happens on the floor is just as important, as examining its overall impact on the business as a whole. Desktop management and monitoring tools, such as dashboards, allow for a real-time picture of what is happening across the company. The metrics and variables to which this is programmed will highlight problem areas, opportunities to improve efficiency and productivity as well as those areas that are working well – particularly when it comes to closing deals. This is essential for the purposes of drilling down through the data to the activity that is driving up profits or dragging profits down.

Defining the variables with a view to efficiency is going to be the driving factor in increasing sales conversions. After all, it is not just about monitoring but measuring the correct variables and tying this back into the company’s long and short-term goals and objectives that matter.