Repeat sales, upselling and cross-selling to an existing customer base remains a critical revenue stream for many businesses, providing the ‘bread and butter’ of many companies’ turnover. It is often said that it costs three times more to win a new customer than to keep an existing one, so serving the needs of your existing customer base really should be a high priority.

In the survey, respondents cited three main reasons for being dissatisfied with the service via the contact centres in question:

1-Call centre staff unable to perform necessary transactions

2- Calls are not returned

3- Queuing times too long

All of the above can be solved through providing the correct training, having clear tracking procedures for calls in place and good peak time planning in place.

Here in the PCMS Contact Centre we place a strong emphasis on ensuring that all of our agents are comprehensively trained to be able to perform all necessary tasks for our clients’ customers and to answer questions subjectively and helpfully.  We don’t believe that good customer service can ever be achieved when the focus of a contact centre is the time taken to close a call – if your customer needs more time to talk their queries through then your agents should not be pressured to end the call before the customer is ready.  We have seen time and time again that giving customers the opportunity to explain their issue has often meant we then understand their problem better and are able to resolve it more effectively –saving time in the long-term and keeping the customer happy!

Non-returned calls and non-fulfilled promises to call a customer are surefire ways to upset people and a poor reflection on your company; it’s easy to follow through on returning calls with simple tracking tools in place to remind your agents.  No excuses.

Lengthy queue times are caused by poor management of staff to cover peak times in your contact centre; analysis tools are available to help your contact centre managers to plan resources more effectively and are a wise investment.  Most contact centres should be working to reasonable Service Level Agreements, giving peace of mind to companies who outsource their customer service.

Here at PCMS we have a history of achieving excellent customer service satisfaction scores and are proud that our focus is and always will be on providing a top notch service tailored to the needs of our clients’ customers.

Don’t let your business suffer because of poor contact centre customer service; make sure you choose a contact centre that places a strong emphasis on customer needs.

Melinda Richardson

• Focus on the relationship, sales should be a natural extension of customer service. Build a relationship with your prospects so you can learn what they want and when they will need it.
• Ask for referrals, if you have put in effort building a relationship and you feel it is positive but the prospect isn’t ready at the moment ask for a referral to A colleague or friend of theirs that maybe interested. Ask for just one contact though, it makes it easier for the prospect to think of one person instead of several.
• Set goals and objectives, before you start calling or start a meeting. Look at what you want to achieve by talking to the prospect, do you want them to sign a contract? Do you want them to tell you how their business needs your help? Or do you need them to commit to a meeting? Think about this before you start and think about how you are going to achieve these objectives/goals.
• Don’t lie; as I said before you want to build a good relationship with the prospect don’t start by lying to them. Also some of the cheesy clichés like ‘one of our sales people is in your area’ are so outdated you may as well wear flares and platforms to the meeting.
• Look around for inspiration, there are some fantastic blogs out there that will provide you with ideas about how to improve and change the way you currently sell. I am always looking around for new ones. I find getting stuck in a rut can really affect sales and that finding new ways to inspire and motivate yourself and your team are invaluable.
• Count 10 pink elephants, listening and silence are great sales tools, so count ‘1 pink elephant, 2 pink elephants, 3 pink elephants…’ all the way to 10 pink elephants (in your head), whilst you are waiting for a reply or more information from your prospect. No prospect ever makes it past 5 pink elephants without filling the silence and usually they crack and give away more information than they would have like to have done.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

A few years ago when I first started at PCMS we ran a campaign for our leading EPoS product, VISION Beanstore.  During the campaign our task was to arrange meetings for our team with retailers to discuss PCMS products and solutions and how they could be of benefit.  As part of my training I was able to experience BeanStore from development to actually using the system as you would in-store. I found that after this experience when I considered the objections I may come up against, I would be ready for everything, because I was positive we provided an amazing product. This passion for our product resulted in the campaign being extremely successful.

