Going “Off-Script” to Increase Product Sales
The Problem
The Client’s conversion rate was flat and product sales were declining
As part of the sales process, Agents were required to follow a very scripted sales process to avoid sales exceptions due to improper financial disclosures. However, the heavily scripted process did not support an interactive, conversational engagement between the agents and the customers. In particular, agents were instructed to use specific rebuttals in response to customer objections.
Over a 30-day period, our Quality team and Project Management team analyzed sales contacts. We also reviewed contacts that were disqualified sales due to script adherence exceptions.
With the help of our Analytics team, they were able to categorize the contacts to determine the ‘pitch’ and the rebuttal used, and the success rate for each.
Key findings included:
- Customers indicating ‘not interested’ as a general response were not given an opportunity to learn more about the program due to restrictive rebuttal script flow
- The majority of customer declines were due to incomplete or confusing pricing explanations
- Rebuttals did not naturally flow in a conversational tone
Our Solution
Create a more fluid sales script
The teams then worked with agent focus groups to gather additional insights to support the data and improve sales conversion rates. Our teams were convinced that the existing highly-scripted rebuttal process was negatively impacting production metrics and driving call conversions down.
Upon reviewing our findings, the client was approached to establish a control group for a champion/challenger scenario. The control group agents would continue with the current scripted rebuttal process.
Contact center agents in the challenger group would be permitted to choose rebuttals based on the circumstances of the conversation. Agents were allowed to use the pricing rebuttals as well as updated FAQs as necessary to fully educate the customer on the benefits of the program.
The Results
This more conversational process allowed agents to focus on education
This quickly led to an increase in sales conversions by the challenger group.
- Within 60 days of the champ/challenger test, conversion rates increased from 17.5% to 22%, with a newly established goal of 23%.
- Sales exceptions (not following the script) are still well below the client’s target of 3%.
