7 Fantastic Ways for Up-Selling and Cross-Selling for Contact Center

1. 7 Fantastic Ways for Up-Selling and Cross-Selling for Contact Center Every contact center’s main central point is on delivering customer satisfaction and at the same time increasing their sales. But most of the techniques for increasing the sales require a call center to invest a huge amount in their marketing strategies, and, it is not possible for every contact center to make such a massive investment just for marketing. So, am I saying that there is no way the small or medium call centers can improve their sales and revenue? Not at all! There is one method that enables call centers to increase their productivity without putting their money on costly tools or software such as the best call center software and that method is up-selling and cross-selling. Both up-selling and cross-selling are forceful sales techniques and most of the customers find it very annoying. But if handled properly they can be very effective. What is up-selling? Up-selling is the process of convincing the customer to buy a higher-end product compared to the low- end product to achieve more benefit. For example: If a customer is looking to buy a laptop, then as an up-selling practice, the sales agent will try to induce the customer to buy a more costly laptop. What is cross-selling? Cross-selling is the process of selling an additional product or service to an existing client of your contact center during the buying process so as to increase the income.

2. For example: If a customer wants to buy a mobile phone from your business, then the agent tries to cross-sell additional service or the product like mobile cover or screen guard to increase the profit. Importance of Up-selling and Cross-selling: 1. Provide revenue generation opportunities: A call center is a place where the agents have to deal with caller throughout the day thus your agents have a lot of opportunities to generate additional profit by the means of up-selling and cross-selling. If the call center management integrates cross-selling and up-selling in the process, they can generate more profit. As per the experts of customer service industry, it has been noticed that it is 4 times more difficult to sell a product or service to a new customer when compared to an existing client. 2. Customer retention: To have a customer-centric environment in your contact center the management and their agents should understand the customer needs and requirements. Only when the agent has proper knowledge about customer’s necessities only then they will be able to suggest the service which will help the customers in better management. If the customer finds agents suggestion helpful and genuine there is a high possibility that they will put their trust in the contact center and their agent’s recommendation in future as well. 3. Increased Return on Investment (ROI): Running a contact center is a costly business. Thus, to have better ROI the contact center needs to make a constant profit. The best way a contact center can gain maximum profit in almost zero investment is cross-selling and up-selling. Since these methods have very high success rate the call center gain a lot of profit in a very short period of time. 4. Adds on efficiency: Whenever a customer service agent makes a successful sales call it adds to the efficiency of the contact service. For every agent who has been trained in the customer service can also be trained on sales skills. By using this technique the contact center can cut on the cost of hiring the sales executives. Not just that to improve the efficiency the call center can include the cross-selling and up-selling in every medium of interaction like voice, live chats, emails or online forums etc. thus making full use of every contact channel. Tips for effective up-selling and cross-selling: The ideas provided (below) can be helpful for up-selling and cross-selling of services in a contact center: 1. Wait for the right time: Waiting is also one of the key skills that a customer representative should possess. As these skills play a vital role in up-selling and cross-selling.