I find that the more myself and my agents know about the product they are selling, the more confidently we approach each phone call. This is because we are sure that whatever objection or question that comes up during the call we will be able to answer with relevant information and not just repeating from a script. This means that you sound more professional on the phone and that the person you are calling is more likely to take you and the product seriously. We provide product knowledge in a number of ways, where selling a number of products that could be sold together we ask the staff to role play cross selling different products, if it is one service the agents make themselves familiar with the services and the benefits it provides its users.

Knowledge is a fantastic tool in the contact centre and there are many ways to impart knowledge on to the agents. Find fun and motivating ways for agents to learn and gain knowledge if its fun to learn they are more likely to remember it.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

1. Listen! Listen! Listen!
   Too often contact centre agents feel that what they say sells. Listening to what your customer needs and you fulfilling that need is true selling. We tell our agents to pause before and after speaking, because people don’t like silence and have an urge to fill it, meaning they will give you more information.
2. Ask open ended questions.
   What, Where, When, Why, How or Tell me about are fantastic words to get customers talking, using these words asks customers to tell you more than just a one word answer and invites them to give you more details.
3. Don’t interrupt.
   Interrupting a customer is not very polite but also it means that you are not remembering hint number 1. Listen to what the customer has to say then pause before you reply; if you do this you will listen more effectively and you will gain more information. Also don’t assume you know what the customer will say, this will get in the way of your information gathering because your assumption may be wrong.
4. Repeat.
   Repeat the main points your customer has made and ask them if you have understood their points correctly. Ask the customer to expand upon any points that you don’t understand or that you will need more information about.
5. Write it down.
   What use is it if you gather all the information you need, if the second after the customer has told you, you forget it all? Write down all the key points from the conversation and keep a record of this information for future reference. Even knowing where your customer went on holiday is useful as it helps you build rapport and will open them up to give you more information in the future.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

Poonam’s Team Leader had this to say “I would like to thank Poonam this month as she always delivers 110%, she is known for her generosity and friendliness this makes her a valuable member to the team and the contact centre as a whole.”

 The report is very interesting, proving how investing in customer communications whether it is in-house or outsourced can save companies a lot of money further down the line in regards to marketing and sales. It does not matter how large or small your company is, it is less expensive to retain a customer than it is to generate new ones.

 The results of this poll show that although society is becoming more reliant on social media, customers still favour traditional contact methods.  I have found  that it depends on the company you are dealing with, I had an experience recently with a ticket provider, I needed to be advised as to how to collect some tickets I had purchased. I tried calling their customer services numerous  times; each time I got cut off without even speaking to an agent.  In my frustration, I turned to twitter. Within 30 minutes I had a private message apologising for my situation and asking for my contact details, within an hour I had all the information I needed. I think its unfortunate that you have to embarrass a company publicly before receiving good customer services. Needless to say I haven’t been egger to give them my business again!

The results of the poll show companies that customer service is just as important as areas as sales is to their revenue. They should look at their customer services seriously and consider how personal and enjoyable they want to make the experience. We have been blogging for a while at PCMS and have shared many hints and tips as to how to make your customers feel valued.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

Here are a few of my top tips that I give to our telemarketers here in the PCMS contact centre:

1. Think about why you are calling? What do you need to find out from your prospect in order to find out if you can help them?
2.  If you can’t obtain the result you want, what result will you be happy with?
3. Receptionists are our friends, as telemarketers we need to appreciate that they are doing their jobs. Being nasty to or lying to receptionist is not going to help us build relationships with our prospects.
4. Ask for the receptionists/PA’s help, most people want to ‘help’
5. PAs usually know as much about the business as their boss does, tell them your value statement and ask if it is their boss’ department and when you can talk to them.
6. Always confirm who you are talking to, this shows interest and helps you to keep accurate notes.
7. When introducing your company, add a value statement. Why should the prospect listen to you? What will get their attention?
8. Be honest about why you are calling and what you hope to achieve from the call. The prospect will respect your honesty and they will focus on the conversation instead of wondering what you want from them.
9. Silence is your friend, after asking a question wait for your prospect to respond.
10. After you prospect has answered your question, pause, this gives you time to take in what they have said and think of your next question. Also the prospect may fill in the silence and give away to much information.
11. Close with a value statement, so they know why they should call you in the future or to remind them why they have agreed to the meeting.

