AQM News

 

Crucial to weathering the storm for many is (I think) a greater emphasis on not just attracting potential customers but more importantly how much effort is spent on turning the lead in to a customer.

Over the last few years I have become more and more aware of what I have come to call the “low hanging fruit” syndrome.

As a business owner I am of course always keen to be offered the opportunity to expand the business and to acquire new clients and was pleased to receive a call recently from a potential new client that had been referred to me by an existing client.

We arranged to meet at their offices and I was introduced the Sales Director and the Marketing Director and we spent around 45 minutes discussing their needs and how we could possibly work together.

The meeting went well and I was asked to submit a proposal covering an agreed course of action.

As part of the proposal process I submitted an email to the sales director as requested with a list of questions designed to allow me to get a fuller picture of their needs and to allow me to offer the best solution.

A few days went by with no reply and I followed up the email with a polite reminder email to “bump” us up the list of the Directors priorities.

The Sales director was on annual leave so I have arranged to follow up when he returns to propose that we meet again to run through the list of questions to make it easier for us to progress and to allow the Sales Director to have some dedicated time that he can give to the proposal process rather than it remaining on his (undoubtedly!) large list of “things to do”.

Most people lead busy lives and much as we’d like to think so our services and offerings are not always front of mind and despite the fact that a person has taken the time to contact us doesn’t necessarily mean they will purchase there and then (especially if a person is shopping around or if the product or service is of a high price point or what is generally termed a “considered purchase”)

Over the years we have reviewed the sales cycle of a wide and varied range of businesses and a common gap in the process has been the inefficient and in some case abhorrent process of leads management.

“Low hanging fruit” relates to the  practise of sales agents only converting the “easy” calls (picking the easy fruit) and disregarding the calls that require a little more effort or in many case the callers that don’t buy on a first call and may require more effort by following (in some cases a number of times)

It’s not uncommon to speak to senior call centre personnel who are struggling with large volumes of calls and in some cases out of control call queues and large abandonment rates but yet the sales figures are not reaching the required levels.....Why is this ?

It would appear that in many cases there is no shortage of potential customer’s calling the business so why are these calls not being converted to sales?

Over the last couple of years we have run a series of competitive analysis projects where clients have used our mystery shopping services to contact their sales line and also the sales line of a number of key competitors in their market to assess each against a range of sales and service KPI’s.

Generally the mystery shoppers are tasked to enact the “normal” every day sales enquiry scenarios that make up the bulk of each of the providers contact centres and score them according to their perception of the people and process.

As part of the process we generally ask the shopper which of the providers they would have purchased from and why....the answer is generally consistent on each project with two key influences motivating a sale

1.      The last provider called

2.      The company that follows up the initial contact

Further research and a number of discussions with the shoppers have allowed us to reach the following conclusions....When a person is shopping around the first call generally results in the customer learning a great deal about the product or service, the features and benefits, the terms and conditions, an education experience if you like.

As a result of that call subsequent calls are often more of a “compare and contrast” exercise to the details of the original call.

As other providers are contacted the more the customer is educated and so allows them to form an opinion of what it is that they need and what their commitment in time and spend will be.

Generally competitive markets result in the main providers not differing widely in their offers and apart from the occasional “widget” there is not often a great deal to distinguish them or to offer a Unique Selling Point – for example a review of credit cards on offer gives the perception that there is not a whole lot of difference between the major players in that market?

As a result assuming that most offers are similar the customer gets to the last provider on their list and appears to agree to become a customer if the offer covers their basic needs and fits their budget (No point calling another provider back if they are happy with the deal being offered by an agent there and then that compares favourably to the other providers?)

Point 2 above is the key influencer in avoiding the last provider called winning the deal but is also seen to be vital in single vendor enquiry sales calls.

A company that gives the impression that they “want” your business and show willing to provide additional information to review the small print, that is willing to go at your pace and shows that they value you as a customer and are willing to spend time with you during the sales process appears to have an edge when it comes to converting a lead to a sale.

“Wooing the customer” is seen as still being vitally important in building the relationship and especially in winning the sale.

We decided to try to prove whether this was indeed the case and in two separate experiments we worked with two different clients in two widely differing markets.

For the project we took two samples of leads (each a block of 100 identical leads from identical sources) from an in-bound sales line.

All leads were handled the same in that the agent hadn’t made the sale on the first point of call but had agreed to send the potential customer some form of brochure to assist the customer decide if they wished to buy.

A week later one block of leads received a follow up call from the agent where the other block of 100 leads were left un-contacted (to allow the potential customer to decide if they wished to follow up on the initial contact?).

The results were astounding – Client A reported that 79% of the followed up leads became customers with the conversion of the leads that weren’t followed up showing a conversion rate of just 17%.

Client B reported 68% conversion for followed up leads with 18% conversion for those that weren’t.

A recent exercise to assess the lead management for a large well known bank that ran a TV advertising campaign to acquire customers using a zero interest rate deal for 6 months to transfer debt from other providers showed that only 30% of the callers were asked for their name and contact details at the first point of contact (Meaning that 70% of the potential customers couldn’t be followed up).

