The primary function of your contact center is to retain customers, which requires providing stellar service to callers and resolving their problems quickly and effectively. But your contact center can also function as a revenue hub by selling to those same callers. Rather than thinking of cross-selling and up-selling as functions separate from customer service, consider them one-in-the-same. Here are three ways to optimize your contact center for sales, and in the process, tap into opportunities for increased profit and greater customer loyalty.

First Things First
The first thing to do, before considering how to optimize sales, is ensure calls are being managed as efficiently and effectively as possible. From the first greeting and prompts to hold time, your customers must be kept satisfied and engaged. The moment they become frustrated, the chance of a potential sale is lost.

Capture Attention
Your callers are a captive audience that present an opportunity, but few companies consider using hold times as opportunities to sell. Once your systems are in place and you have dedicated, professional agents, make sure your IVR recordings (i.e. on-hold messages) are designed to encourage and motivate callers.

Up Sell and Cross Sell
It makes good business sense to blend sales with service, especially if your contact center is already taking orders. Agents can encourage customers to buy something of a comparatively higher value through up-selling and use cross-selling to invite them to buy complementary items. Both methods can increase sales and customer engagement, but in order to do so, contact center managers must implement strategies to ensure success:

  • Train agents to practice active listening and be proactive in asking questions to help discover customers’ unstated needs, and when hiring new team members, interview for these skills.
  • Deploy your best agents during peak times to effectively handle customer queries and at the same time make a sale.
  • Provide agents with customer data in advance so that they know what new initiatives to pitch the customer. Use analytics and benchmarks to better understand initiatives
  • The key to up-selling and cross selling is demonstrating value to customers.

Partner for Success
Your contact center is the front line of your company, which is why it has vast sales potential. OptimumCX can help you create a service and sales-driven customer experience that can help develop new efficient and effective ways to generate revenue.