3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

In the call center world, there are only so many tricks and techniques you can teach an agent before setting them loose: how to engage the caller, when to move in for the sale, how to close the deal, and more. But for many agents, there is also an indefinable quality—some call it empathy—that sets them apart from their peers and makes them superstars.

That was the challenge facing David Blackwell, President of BPA Quality—a leader in contact center development—when he was at a kickoff meeting with a new client. Blackwell recalled the challenge in a recent blog he posted titled, ‘Sorry, I Wasn’t Listening…’

“During this meeting we wanted to find out the needs and asked what they wanted to achieve. The director took me to the door of her office and pointed to an agent in the first row of the center,” Blackwell recalled. “She went on to say, ‘This agent, Joe is his name, has 15 percent more sales than any other person in the center. How can we get the other 500 or so agents in the center to do the same?’”

Blackwell noted that while he found the challenge interesting, it wasn’t all that unique. “The reality is, that’s what most of our clients desire … how to replicate the success of their best agents,” he said.

Blackwell says one of the first steps to take is to analyze the successful agent’s behaviors, to see how they achieve the desired results. Once he did that, they were able to see some predictable elements.

“First, Joe went about really understanding what the customer needed. He gathered facts and spent a lot of time on the more emotional or personal elements,” Blackwell said. “As his calls progressed it seemed that he instinctively understood what the customer needed. He managed to elicit an amazing amount of information and got the customer to openly exhibit enthusiasm for product suggestions that he was making. It seemed that Joe had the perfect personality profile for a salesperson.”

Blackwell concluded from his research that the most successful people ask more questions than make statements—usually at a rate of 3 to 1—meaning that for every statement they make, they ask three questions. “If an agent can ask those questions in line with something the customer has said, demonstrating they listened to the customer, those questions will result in positive outcomes.”

As such, what seemed a daunting and mysterious task at the outset turned out to be much simpler: Listen to what the customer is saying, and respond accordingly.