Stoffer's Soapbox

Calling Internet Leads: How Often, How Much

There is a multi-billion dollar market in Internet lead generation for big ticket item services (mortgages, education, etc.). So you would think someone would be able to tell me the optimal strategy to reach these leads. I have talked to virtually every large telecom equipment vendor, publicly traded outsourcers, a boatload of consultants and a number of software providers and no one can give me a simple answer to two not so simple questions:

1. The holy grail would be a one size fits all answer to "what is the optimal strategy, across channels, to convert leads in a consultative inside sales environment?"

2. Clearly, there is no holy grail answer possible as each company and industry and consumer segment has its own characteristics. So the next question is "what approach or methodology should I use to arrive at an answer?" Surprisingly, no one has given me a good answer here either.

The easy answer is to focus on telephone contact only,  act as a telemarketer and just dial the heck out of leads until you reach 70-80% list penetration, rest the list, and then dial the leads you could not finalize again a few months later. But, as a consumer, would you enroll in a school that dialed you twenty times and never left a message (for me, that twentieth dial would be a big "place me on the Do Not call list").

A more intelligent telephone strategy would be to figure out, based on lead characteristics, what are the best times of day to reach a consumer. There are global and segment-level optimums and this is a very attainable strategy.

The best strategy would be to reach the customer through the channel they want to be reached and when they want to be reached - this could be via an active channel like via outbound dialing, IM or email campaigns or a more passive relationship-oriented channel like an RSS feed or school-sponsored portal.

Easier said than done - has anyone had any success in a consultative sales focused organization optimizing lead conversion, in the long run, and across channels?

Fighting Temptation to Compromise

I am hiring for a number of sales positions right now and the big temptation is to compromise - you need X hires by Y date and it's tempting to chuck away all those visions of only accepting the best of the best and instead settle for "they could end up being good with an equal dose of training and prayer." It's great that I read Seth Godin's blog this afternoon as it gave me a well needed jolt of reality.

Seth urges marketers "to refuse to market mediocre stuff if that's the best the folks in R&D and production can bring you. The first time, they'll be shocked. Your job will be at risk. But then you'll notice something... the stuff gets better. Fast. In Japanese car factories, this is called kanban. You trade production efficiencies for quality. If a part isn't perfect, the worker refuses to install it. And the entire assembly line stops. Detroit was horrified by this idea. Keeping the assembly line going is the holy grail. Guess what? The line doesn't get stopped very often. Things get better, fast."

The same principles apply with HR - if the cadidates aren't good enough, I will press for more and more and more until I get the ones that meet my needs.

The Multi-Channel Customer Experience

There was an interesting post from the eStara blog topically about finding the best contact center technology. However, I found eStara's emphasis to be spot on: "Organizations need to think beyond whether or not customers are having a good call center experience, or a good Web site experience, and worry about whether customers are having a good brand experience. Nothing is more frustrating to a customer than investing time and effort online and then having to transition to a phone call and “start all over again.” The best contact center technologies are those that provide a seamless cross-channel experience and offer a continuity of experience for the customer."

In the for-profit education industry, the emphasis has shifted toward reaching the potential student when they want, where they want and through whichever channel they want. The next step is, as eStara states above, putting the systems in place to give emloyees a single view of the customer. That way, employees can view a history of every contact a student or potential student has had with the school, can avoid having to recollect information and can work to optimize the customer experience each and every time.

Workforce Optimization for Outbound Telesales

Witness Systems has published an excellent white paper on how workforce optimization is more than simply forecasting the number of agents required, based on expected call volume, and scheduling appropriately. Instead, true workforce optimization should be customer-centric - integrating QA, training, forecasting and scheduling. I'd add recruiting and a CSAT program to this list as well.

Below are some special considerations I have found useful in striving to be customer-centric in an outbound telesales environment. 

1. Implementing a Customer-Centric Sales Process. Use information from shopping competitors, customer surveys and quality monitoring to ensure your sales process meets customer needs

• Segment customers based on demographics & needs unveiled by surveys/QA monitoring
• Understand your competitors' sales processes through regular mystery shopping
• Use information from surveys/monitoring/competitor shops to adapt the right call flow/scripting and tools to optimize conversions within each customer segment
• Develop rebuttal guides to help salespeople overcome prospect objections

2. Hire salespeople with the skill sets needed to execute your process most effectively.

• Assess the skill set needed to sell your product most effectively - you can do this by profiling your best salespeople. Also use this profile in screening new hires
• Determine whether your compensation/employee benefits are appropriate by benchmarking competitors and comparable industries (also if all your best salespeople are defecting to other companies, you know you have a problem)
• Assess whether you can expand your labor pool by using home agents or locating in a different geographic location

