Far away are the days were a contact centre provided just call centre services. Now, a new range of services is available to companies who decide to benefit of economy of scale and integrate a third-party business outsourcer as part of their operations. In this blog, we discuss how contact centre services can support your in-house sales team and in turn, increase your sales.
Inbound Phone Order Line
Your in-house sales team can benefit from a dedicated or shared inbound order line call centre support. A team will be readily available to answer the phones when your in-house team is busy closing sales or performing other duties. There are different options depending on your needs including:
Dedicated team: fully integrated with your in-house sales team, they become as knowleageable as your own personnel. Their job focus on closing sales and placing orders directly in your system. Your dedicated team can be supported by an overflow team which will take calls when all customer representatives are busy.
Overflow service: this team works as back-up for your dedicated team (in-house or outsourced). When all dedicated customer agents are busy, they will take calls and answer FAQ’s as per your procedure. They can close sales or just take details and escalate them to a more senior members for a call back.
After-hours support: This team perform sales when your main office is closed. The knowlege and skillset will depend on your requirements. They can be a dedicated team or just a message taking service.
Independently of the level of cover chosen, the benefits of an inbound order line are multiples. See the following blog for more information:
Increase Sales Conversion on your website
Nowadays, the number of customers conducting business online is on the rise. Technology savvy generations are growing up very fast and they avail of website and apps to purchase products and services. The needs of this type of customers are different as they require more technical support that buyers from the brick and mortar environment. There are multiple customer support channels that can be implemented by your sales team to increase sales conversions on your website. These include: phone, e-mail, live chat and social media customer support.
Outbound Campaigns
To complement your inbound sales efforts, your team must consider outbound campaigns. Far away are the days when call calling was an accepted practice. Currently, the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) makes this practice less desirable unless you have express consent to do so. Additionally, new generations prefer other less invasive channels such as e-mails or text messages. Therefore, while outbound campaigns are paramount for any business they need to be implemented with a well-defined strategy. You must define your target audience, the right that you have to contact them, the objective/purpose to do so and the best approach to reach them.
Export Strategies: Reach New Markets
As previously described, your sales team can benefit from having a call centre team available when your main office is closed. A clear example of this, it is the use of a contact centre for exporting purposes. Organizations that serve multiple markets (with different time zones) may find difficult to provide a homogeneous service from their main office on a 24 by 7 basis. Here is were outsourced customer support and sales team can complement your in-house efforts. Additionally, it provides the opportunity to target other speaking countries with languages not spoken by your in-house team.
Market Research
Your sales team made benefit of performing market research campaigns to better understand new markets or existing clients. Customer feedback campaigns and customer satisfaction surveys are the bread and butter to collate valuable information to design sales strategies. Depending on the type of research planned and the budget available, the use of a call centre can prove to be a cost-effective solution. In comparison with market research agencies, contact centres focus on the data collection process instead of the data analysis.
Support Payments
On the financial side, your sales team may require support for financial activities such as invoice management, payment processing or records updates. While this type of tasks usually falls within the financial department, it is not surprising the number of companies that avail of sales representatives to complete some of these activities. In this case, call centre teams can be the bridge between both departments and support specific projects when required. Examples of projects include data entry & invoice management, Payment & reconciliations, and update of suppliers & payees database.
-
Data Entry and Invoice Management
-
Payments and Reconciliations
-
Update Suppliers and Payees Database
If your sales team require support in any of the above activities, please get in touch. We will be delighted to provide you with a detailed quotation and some examples of our previous experience.