Jonty's Tips

Jonty shares a mix of contact centre learnings, observations and shared experience.

Don’t sell – provide encouragement to buy

Carpeo have an interesting approach to telephone sales. Rather that direct selling (the hard sell) they instead try to build some rapport and empathy to encourage the prospective customer to make a buying decision.
To do this they use a selling model called IDEA.
I – Interest
D – Desire
E – Evaluate
A – Action
It is a simple sales-funnel-type [...]

(Read more...)

Phoney rapport building (don’t try to build rapport too quickly)

Here is a common scenario. Guess what type of call this is likely to be?
Agent - “Hello, can I speak to Mr James Smith?”
Customer - “Speaking.”
Agent - “Hello, Mr Smith, how are you doing today?”
I wonder if you can guess what type of call that is likely to be? That’s right, it’s a sales call.
It’s [...]

(Read more...)

Look for common customer problems

Analyse complaint data from your customers to see if there are any common patterns.
One of the most important factors in complaint handling is to demonstrate that the company has acknowledged the complaint so that (where possible) this is 1) resolved 2) not repeated with other customers.
Use advisors for proactive data collection too, in order to [...]

(Read more...)

Non-telephone treats

Allow staff non-telephone treats (i.e. time off the phones). Put staff on the phone for 70% of time, but leave the other 30% for other tasks such as emails, new projects, or improving processes.

(Read more...)

MOT calls

Want to improve customer service and customer retention? Why not make an MOT call to anyone who has not been in touch with you over the past 12 months? It can be done in quiet periods and is best done before renewal is due.
(It is called an MOT call after the Ministry of Transport MOT [...]

(Read more...)

Be careful with outbound security

One of the things we quite often do in outbound contact centres is to use some words like “before we start, I need to ask you some security questions”.

(Read more...)

Route the call to the last agent that the customer spoke to

Using CTI technology it is possible to route the call to the last agent that a customer spoke to. This is great for consistency with the customer, but may cause problems with spreading call volume equally around the call centre.

(Read more...)

Challenge the Data Protection Act Guidelines

Challenge the Data Protection Act guidelines in your company. These can frequently present a barrier between you and the customer and can be very inappropriate – particularly when dealing with someone who is ill, or has recently died.
They are often used as a smokescreen for bad practice. Challenge the guidelines and streamline them where possible.

(Read more...)

Hold a brain-storming session

Get the team away from their desks and hold a storming session. It is difficult to do this when you are in the trenches, but you could get another team to cover you.
To solve the problem of brainstorming (people shutting down ideas) get everyone to spend a couple of minutes putting their ideas down on [...]

(Read more...)

Personalise the music on hold that you play

You could look up the caller’s phone number in your database and play different music on hold to the caller (e.g. pop music for the under 25s and classical to the people living in a posh postcode).

(Read more...)