The ultimate goal of every contact center business is to expand its customer base and boost per-customer spending. While many traditional efforts have indeed produced some solid ROI and boosted lifetime value of new leads, the use of the best initial data sources, combined with direct one on one training and high-level analytics, have proven to be consistent outperformers.
However, many contact centers lack a basic understanding of how leads can and should be generated. They often spend too little on data and do not do deep dives into the data analytics.
Its why Conversion Media Group has compiled the six easiest ways to increase your ROI and keep your clients happy and spending.
1: Listen to Your Top Agents
The most important part of a call, from the agent’s side, is how the message is communicated to the prospect and how important an upbeat personality is to the person on the other end of the line.
The script is the foundation of this conversation. A good script will have been well tested, anticipates lead responses and has responses for them all.
The best agents know the points, the product, and the prospect, but perhaps most importantly, they have a natural and conversational tone with the prospect. They are not “reading” a script, they are conversing with it.
Ask your best agents for feedback on what kind of language and tone is working best. Take their input and be sure your weaker agents are getting training on that. In fact, make sure they sit in on calls. The best agents may be territorial, but if you explain to them how a stronger contact center helps them too, they’ll get on board.
Of course, every script must be A/B tested, continuously until conversion rates and ROI are maximized.
Collect the data, analyze the data, improve the scripts and be sure every agent gets the right tools for the job. And when you are done, analyze some more!
2: Analyze the Lead Data Before Calling
Every single contact call has a world of information hidden within it. Luckily your lead data should offer almost all of it to you, well before a single call is made.
Since every prospect is different, they should be talked to differently. Folks from Alabama are different from those in New York. And your agents should be aware of this, it is important to match the tone and pace of the person you are speaking to.
3: Work With Agents on Soft Skills
Mastery of soft skills leads to perhaps the greatest increase in lead conversion. Soft skills are the key to building rapport with the prospect. These skills include positivity, empathy, collaboration, adaptability and, importantly, listening to the lead, not simply “pitching” him.
Believe it or not, soft skills can be learned. Every new agent should be coached and monitored for points where soft skills should be deployed. Reviewing call data with all agents should reveal ideal areas in the script where soft skills should be used, and where stronger pushes should be employed. And always remember to say, ‘please and thank you’.
4: Monitor the Funnel:
While you may base a conversion on a prospect turning into a customer, the real long-term value of a lead can be found on how deep into the sales funnel it goes. How engaged is a lead when your client calls them? How are they converting for your client versus the competition? Of those that convert how many are becoming long term customers? When your client provides conversion feedback what are you doing to optimize the campaign? Remember, long term value is as or more important than conversions. The client wants customers that are more likely to be repeat or long term customers.
Each stage of the funnel should give you incredible data not only on the lead, but for the entire lifecycle of that lead. By digging into the data, you’ll be able to improve conversion rates throughout the funnel, step by step.
Is it the script? The agent? The lack of soft skills being utilized?
Maybe the data records themselves are poor.
Funnell monitoring will tell you all of this and more.
5: Analyze, Analyze, Analyze:
Taking the proper time to analyze all of your lead data, as well as your agent and script performance data will show you where inefficiencies occur. An inefficient contact center is a losing contact center. The best clients will only use contact centers that can prove their data analysis capabilities.
You should have detailed analysis on which days of the week, for example, have the highest conversion rate for every type of client or vertical. If you don’t, not only will a prospective client be unimpressed, but you’ll be wasting resources trying to convert leads when the data show exactly when the time is right.
But it’s not just days of the week. Every data point must be properly analyzed to maximize conversions and ROI. Your contact center should have at least one employee dedicated to data analysis. If you already do, congratulations. You know how valuable that person is.
6: Analyze Customer Dissatisfaction
All data is good data, meaning it is all useful. Negative data inputs have just as much value as positive data inputs. Meaning you can take what didn’t work and use that to eliminate negative behavior just as much as you can use what did work and increase that behavior.
Re-dialing non-contacted data intelligently (and legally) also improves ROI. Don’t abandon a data record because you didn’t reach them the first 1,2 or 3 times. Change your dialing strategy for those records.
Take your poor call data, analyze it, and adjust. This is another spot where your in-house data analyst should shine.
By utilizing these six tips, your clients will be happier, they’ll generate more ROI, increase the long-term value of their converted leads…
And continue to do business with you.
Now, a little bit about us…
Conversion Media Group currently owns and operates contact centers in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Jamaica, and many remote representatives throughout the United States. With over 40 years combined experience in the call center industry between the partners, we can identify and recognize monetization opportunities that many miss and we are die hard data analytics believers. We utilize leading edge in house and external software to find every last honey hole of opportunity to maximize efficiency.
We offer call verified leads and live transfer services to help boost your ROI. If your company is interested in call center leads and/or live transfers, contact us today!