Cross-selling is becoming a growing priority in contact centres as organisations realise agents’ potential to gauge customer requirements, assess purchase information, and offer customisations. One research study found that optimising your cross-selling strategy could enormously increase your revenue per call. It suggested that an optimised strategy could lead to over 90% of the sales achieved via 75% of cross-selling attempts, at an impressively low personnel requirement level.
In other words, it is a good idea to leverage the unique knowledge of customer intent and experience owned by your contact centre to drive cross-selling at the time of service delivery.
Types of Cross-Selling Opportunities
To increase cross-selling activities among agents is important to first understand the term and its various types. Cross-selling can be defined as the practice of selling a different but similarly priced product or service to an existing customer based on their previous purchases and customer interest forecasts. Typically, you will encounter the following cross-selling opportunities in a contact centre:
- Past purchase-based – You look at their most preferred categories and recommend the most popular products from these categories
- Discounts – Discounted product bundles, free delivery, etc., can also encourage the customer to buy more
- Similar interests – The agent tells the customer about what others are buying, and natural curiosity will encourage the customer to explore new products
- Customer segmentation – The full customer profile, including demographic information, behaviour, etc., is leveraged to create a segment associated with a specific type of product
- Product bundles – products will frequently come in natural bundles such as a pair of earrings with a dress or a stylus with a tablet
- Loyalty points – Loyal customers are awarded points that can be redeemed at no or nominal costs for a different product
- Maintenance – Products that require upkeep such as cars, computers, workout equipment, etc., are prime candidates for cross-selling maintenance services via agents
Tips for Better Cross-Selling at Your Contact Centre
Cross-selling has to be a formalised program if it is to show optimal results. To achieve this, follow the best practices:
- Use speech analytics to monitor for cross-selling-friendly keywords like “I want” or “I was looking for” in real-time. A senior manager or supervisor can step in to complete the sale
- Schedule your best agents for peak sales periods. This is important as in several sectors like outdoor goods, stationery, etc., customers’ readiness to purchase follows seasonal patterns
- Incentivise successful sales and recognise good performance by your agents. This will reinforce positive behaviour and motivate the team further
- Leverage call queues and wait times for cross-selling. Promotions heard during the wait time can engage the customer and create curiosity, so they can follow up with the agent
- Leverage screen analytics on your website to assess and document which products are of most interest to a customer
- Train agents on the art of selling. Often, sales are considered only to be an outbound function, and inbound agents are left out of sales training. In reality, a loyal customer calling for service support is an excellent candidate for driving cross-selling opportunities