Increase Sales through Inbound Calls
Companies are constantly under pressure in downturned economies to turn every advantage into a sales conversion. Understanding where those advantages lie can often be difficult to assess from within your own business or department. Realizing there are multiple revenue channels, upsell and cross sell opportunities, and brand loyalty options in order to increase sales starts with training and effective customer service for inbound and outbound calls. One of the most important opportunities to increase sales and conversions is available through inbound calls. Retailers need to capture customer attention during inbound calls to increase upsell opportunities.
The Personnel
The most important part of increasing sales opportunities for retailers and inbound calls surrounds the proper hiring and training of personnel. The inbound call process is a way to effectively highlight products and services to consumers already interested in your products, services, or company. Putting the right strategy in place to effectively realize the potential will aid in capturing more conversions and sales during this process and build brand recognition and loyalty. The first part of the process is to realize that specialized inbound call agents need to be trained properly on the company’s products and services in order to be an expert in front of potential customers. Personnel need to be positive during all parts of cold-calls and have an ability to control the conversation respectfully and provide accurate information to the caller. Having an effective quality assurance program to deal with service gaps will consistently enable the inbound call program to increase its efficiency.
The Call Process
To take full advantage of the inbound call sales, and upsell or cross sell opportunities, customer service departments and call centers need to be aware of the entirety of the call process. The call process and model used needs to be effective and tailored to the company’s product or services. All customer care agents should use the same call model to ensure consistency of service and deliver excellence of service. This call process should include a greeting, an engaging response of action to the client’s request, possible further development of the problem in order to assure an adequate solution, being able to present solutions succinctly, an attempt to close the sale, being able to overcome any objections, and finally completing the sale. This process should be covered in depth and tailored to your specific product or service with inbound call agents being trained on all products and services with refreshers or as new products are released.
Anatomy of a Call
The specifics of every call have elements that need to be addressed in order for inbound customer care representatives to perfect their ability with clients and improve sales. This includes being very courteous to customers and remembering to ask if you have pronounced the customer’s name accurately. These simple things will add a higher quality of service to your calls, engender trust within customers and lead to a better closing ratio for inbound calls and upsells. Using concise, colorful language to entice buyer engagement does not outweigh the necessity to overcome objections with clarity of communication and solutions for those objections. Lastly, inbound call operators need to be better listeners than orators in order to direct the conversation and realize potential added sales.
Inbound customer care for retail businesses provides a great opportunity to increase revenue with dedicated and effectively trained inbound call agents whether in-house or through a third-party vendor in order to capture the sales opportunity that is usually missed.