3. Ensure your inside salespeople are properly equipped to handle your sales process

• Determine what foundational training & coaching is needed for onboarding new salespeople
• Determine what foundational training & coaching is needed to ensure that newly promoted/hired coaches understand how to coach your sales process
• Once a salesperson is on the phones, use QA and supervisor coaching to identify gaps in agent skill sets
• Use a mix of e-learning, simulation and live coaching to close gaps in agent and coach skill sets
• Measure agent, coach and organization-wide training needs via a learning management system.
• Ideally you should be able to statistically tie skill set trainings and scoring to changes in performance

4. Optimize Agent Time Management and Staffing

• Determine optimal average handle time for each part of the sales process based on customer segment. Use this to set agent expectations,  being mindful of the fact that every customer is different
  
• Determine how changes in customer wait time during the sales process affect conversion rates (e.g. if it takes over x amount of time for a potential student to reach a financial aid advisor, how does it affect sales). Use this information to make the right staffing decisions
• Note that it is challenging to schedule optimally when inside sales agents are executing complex sales that require multiple contacts with the potential customer. You cannot simply staff to meet a service level on an inbound queue.
  
  • For example, in education, an admissions advisor may talk to a potential student  three or four times prior to the student making their decision to enroll in class and six more times prior to the student starting class.  When a student is having second doubts, these are often best addressed by phone rather than email.
  • When scheduling, you need to creatively think about how a customer can receive the personalized attention and service they need when the work schedule of the salesperson  does not always match the time when a potential customer is available

5. Lead Allocation. You also need to think about the optimal number of sales leads an agent can handle, to maximize conversions across your workforce (but this is a discussion for another day)

Contacting Internet Leads

Bill Rice pointed me to a great post pondering whether leads procured from the Internet ever get contacted. He finds through mystery shopping that 70% of these Internet customer inquiries are going without even a single response.

Clearly this can happen several ways. One, there is an issue with the technology and the lead does not get transmitted from the vendor into the lead management system of the buyer. Two, the lead mangement system never pushes the lead out to a sales agent. Three, the lead ends up in a dead queue - e.g. an agent on vacation or who leaves their job. Finally, an agent never calls the fresh lead.

Bill has a great point - I do competitive mystery shopping all the time and it is amazing how often I do not get called in the first place. Just as frequent are the times I mystery shop - say I need a few days to decide - and never get a call back.

Makes me think that there have to be systems in place that can ensure leads are called consistently - moving to a more uniform contact strategy using a telemarketing front-end that pre-qualifies leads will likely improve this siutuation. As for ensuring agent's follow up, that also can be managed by, for example, pulling away leads in a pending status and giving them to someone else.

All this points to the same conclusion - that it may be best to move to a sales process in mortgage, education, insurance, etc. that is less dependent on the skills of a single agent and more dependent on putting the right management controls in place to ensure a quality customer experience.

Thrown in the Fire or Learning Slowly?

Prior to now, my strength has always been strategic planning, identifying market opportunities, and persuading people to approach problems in different, more creative ways. Now, I am implementing one of those big ideas and I have a whole new respect for operations. I always used to wonder why operations folks acted in what seemed to be a rash way - but now I know it's harder to always use a rigorous A/B test when you have to hit revenue targets. It's also harder to manage a project involving hundreds of people than a discrete few people on a project team.

I wish I could give more details (oh the woes of working for a public company), but the project I am am piloting right now is one that can change the face of how my company operates.  I suppose when I was doing venture investing our funding decisions affected dozens of lives - but this is one where thousands could be affected. As we muddle through, my project team and I are constantly making and learning from mistakes. I wonder - is it best to learn by getting thrown in the fire or better to learn by working for a great mentor who's an industry expert? My project definitely falls under the thrown-into-the-fire approach.

I look forward to sharing with everyone how it goes.

Ending Call Center Scripting as We Know It

I have shopped all the major online schools and the only consistent thing across them all is the scripted nature of the conversations with admissions advisors. In the vast majority of calls to schools like UOPX or DeVry, there are several minutes of conversation that are scripted - so scripted in fact, that many admissions advisors seem to place their primary focus on asking the next question on the script rather than listening to the potential student. The best advisors are very different - they concentrate on building rapport with the potential student and addressing that person's specific situation and concerns.

I came across a great article from Brazilian publication RC&C, titled "Is It Time for Call-Center Workers To Ditch the Script?", which addresses this very question.

There is a balance to strike between scripted and free flow conversation, but I believe - if you hire high quality inside sales professionals - that a simple call flow guideline works far better than a script. Of course, this call flow can be combined with call monitoring & coaching - regular monitoring will balance any concerns about advisors getting the university into regulatory problems and calls from your best advisors can be broken down to determine the best practices that can be coached to increase productivity.

What experiences have others had moving to this less scripted environment?

