Historically, contact centers have been a bastion of customer service, used to manage all types of inquiries from customers, ranging from product returns to billing issues. Most recently (particularly in challenging economic times) contact centers are increasingly being used to drive sales and revenue. With contact centers taking on a more strategic role, sales leaders across industries are rethinking their operational strategies.
To better understand these operational shifts and determine how they affect customer service and sales teams across industries, Cresta commissioned a survey of 300 sales and service-to-sales leaders who run revenue-generating contact centers at large enterprises. The survey aimed to unearth the strategies that forward-looking companies are deploying, how this differs across industries, and how these leaders are preparing for the future. Key findings revealed that while contact centers are increasingly being used to generate sales, there is still significant room for improvement. By utilizing advanced technology to optimize sales agent performance and measure results, contact centers can maximize their revenue growth.
Let’s dive in.
Boost agent performance with dynamic real-time coaching
Coaching is a huge aspect of a successful contact center and is even more effective when deployed in real time. Real-time coaching delivers live guidance to agents while allowing managers to monitor their progress and identify opportunities for personalized coaching. Generative AI tools enhance the effectiveness of agent coaching by taking the behaviors of top performers and sharing best practices across agents and teams. The result is an uplift in agent performance and an enhanced customer experience.
However, the report found that despite the fast-paced contact center environment and consistently high expectations from customers, fewer than half (44%) of the organizations surveyed currently monitor customer conversations in real-time and use that data to provide agents with tips and suggestions. In the past, there have been many barriers preventing organizations from applying intelligent coaching to their contact centers. One of these challenges is that the technology behind real-time coaching is extremely complex with solutions having to interpret, understand, and coach human conversation instantaneously. Fortunately, with advanced processing power and natural language understanding, this technology is not only possible but incredibly accessible. This is great news, as the need to implement real-time coaching is a high priority for many organizations and leaders, with over two-thirds (62%) looking to enact real-time coaching in the near future.
Harness the power of sales playbooks to evaluate compliance
As many sales pros would attest, playbooks are an integral part of their job. While more than three-quarters (77%) of respondents stated that their organization has a sales playbook to train and guide representatives, only 55% are actually measuring customer interactions against their playbook. Furthermore, among the companies that do measure their performance against the playbook, only a handful have a method to sample calls to verify if their representatives are truly following playbook guidelines.
Additionally, the survey revealed that customer service had higher usage of sales efficiency and effectiveness tools compared to sales organizations. This could be attributed to the prevalent use of technology and metrics in larger contact centers. Nevertheless, one surprising result from the research found that the larger the company, the less mature its use of metrics to measure sales efficiency and effectiveness. This is possibly due to large-scale change management being more difficult in quick-moving adaptation.
Abiding by the guidelines of a playbook could potentially enhance a company’s performance measurement, with even the majority of respondents (85%) believing that adherence to key behaviors would ultimately improve sales performance.
Leverage AI to guarantee sales success
The introduction of ChatGPT has created a frenzy around AI – and contact centers are not exempt from the hype. Fortunately, contact centers have been leaning on AI technology for decades; however, sales organizations have yet to fully implement the technology to improve operations. The current use of AI for sales varies widely by the size of the company and industry.
While deploying AI and real-time intelligence continues to be a priority for most organizations, very few are using it for sales effectiveness (35%), and this is especially low at companies with over 1000 employees. Although larger companies may have the resources and capability to adopt new technologies, they may once again encounter challenges in implementing change management at a larger scale.
According to the survey, respondents leading customer service-oriented contact centers were more likely to admit that AI can help their overall operations compared to sales organizations. A couple of ways in which AI can improve sales are with guided selling recommendations and enablement analytics. Fortunately, a number of sales companies have expressed their intention to introduce real-time coaching capabilities at some point in the future. Notably, healthcare insurance has the highest intention, while consumer goods/retail has the lowest.
Takeaway
The research demonstrates that there is a clear gap between the actions that organizations recognize they need to take and actually taking tangible steps toward achieving more efficient and effective operations. Contact centers in particular have significant potential to help organizations drive sales, but there is clearly room for improvement — if companies are able to revamp their coaching, better utilize playbooks for performance metrics, and increasingly embrace AI, they will be able to more effectively maximize growth and unlock previously siloed revenue opportunities.
To learn more about the findings, visit the report here.
