sales / service mix

I think it depends on your specific products and services. There can often be different skills required - sales involves relationship building / objection handling / negotiation / closing whereas services often requires very detailed product or service knowledge. They can mix but unless you are going to do a large amount of training to multiskill all agents to handle all calls, you are better off using skills based routing to prioritise to individual agent's skills and expertise but allow overflowing of calls during peaks.

I believe that the Sales and Service Teams should be 2 different entities. The Sales Agent and the Service Agents are 2 different breeds. In saying this I do believe that the Service Agents will have a window of opportunity for a sale and it must be acted upon.

Mentor the Service Agents to recognise that opportunities and then try and sell but only as a secondary action. A good Service Agent has the opportunity and the ability to make the client feel valued, respected and important, an opportunity the Sales Agents does not have and within that environment it should be easier to make a sale.

The Service Agent should complete the sale and the client should only be transferred to the sales team if the call will be immediately answered and the sales person has the ability to change the selling technique