These are a few of the tips I have learnt over the years that help with calling. The most important tip of all is to always listen more than you talk. As a telemarketer your main objective is to learn about the prospect, the company and their needs.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

• Expertise. For many companies  it can be a long process finding just one person with some of the expertise you need, and recruiting can be a time consuming process. When outsourcing you can find a pool of expertise when you need it without paying the full time salary of a professional with their level of expertise. This saves your business a lot of time and money in regards to recruitment, training and managing.
• Experience. Outsourcers tend to have experience in a variety of different industries and projects meaning that they are more flexible and able to adapt their plan to fit in with each customer’s needs and budgets. PCMS have an agent retention average of over 4 and a half years, which is longer than industry standard, meaning our staff have benefitted from being trained on various projects and also will have received feedback on their performance on a monthly basis.
• Control. As a company, outsourcing can mean you have more control, companies can state the budget, the SLAs and the standard they require from their outsourcer and the outsourcer takes responsibility for meeting the set objectives.
• Technology. Outsourcing can provide a company with access to technology that they otherwise could not afford, so companies can use this technology to benefit their business without a large initial investment.
• Dreaming Big. For some companies wishing to expand, outsourcing can be the ideal option, they will benefit in all the areas I have already mentioned making their companies bigger with less risk. Also they may not have the room for an outbound team of 10 people so outsourcing is a fantastic option for them.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

1. “Sorry I cannot help you”
   Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, they may have been passed around and told this all day and they may be losing their patience.  If you think about most the queries you receive in customer services, although you may not be able to resolve the query yourself, I bet you know someone who can help the customer.   If you know someone who can help then give the customer their contact details and explain how this person maybe be able to help them. Better yet, transfer them yourself  and give them your name as a point of contact.  So, instead of saying ‘I can’t help you’ say ‘These are the contact details of the person who can help you and if you need any other help here are my contact details.’ Although you haven’t resolved the customer’s query you have helped them get a step closer to resolving it.
2. “Don’t blame me”
   You need to understand that taking calls in a call centre is a relatively anonymous job, a customer generally isn’t calling to shout at you they are calling to vent about an issue they are having.   If a customer shouts, generally (depending on how you have handled the call) a customer is shouting at the company or the issue. The best action to take when a customer is venting like this is to let them say what they need to say, don’t interrupt.  Once they have finished, clarify what you believe the issue to be, apologise that they are in this situation then explain the actions you will take to resolve the matter.
3. “Sorry but it is company policy to …..”
   Reciting company policy will not help resolve a customer’s issue; this is just another way of saying ‘sorry I can’t help you’.  Instead of focussing on what you can’t do for your customers, focus on what you can do. Present customers with options of what they can do in their situation and then let the customer control how to resolve the issue.
4. “Hold On”
   Just putting a customer on hold can be annoying. Customers respond better to explanations of how you are trying to resolve their query, how long it will take and result they can expect from it. Putting people on hold is the same, explain to the customer why you are putting them on hold and how long they can expect to be on hold or offer a call back at a time convenient to the customer.
5. “I don’t know” These words should not be in a contact centre agent’s vocabulary. If you don’t know the answer to a question, find out the answer from a team leader or handbook or find out where the customer can find the answer. This saves the customer a lot of time and guess work on their behalf, they will be grateful for the help.

Remember, you can always help a customer in some way, you may not resolve their issue but you can put them on the path to a resolution. Don’t take calls personally remember that the customer is not angry at you but at the situation, I know it’s hard but try not to get emotional!

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

Heidi Coles

Business Development Executive