Management, Human Resources, and Life in a Customer Focused World

Historically speaking, call centers have all too often been split — you’re either a selling agent or you’re a service agent. These two hiring profiles were polar opposites and even when sitting together in the same area they held themselves apart by force of personality and title separation. This was the paradigm that most call centers and companies using a contact center were stuck in. Although this is still often the case, there are more and more situations where it is not. The major shift is that more and more centers are being profit centers rather than cost centers. In this sense, the center must look to where they can successfully increase revenue or decrease costs. Generally, this means looking at how to up-sell products to a customer or use affinity sales to branch the customer calling up for a mop into also buying a bucket from your company.

The center where I’m currently consulting, for example, blends this. Although there are agents who say “I was hired on to do service and I can’t (won’t) do sales”, they work side by side — and in conjunction with — those that are more sales oriented. Another organization I used to work for was the same way. In both cases, management decided to allow the agents their personal preference. If you felt you were only service, then you wouldn’t have to do sales. For those that had the personality, interest or skills in doing sales, they were given that opportunity and rewarded accordingly. New hires were expected to do both. This new change was conveyed in the interview process.

Salaries are tied into this as well. Those agents who are truly service only will, in time, lag behind. This is already evident in the differing salary ranges. Those that generate revenue for the company have a higher payscale than those that don’t. If one considers that, in general, the skills for customer service are the same as taking orders, then the diference in range is $1.01 per hour. Add outbound sales to the mix and the increase shoots up an incredible $4.33 per hour (over $9000 per year!).

I don’t forsee that this will change. The more you can offer the company in terms of revenue opportunity, the better off you are and the more valuable your skills are. If you’re just service right now, look at learning how to sell .. the sooner the better.

Some suggestions:

• Cold Calling for Women: Opening Doors & Closing Sales (Useful for men as well as women!)
• Telephone Sales For Dummies

Those are two books that some of my agents have found to be quite useful. The other that I often suggest to people because it is quite interesting is Baseline Selling: How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know About the Game of Baseball, but it doesn’t apply to a normal contact center environment. If you’re an account manager and can work through a longer cycle time, then it might be worth reading.