Call Center a Selling Point

This type of practice is a conflict with the belief that you should keep your help desk operators away from excessive multi tasking, as this takes away their concentration power and consequently reduces efficiency. Implementing sales within the same area of the company that deals with customer service is something few companies are ready to adopt, let alone the help desk staff. Sales calls are usually seen as an intrusion into the personal time of the potential client, especially by the average help desk. Traditional help desks are just what their name suggests, but tradition is giving way to this modern revenue generating service center.

Help Desk Software Promotions

Small companies who were facing financial difficulties adopted this method as a final attempt to boost revenues – and they did it! However, they were smart enough not to push the limits too far and they only used customer directed sales promotions. The actual sales pitch is only inserted in the conversation when customers ask about other services or products they are interested in. A sales proposal can be made when the operator suggests another alternative to an old service or product that the customer is using.

 This can become a powerful promotion method, as the client who is already open to the idea of receiving and assimilating advice. A well trained help desk operator can make a sales promotion seem like a totally unbiased advice, only meant to help out the customer. Implementation of such a sales method is not easy! It requires advanced planning and training for the entire helpdesk staff, from management to employees. 

A call center like as the Quality Assurance from CallCriteria that wants to become ‘solution selling’ oriented needs to undergo several training stages. Agents need to develop skills that their previous help desk jobs didn’t require. They need to learn how to pose open-ended questions that will lead the customer to the desired conversational path where the perfect sales pitch can be inserted. The agent’s job is not only to respond to inquires about products, but to present them in a favorable light, hopefully making them seem vital for the customer’s needs. Accessories that would enhance a product’s benefits are easy to introduce in the conversation, if the call center operator knows how to talk the talk. Upgrades to more expensive products can also be suggested, but all should be done in a subtle, non-intrusive manner.

Rewarding Help Desk Technicians

Management should reward this extra work that is demanded from help desk staff, in fact, they should consider them a key part of the sales team! This works best by setting short and long term goals, both for individuals and the entire team. When a goal is achieved there are several options of rewarding the employees, these being left to the discretion of management. Programs that focus on awarding points for sales in the agent’s case proved to be very effective in stimulating the selling activity. Motivating agents to ‘want to sell more’ is vital, otherwise they will not bother with the extra pressure and would just settle for serving their original help desk jobs. 

Management must go through some training stages, in parallel with the help desk staff. Participation in the staff’s training sessions can give management a better idea on what is expected of their employees. By focusing on customer service skills and identifying the shortcomings of agents, managers can greatly improve their agent’s performance. Many companies feared that they would experience a loss of quality in help desk services with the introduction of service sales, but data tells us this is not a crucial factor, as service style remained about the same. In fact, talk time increased and, exponentially, so did the generated profit.