Donna
Siegel

Build Sustainable Quality Into Your Telephone Call Center

High turnover is a fact of life in telephone call centers, so most quality initiatives have short life spans. New people arrive, and the culture of call quality begins to slip. But it is possible to implement long-term programs that Build Sustainable Quality Into Your Telephone Call Center.

"I always thought I was very good at selling. I've been doing it for years. In fact, I'm good enough that my manager picked me to head up our new Quality Assurance initiative."

So began a new career direction for Cynthia Joyce, the top-selling rep in her telephone call center.

Starting a quality program was quite a challenge for her, since she wasn't really sure where to begin, or what other companies in the industry had accomplished. But it seemed as though the appropriate starting point would be to monitor the calls of her fellow reps. That way, she could find out what they were doing in actual conversations and think about ways to improve their performance.

Monitoring For Quality

At first, Cynthia listened to telephone call center calls using her manager's monitoring station. She could listen in to any conversation she wanted, without letting her presence interfere with either the rep or the customer. That way, she could choose to move from rep to rep to hear a variety of styles and skills, or she could follow a series of calls with a single rep.

As she listened to each of the calls, she made notes on the rep's selling skills. She noticed that the calls seemed reasonably good; although, occasionally, a major selling error would be made. For example, the close would be incomplete: "I'll send you some information so you can review it at your leisure," or the prospect would get off the line without the rep having asked for a name for follow-up. The customer would say: "I'll call you back when I'm ready to buy," and the rep would accept this.

In sharing her impressions with her manager, Cynthia came to the conclusion that there wasn't much of a quality problem. The reps were doing about as well as possible, and the closing rate was about right. In fact, they were closing about 28% of all inbound leads.

Customer Satisfaction Survey

Still, Cynthia and her manager thought the reps could do better, and Cynthia came up with a different way to determine how her reps could improve: "If I can't find anything significant by monitoring the reps, maybe I need to talk with the customers." She decided to build a list of recent customers and survey each one of them. The purpose of the survey was to find out each customer's perceptions of the sales reps. Were they treated well by the reps? Did the reps take the time to find out exactly what they needed? During the selling process, did the customers understand exactly what they were buying? Were they encouraged to make the decision to buy in a constructive way?

Cynthia compiled the results of her conversations with the customers and reviewed them with her manager. The customers were clearly satisfied. While they might have saved some money by purchasing a competitor's product, they felt comfortable with their choice. Cynthia was hearing comments like: "The salesperson took the time for me to explain exactly how I was planning to use the product. I really appreciated the attention," and "My brother highly recommended your competitor as the best choice, but I just had to check it out for myself. I liked your price much better. I saved myself quite a bit on this purchase."

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," was the conclusion of both Cynthia and her boss, and that's what they reported to their management.

Training To Maintain Our Sales Skills

While everything looked good, it seemed to Cynthia as though there was still an opportunity here. "If we're that good at what we do, maybe we have to do something to make sure we stay this way. Perhaps, training might help keep all of the telereps sharp." A quick look at the available off-the-shelf training programs pointed out that most of them covered the basics. With the skills in this group, something more was needed. Cynthia's solution was to develop her own training program. She would use the skills of the rep as positive examples and therefore, encourage the reps to keep working on the more subtle points of selling.

To develop her training program, Cynthia started recording the conversations. Because she needed a quiet spot in which to record, she found herself an empty office and set up a monitoring station. Unlike the manager's office, this one wasn't visible to the reps; and because she was working behind closed doors, they never knew whether she was recording or not.

Quality Improvement Was Possible After All

After recording the conversations, Cynthia next transcribed several of them word-for-word. These transcripts would become case studies in the training program she was planning. But as she looked at the transcripts, she realized that there were some unexpected results, such as:

• The quality of sales skills on the tapes was significantly less than the apparent quality when she was monitoring. It seems that when the reps knew that they were being watched and monitored, they were on their best behavior. As soon as they were unaware they were being monitored, they stopped using their best skills.
  
  
• From the transcripts, Katrina started picking up subtle defects in the selling techniques, which were having a significant impact on the outcome of individual calls. Reps were missing clues as to how the customer was planning to use the product. Reps were presenting features long after the customer began sending out serious buying signals. Even little steps like thanking the customer for calling were being missed.

Clearly, there was an opportunity here to improve quality. And the quality assurance program could be built around her training plan.

Best Of All

Cynthia started her recording and transcribing to build a program to help the other reps. What she ended up doing was improving her own selling techniques. She knew she was guilty of some of the flaws she saw in others. She heard some sales techniques she hadn't thought about before. So, now when Cynthia spends time on the phones talking to her own prospects, she is much more observant about her own techniques. She tries different ways to see which work best for her and records the best of them … which leads to a whole new set of skills to share with others.

How You Can Improve Your Own Sales Skills

You, too, can benefit from recording your own sales conversations with prospects. All that is needed is an inexpensive tape recorder which can be purchased in a number of different places. (If your job is telesales, you'll also need a device to help you record both sides of the conversation.)

Follow these steps:

1. Record a few conversations with your prospects. Don't worry about the results of the conversations; you'll have some good ones and some bad ones.

2. Transcribe each of the conversations you recorded verbatim. Don't try to paraphrase, or just capture the essence; you will lose all the meat this way.

3. Look at your transcripts:

• How well did you start the conversation and build rapport with the prospect?
• During the conversation, did you uncover all of the prospect's needs that relate to your product or service? How effective were your questions?
• Did you present the right information for this prospect? Did your presentation meet the needs of your prospect?
• Did you try to close the sale or at least move to the next step in the selling process?

It's likely you will find several ways that you would like to change the way in which you sell. Pick one, and see what you can do to improve it.

It seems so straight-forward and simple. It helped Cynthia make herself and the other reps more effective; and it can probably help you too.

SeaBird Associates Inc
3011 NE 7th Drive
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: 561-750-9233
E-mail: Donna Siegel

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