Situation:

Our client’s inbound servicing team was routinely handling calls from existing customers regarding account maintenance when their leadership team asked experts at Direct Channels to change the mindset of these servicing agents and teach them how to cross-sell other products and services during these servicing interactions. Servicing calls included questions regarding billing, payments, adding or subtracting services, disputes, account maintenance, and more.

The firm’s Servicing Leadership Team wanted to capitalize on these customer service opportunities to drive additional sales and convert the cost center into a profit center. They had tried offering new agent compensation and commission plans to encourage cross-sell offerings. While these created a slight improvement in performance, the overall cross-sell numbers were disappointing. An additional challenge arose when the agents, who were hired for servicing, started pushing back when management expectations shifted to include sales. They did not buy into the company’s mission and felt that selling was not part of their job.

Direct Channels Solution:

• • We went right to work, breaking down the agent’s distaste for selling by creating a relationship-to-sales workshop.
  • We then created informative, easy to navigate job aids to guide agents with conversation starters that moved them comfortably into sales dialogues to highlight benefits of the firm’s products and create common transitional statements to move agents organically from service, to sales, to close.
  • We also designed, developed and delivered a two-part on site service-to-sales training session designed to influence and reinforce desired behavior.

Results:

Before our involvement, our client’s cross-sell conversion rate was stable at 6.7%. Within the first 120 days into our campaign, the firm was benefiting from a conversion rate of 23.5%. The program was so successful, it was rolled out to the rest of the organization and institutionalized as business-as-usual servicing.