January 2000

Applying Call Center Business-To-Business Know-How To The Web

BY TOM HENNINGS, ORDERFUSION

There are many similarities between call center selling and Web selling. Since most companies have already established an effective call center sales force, they can apply their call center knowledge to their Web sales efforts. Let's take a look at seven approaches that have made the call center successful and how to translate this existing knowledge and experience into potential Web sales.

Know The Customer
Call center service representatives (CSRs) are most likely already armed with instant access to customers' static information. Effective CSRs don't waste precious selling time attempting to retrieve address information while live on the phone with a customer. Name, address information, shipping preferences, tax status, and credit limits of all existing customers is easily accessible to each CSR. Current demographics such as key operating information, "high-volume production" or buying procedures and timetables are also readily accessible. Qualitative information regarding the customer's acceptance of product "risk" is also important. In business-to-business sales transactions, each buyer may be responsible for purchasing only a portion of a product offering, so the individual buyer's information must be stored, retrievable and integrated into the overall customer (company) profile. Just as the call center currently stores individual buyer and company information, a Web selling system should do the same. In fact, a Web system should go a step further and enable customers to update data as needed.

Know The Customer’s Order History
Most companies have implemented the tools required to help CSRs identify customers’ past behavior and experiences and enable them to interact accordingly. A Web selling system must incorporate these same tools.

Access to details about customers’ past purchases, quotations and product inquiries is essential because many of their purchases will likely be repeated. Customer-specific pricing and contractual terms also provide valuable information since no quote or order can be “closed” without it. Product-related complaints or questions are also important because they can help CSRs know which products not to sell or when to sell higher-value products. For example, the CSR needs to know if a customer’s production environment is too demanding to yield satisfactory results with a company’s light-duty lubricant. Prepared with this kind of order history, the CSR can recommend and upsell a heavy-duty lubricant.

Know The Product Line
Knowing which products best match a customer’s need is a major value-added function of the effective CSR. Again, let’s look at the manufacturing example previously mentioned. It is critical that the CSR recommends the right lubricant for a customer’s high-speed drilling operation. Access to products based on specific attributes or traits, such as “high speed, high rpm, hardened steel” rather than simple descriptions or cryptic part numbers is essential. In each case of a potential upsell opportunity, customers typically have questions or objections based on price, performance, availability, delivery or other issues. The ability of the CSR and the company’s Web selling system to address these concerns is key, especially in the b-to-b sales process, because unlike business-to-consumer selling, products ideal for cross-selling and upselling to top-tier customers often need to be customer- or buyer-specific and reflect account strategies, not just inferences.

Create A Solution
One traditional way to build revenue and account penetration is to create a multiproduct solution that solves a broader business problem than a single product. A company should look to see if it has complementary products that can be bundled. By giving a customer choices within the offering, such as quantity, size or specification, the customer feels he or she is participating in the solution and is in control of the buying process. For example, a CSR might want to recommend, for the previously cited industrial manufacturing customer, a total lubrication and clean-up solution. Bundling is a great way to encourage the purchase of items or a product group from which a customer has not previously purchased. One way to accomplish this cross-selling is to provide price incentives for the complete solution. To create larger orders and better account penetration, be sure these types of merchandise configuration capabilities are available in your Web selling system.

Create Urgency
Motivating customers to buy for the first time, buy now, buy more or buy something new is something the CSR has probably mastered. Motivating factors must be effective at the basic order level, as well as within the context of a multiproduct offering. For example, you may offer a customer an additional 20 percent off his or her next purchase of the heavy-duty lubricant if he or she tries a lubricant clean-up kit. This works well if the customer has negotiated discounts based on order size or cumulative-period purchases. While interacting with the customer, a good CSR should always prompt with additional incentives such as “get a two percent discount if your order exceeds $1,000” or “escalate into the eight percent total discount bracket if you buy another $4,000 this quarter.” To maximize your Web sales dollars, the interaction customers experience with a company’s Web selling system must emulate these techniques.

Be Fast And Accurate
The CSR has been trained to rapidly respond to and deal with unstructured customer interaction during the selling process. In the Web environment, customers want to have the same interaction flexibility while checking availability and technical information for various products. A Web system should cater to this flexible, unstructured interaction. The system should have the ability to easily produce a “virtual quote” for every product inquiry. This virtual quote can be created behind the scenes as a customer browses, or just explored within a specified Web page. Once the quote is stored within the company’s system, the detailed information can remain for a specified period of time. When the order is placed, the availability of this static information dramatically reduces input errors. For example, for a large order to be sent to fifty sales offices and five plants, the ability to select addresses from a pull-down menu is often faster and dramatically more accurate than CSR interaction.

Work As A Team
The CSR should know what promotions other marketing and sales channels have been offering. This is especially true for large, top-tier accounts. The sales director has probably worked hard at ensuring the CSRs stay in synchrony with what each field salesperson is trying to close by quarter-end and the specific account strategy. For lower-tier accounts, CSRs should know which particular marketing program has been targeted to them, based on demographic-driven one-to-one marketing tactics. Since the Web is another sales channel, it too must stay in synchrony with field sales, inside sales, marketing, etc. Otherwise, it can create confusion or lost sales, especially when a company’s competitor is an anonymous click away. For example, avoid having Web-based CSRs try to sell the exciting new product that is not yet shipping when a repeat order for the quarter is at risk. If a company’s Web storefront can be unobtrusively placed throughout its existing Web site without hurting the look and feel, the company has gained the best from a marketing and selling perspective.

With any indirect sales effort, customers may want to speak with someone on another level or within a different department, e.g., assurances about delivery from the field salesperson or more technical information from the technical support person. Being able to request customer interaction from other members of the virtual sales team may be critical. Be certain the Web selling system provides this escalation or safety valve feature so customers can easily request a chat, e-mail or callback from someone.

Let Web Selling Begin!
There is a lot to learn about how to use the Web for effective selling, and new technology will make the process seem like a moving target. Let’s not forget what we’ve already learned about call center selling as we venture into the land of World Wide Web sales.

Tom Hennings is CEO of OrderFusion. OrderFusion is a provider of software solutions that help enable sales teams to sell new customers and maximize lifetime revenue from existing customers. By leveraging existing systems, OrderFusion can help enterprises close and fulfill orders. By orchestrating and synchronizing all sales channels for each customer, OrderFusion executes personalized closing tactics based on corporate sales and marketing strategies, customer account plans, demographics, buying history and preferences.