Insurance Q&A: Outbound Sales

Insuarance & Technology magazine featured a great Q&A on outbound telesales in the insurance industry. A few key takewaways are as follows:

1. Effective Call Recording and Monitoring Can Lead to Improved Customer Satisfaction. Sharon Ritchey, SVP Property-Casualty Service Operations at The Hartford explains, "The Hartford shifted its focus from cost to customer, developing a system to record 100 percent of the voice and screen activity across eight separate call centers and 3,500 agents. By recording the sound and visual cues of how those agents were serving their customers, and tagging this with data about the customer and about the agent, we could review efficiency, effectiveness and customer impact of calls. Our Customer Experience Management System captures, evaluates and analyzes customers' experiences for continuous measurable, sustainable improvement."
2. Put the Right Information at the Agent's Fingertips Real Time. Joseph Heinen, VP Strategic MArketing at Genesys Labs says "The right contact center technology can allow insurance companies to segment customers and use real-time data to capitalize on valuable up-selling opportunities. It's not just about cutting costs. For example, you might see that a caller is a prime candidate for an up-sell and then route them to a specialized sales agent -- maybe even someone outside the contact center."
3. Outsourcing Can Be Effective, But Keep Your Core Business Processes In-House. Mike Sheridan, VP Strategy for Aspect Software says, "Outsourcing can potentially play an important role in an insurer's contact center strategy. It is key to segment interaction types and possibly limit outsourcing to routine tasks, at least in the beginning phases of an outsourced program. It is also helpful to have an outsourcer available during unexpected spikes or peak times to provide important backup resources."

Blockbuster: Upselling Me All the Way to Netflix

At Blockbuster this past weekend, I stood in line with a few movies as the employees lackadaisically served the customers in front of me.

When I did get to the front of the line, the clerk, with her eyes averted, mumbled "Welcome to Blockbuster." Then, she turned away from me to help her fellow employee figure out to sell someone a DVD. Finally, the extended and ineffective upsell began. She mumbled, "Would you like a soda or popcorn with those movies?"  I said, "No, thank you." Then she quickly spit out under her breath, "Would you like to join Blockbuster Online, where  you get unlimited DVD rentals for $17.99 a month?"

I just don't get it. First of all, when I go to the supermarket, the checkout aisle, like Blockbuster, is chock full of soda and candy. And never am I asked whether I want to buy it - supermarket's  management knows that if I did, I would just reach over and grab the soda and candy right next to the checkout counter. Secondly, there is a computer set up near the checkout counter at Blockbuster with a big sign touting all the features of Blockbuster Online and letting people sign up today. Is there really the need to ask again?

It was readily apparent that the Blockbuster employee was getting mystery shopped on occasion to make sure she said the scripted upsells. But the Blockbuster employee never made eye contact or even flashed a smile - if she is mystery shopped, shouldn't this be part of the evaluation criteria? I can say with certainty that a combination of unfriendly customer service and irritating upsells is an unprofitable strategy - any revenue gained by upsells is lost by turned off customers going to the store less frequently or, as I did, surfing to netflix.com as soon as they come home.

Executives at Blockbuster face a huge challenge to stay alive as new channels to buy movies continue to encroach on its traditional rental business. They will have to look farther than selling more soda to find the key to survival.

Sales in a Contact Center Environment

Is there any distinction between a service and a sales culture in the contact center? There shouldn't be! Don't the best real estate agents or financial advisors provide great service, even though they are in a sales position? Ulysses Learning has a great white paper called Race to Sales, which talks about sales in a contact center environment. There are four major points in the white paper, summarized below:

Sales is Great Service
This point is made eloquently in the pdf by Gerry Barder Vice President for CIAC, the Call Center Industry Advisory Council. "Without a doubt, our sales initiatives will fall short, if we forget the act of selling useful products and services, when done well, is the ultimate customer service," says Barber.

Judgement Reigns Supreme
Do you train your agents on listening and empower them to go off script and use their own judgement to make the right decision for the customer? "According to Nucleus Research, 80 percent of call center training is low-fidelity issues. Twenty percent is highfidelity training—customer service, sales, and coaching where the emphasis is on judgment skill development. The high-fidelity training is the hardest to do well but adds 80 percent to the value of your service."

Coaching is King
Do you have a monitoring and coaching process where your organization is able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of individual agents? Do you have the right mix of face to face, simulation and computer based trainings to effectively improve agent skills? Lenny Padron, Director of Sales for Intuit's Small Business Products Contact Center group, makes a great point about the importance of holding your training organization accountable for achieving results. “We’re convinced that coaching is the key to getting agents to have more consultative conversations with customers. “And you need a coaching process with clear accountabilities... a process that sets your coaches up for success.”

Think Evolution, Not Revolution
You can't transform your workforce overnight. Focus on continuous improvement and sharing of best practices to optimize your workforce for sales.