3. There is no doubt that an agent has to give the highest priority to customer immediate needs but they also need to think about meeting their target and help contact center in gaining new business. Trying to up-sell or cross-sell a service when the customer is more concerned about something more important can cost a lot to the contact center. Thus, understanding the importance of time and context also plays a crucial part for successful up- selling or cross-selling attempt. As per the research, the best time for up or cross sell is towards the end of the call. Since the agent had enough time during the call to know about customer business needs. Also since the agent had already resolved the customer’s issue and had enough time to build a rapport with the customer, so the percentage of convincing the customer is more. 2. It should meet customer’s needs: The only way you can up-sell or cross-sell a product is that it should meet the customer’s requirement and it eases the task for them. To gain a better knowledge of their needs the call center software can be very helpful. The agents should use the previous call recordings and campaigns to get an insight into the needs of customers. The management should conduct practice scenarios for agents so that they can learn about the up- sell and cross-sell techniques and which service to recommend in various situations so the chances of selling increases. 3. Use the rule of 25: As a general practice, the contact center management should ensure that agents never try to up-sell or cross-sell product or services that are greater than 25% of the original order value. If an agent tries to sell a product/service which costs more than 25%, then it appears to the customer that the contact center is only interested in business and does not care about customers need. This can affect the reputation of the call center in customer’s eyes and also the loss of business. For example, if a customer wants to buy a Honda car, then the sales person should not try to up-sell Audi to the customer. Instead, they should try to up-sell a car that cost less than 25% of the cost of Honda. 4. Credibility matters: For successful cross-selling and up-selling of the product, the most important thing is credibility. For gaining customer’s trust and confidence in the contact center and its services, agents should try to quote recommendations of industry experts and professionals. This helps the customer in feeling more confident about the agent’s suggestion as well as the contact center. This also ensures that they can trust the call center for their future business requirements as well. 5. Look for cues: The call center agents should always look for cues from customer conversation for up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. For example, if a caller says that “I hope my manager doesn’t move the deadline of this project to next week. I don’t want my vacation to be ruined.” From this conversation, the agent can take a clue and up-sell the travel insurance plan. 6. Try Bundling: Bundling orders is a one stop solution for both up-selling and cross-selling. Therefore, it is always recommended to package items together in a bundle. Bundling is not only beneficial for call centers but it is also profitable for customers as they get more discount when buying multiple items or services together. 7. Discounts and offers: This is for sure the best method to draw people attention and improve chances of your product or service selling. By offering discounts or coming up with new offers you are ensuring customer satisfaction.

4. Providing special offers for your loyal customers guarantee that they will continue their business transaction with you and also makes it certain that it will attract new customers for enhanced business opportunities. Since now we have gathered our knowledge about the up-selling and cross-selling techniques and its benefits. Let’s see how valuable these tips are in real-life with the help of a case study. CASE STUDY: PROBLEM: We will be seeing a real-life situation of a travel agency let’s call it as T&C Ltd. The company was set up in 2001 and has its head office in Bangalore. The company was into planning and organizing holiday vacations for its various customers across the world. The booking and arranging the stay plan was handled by their internal call center. They use the latest cloud-based call center solutions for their call handling, recording and monitoring purposes. Over a period of 3 years, the company’s performance has improved drastically and they have been consistent with their performance since then. But the company’s management was looking for a new approach to improve their productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction level. After a lot of research, they got familiarized with the concept of up-selling and cross-selling. Considering the benefits it can provide to their company and that too at a very low investment they decided to integrate these selling practices within their call center. SOLUTION:

5. The company’s management adapted to the following approach and observed the following changes in their performance: 1. They conducted multiple training sessions for all their agents to properly understand which service can go hand in hand with which situation or query that the customer is having. For example, a customer is planning a vacation to Ooty and wanted to know various ways to reach Ooty from Bangalore. So, after providing this information to the customer an agent can try to up-sell the service and suggest their holiday package that includes the travel plan as well. 2. With the help of their call center software solutions, they were able to collect valuable information about their customers and their needs. 3. Once they had a clear understanding of customer preferences they introduced customized package plan to allow customers to select the service they require and only pay for the service availed. 4. To increase their customer base, they offered various benefits and discounts for their frequent users. RESULTS: Since the company had been in business a long time and had a good reputation for their services in the market they were able to gain customer’s trust in no time. • By adding these methods of up-selling and cross-selling the company saw 35% increase in revenue in one year. • They also noticed 40% increase in their market base, since these selling techniques do not require a lot of investment the company’s ROI increased quickly. • Additionally, they successfully gained customers satisfaction, trust, and loyalty which ensured word of mouth and more business opportunities. CONCLUSION: In this article, we have seen how cross-selling and up-selling can boost the performance and productivity of your contact center. I have tried my best to provide you with the most efficient and easily implementable ways so that by using these tips a contact center can achieve maximum business and customer satisfaction, and also focus on their main business goals and daily activities at the same time. If you also find these tips helpful and effective do put these tips into practice and see the results. By TentacleCloud