The advertising campaign would no doubt have cost the business a huge amount of money, the wait time on queue indicated that the phones were ringing off the hook at the banks contact centre but anecdotally we were informed that the campaign was deemed “not as effective as we would have hoped” by the marketing team.

Each time I am contacted about potential business I ensure that the lead is treated like “gold” – certainly we don’t always end up getting the business but it’s not through lack of trying and if I was to simply send a brochure and wait to see if the person gets back to me I would have been out of business many years ago!

For that reason lead management is one of the first things we look at when working with a new client as without this aspect working effectively nothing else can possibly be achieved.

 

The current Status Quo - Quality suffers when call quantity is the main focus

As business becomes increasingly reliant on the use of in-bound/outbound telephony staff and internet contacts to promote and sell its products and services the need to be confident of the abilities of the reps taking the calls has become of paramount importance.
Response times, telephone manner, compliance to legislative aspects, product knowledge and sales skills all play an important role in ensuring that your company is best represented and that the sale is made or the caller is 100% satisfied with the outcome of the call.
Invariably any deviation from expected customer care procedures or the conversion of an enquiry to sale is only discovered when a problem arises or at the end of a promotion or sales period when expected results have not achieved.
Just as damaging is any adverse reactions or misconceptions about your business or products not reported which also impacts negatively on revenue and reputation.
Including quality monitoring in the process and performing regular quality audits helps minimise and prevent these occurrences whilst also providing invaluable on-going feedback on your sales or call centre team.

Some internal quality initiatives.

Although it is now common to record a sample of conversations to assess performance, the results can be flawed for a number of reasons including internal politics, career protection, reps being "tipped off' etc.
Additionally these are time consuming exercises and in the high pressure environment that most call centre management work in, the monitoring and assessment of these calls can sometimes end up way down on the list of priorities (much though the managers don't want them to be!!).
Internal monitoring is a valuable tool but can and does in many cases reflect the “wants and needs” of the person monitoring or critiquing the team rather than getting feedback from the customer.
Alternatively if the call centre function has been out-sourced it can be difficult for the client to determine how well the service provider is performing these audits as problems with staff or quality not aspects a service provider is keen to highlight.
Ideally an independent source undertaking audits and monitoring can be the solution to overcoming these problems

Using external Quality Consultants.

The term "mystery shopping" will be familiar to many in the call centre environment. This entails sample calls being made under the guise of a genuine caller to provide a realistic assessment of the process and people.
Traditionally these calls have been made from large bureau type operations where documented staff turnover can be a regular problem and in some anecdotal examples it would appear volume rather than accurate feedback has been the driving force.
AQM’s proven methodology and process overcomes some of these traditional problems by employing a large flexible workforce from all sectors of the population in order to provide a true representation of “typical’ contacts from “typical” customers.
Working with benchmarks from the client the team is trained to assess the response received when dealing with the contact centre and provides realistic and qualified feedback.
In effect, they are your customers not part of a polished "young gun" bureau team!
A recent survey found that poor product knowledge from some of the reps reflected badly on the company (it is unknown if this was due to new staff or poor training but nevertheless was of immediate concern to the National Sales Director).
More startling however was very clear impression that the operator's priority was to give a quote and get on to the next call.
Of the survey undertaken only 12% of the callers were asked if they would like to “buy”!

Achieving uniform quality improvements.

Although quality auditing and monitoring will not solve the problem it will play a major part in assisting management understand how the service is performing and become a tool to highlight areas that do need attention.
In addition regular quality audits can achieve: -
Confirmation that the training dollar spent and techniques taught are impacting positively at an operational level
Identification of potential problem areas either with a particular person(s) or alternatively with a process.
Constructive feedback on sales/call centre staff’s ability
Provide additional input towards performance reviews
Test legislative compliance (NPP’s, FSRA etc.) – in addition, it has been shown that government bodies look upon independent audits as a willingness by the company to uphold the “spirit” of the legislation.
Deliver qualified feedback for management to assist in business growth, sales training or performance counseling.
Confirmation that external suppliers of call centre functions are maintaining agreed service levels and standards
Additionally an independent service monitor can play a useful part in evaluating service provider’s capabilities "in the field" prior to final agreements on tender exercises
Finally, morale and motivation are now major drivers to centre management. If used correctly, monitoring and audits can play a huge part in identifying "star" teams and individual performance to assist in recognition and reward processes

The fantastic partnerships that we have formed with our clients over the years is testament to the continued dedication and support I have received from colleagues, suppliers, strategic partners and of course the mystery shopper teams who never cease to amaze me with their efforts and consistency when working on quality audit projects.

This new web site is just one of a number of initiatives that will be launched in the coming weeks so stay tuned…………….

My own personal Key Performance Indicators have been to grow a business that people enjoyed working for and that clients would see a demonstrable return on any investment they made with us – I am proud to say this is the case and moving forward is something that I will strive to maintain and exceed.

We have a fantastic portfolio of clients but of course we are always interested in working on new and exciting challenges so I’d be happy to hear from you if you’d be interested in finding out more about our people and services.
Please feel free to contact me…my details are below.

Bob Stevenson
Managing Director
Australian Quality Monitoring (AQM)
Direct Phone 02 9977 9002
Email bob@aqmpl.com.au