Boosting Cross-Selling Opportunities

Cross-selling is becoming a growing priority in contact centres

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Cross-Selling Opportunities
Contact CentreInsights

Published: April 16, 2021

Anwesha Roy - UC Today

Anwesha Roy

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

 

 

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