Posted by on January, 2 2020 8:29 pm
Your contact center’s conversion rate is vitally important to your overall success as a company. Regardless of what else is going on in your facility, if you aren’t turning leads into paying customers, you aren’t making positive progress. Unfortunately, many facilities struggle with a low call center conversion rate.
What can you do to change that trend in your own center? Here are five tips that take you through the process of improving your conversion rate, beginning to end - and will help you create more satisfied customers out of the leads you receive.
Better approaches to hiring can improve everything that happens in your contact center - including increasing your call center conversion rate. This is true of every position, from brand-new agents who are just cutting their teeth on the techniques of the industry to seasoned management staff that are hired in from other agencies. Who your staff your center with is directly correlated to your success rates.
Remember that while you can absolutely train your agents and management team members to perform better, a natural talent for communication and connection with people is something that can’t be taught. Hiring and promoting agents with these talents will help your center achieve your goals and connect with more contacts that you otherwise might be able to.
How do you manifest almost any goal in your contact center? Through adequate and frequent agent training!
The basic reasons for training are easy to understand. Your callers or contacts won’t be impressed with an agent who is constantly stumbling over their words, confused about what they’re saying, or obviously “new on the job”. Thorough and regular training will prevent all of these problems - and deliver a better call center conversion rate as a result.
Training should include handling negative responses, making pitches or up-selling and cross-selling, as well as scripting for everything from openers to conversation conclusions. By preparing your agents properly, you ensure that consumers or clients are adequately served - and your conversion rate is boosted, too.
Beyond training, your agents’ tasks should be set up to direct them toward success. It isn’t enough for your agents to know what to do; they need to understand the best approach when doing it.
A prime example of this is timing calls properly. You can have the best scripts and the most extensive knowledge of successful conversion-making call techniques, but if you call your contacts at the wrong time you will not realize that success. Ensure that your calls are going out to leads during what could be considered regular business hours - typically 9 AM - 5 PM, Monday through Friday. Calling on an evening, a weekend, or a holiday isn’t likely to land you anything more than a frustrated contact.
It is also important to motivate and encourage your agents along the way. The burnout that is common in the workplace is one of the biggest factors in poor call center conversion rates. It’s hard to deliver excellent performance and obtain great results when you are struggling to remain motivated.
Reward systems help to foster healthy competition and positive energy in the contact center. Keeping your agents engaged and making it pleasant for them to come to work every day is all part of maintaining a successful facility.
Not every consumer who visits your company’s website, expresses interest in your products, or otherwise interacts with your brand is ready to make a purchasing decision. Calling a consumer who is not ready to commit can help lead them in that direction - but it can also put them off the idea or distract them from a natural purchasing choice they might have otherwise made.
If you have ever been shopping in your local mall and wished that the staff wouldn’t meet you at the door of each store trying to sell you something, you already understand the importance of an effective sales funnel. Consumers who are immediately contacted after exploring a certain part of your website or interacting with specific features might be just as put off by this sudden pitch ad you would be in that shopping mall setting. Establishing an organic connection with a consumer before moving in to make the sale will always yield better results - and a higher call center conversion rate. Remember this when establishing practices for your agents and parameters for your technology that will lead to a more natural progression from introduction to closed deal.
Once your agents are in place and know what to do and how to go about it, it is time for your management team to monitor their progress. You can’t physically stand over the shoulder of every agent and observe them, but through automated call monitoring solutions, you can do something even better.
With the right call monitoring solution, you can offer support to your less experienced agents and guidance to those who are struggling to meet sales or support goals. Management team members can also interject when major problems arrive, which can drastically reduce dissatisfaction in the consumer or client. But perhaps the most important benefit of call monitoring is that managers can review performance with their team of agents and use those recorded experiences as examples for growth and improvement.
All of this is possible with the right technology. If you are looking for the right tech to outfit your operation - and improve your call center conversion rate, as a result - look to the industry leaders at ChaseData. We have everything you need to provide support to your team and realize better results every day. Give us a call today to learn more!