Enliven Guide On Inbound Call Center Techniques To Achieve The Desired Expectations And Results

In the scientific approach, every manager of the contact center must mark the goals, which are astonishing products or services for the improvement of the lives of customers and timely delivery of information to your potential buyers and consumers. 

Admittedly, all consumers feel, understand, and are willing to maintain strong relationships only with companies, which constantly deliver the perceived value.

Frankly, all other so-called sales tricks and gimmicks, just turning them off from you. Ok, let’s define the most successful inbound call center sales tips for higher purchase decision improvement. And what any kind of small or mid-sized contact center can do about it.

The truth about an inbound contact center and winning inbound calling strategy

An inbound call center has supreme importance for a business because any kind of respected product or service requires customer service. Picking up the phone and calling the office is the fastest way to establish business relationships. And engage or report about every issue regarding goods and services.

Naturally, inbound calls regarding your services aren’t deliberately about purchasing or payments. The real cause is rooting in demands the striving for seamless insights.

Whatever you sell, your customer is an intelligent human being. There are no excuses for managers to think otherwise if they want to sustain their call center’s business. The truth is this: when a prospective customer decides to spend their hard-earned money, they want to know exactly what they're paying for.

Hint: The more money involved in selling (hundred or thousands of dollars), the more convenient facts about your product should be. Below you’ll see exactly how you need to nail these calls in the 1-2-3 fashion.

The larger and more successful company - the more inbound and outbound calls you'll have. But your strategy also must change according to the rising or declining inbound calling volume.

Calls and contacts that are organized properly, and nearly perfectly create a mood of trust and reliability.

Potential buyers and regular consumers are skeptical and sometimes think you're taking their money and running away. Unfortunately, most businesses over the globe work like this. 

And this is too bad for them. Your business should be grounded on a strong professional ethic and eliminate the mistakes of losers. 

Ideally, customers want to know that you are credible, not fly by night. And that you’re always in touch with them 24 hours a day. Or at least from Monday to Friday, from 8 AM till 5 PM Eastern.

If customers call you and always achieve a good-enough response to requests, you have true and undying love from them. Actually, they want to have lasting relationships with someone who is a word keeper.

And guess what? When customers call to your office, receive what they need, and it's happening over a long period, this is the single proven way your business sustains itself and prospers, no matter what the economy, recession, or even the geopolitics.

On the other hand, if people over and over are unable to reach you on different occasions, especially for a long period, that will drop your call center sales immediately and fast. 

Thus none of the businesses in history survived unless their inbound call strategy is customer-oriented. And most importantly unable to deliver the value that actually improves their lives.

Foresee consumer’s moods and reduce your efforts and overhead

One of the inbound call center sales tips for inbound sales teams would be to look for the emotional state first and then take the problem into the hand. Indeed, stressed consumers must be identified in split seconds because their current state of mind directly influences the conversation’s outcome. 

Do you hear your consumer loud and clear, and the level of the positive mood of trust is good enough to solve the problem? Then what are you waiting for? Grab the situation into your own hands while the phone is hot and proceed to call center sales and inquiries as fast as possible.

Of course, always prepare yourself for these calls by studying the most occasional inquiries and the ways to solve them. And then, study the unique cases your call center has solved recently. Thus you’ll have the ultimate winning and easy work, day in and day out.

On the other hand, do you have the passive-aggressive caller on the line? The person is about to blow up and spill the negativity right through the phone? Then show a little more empathy and build rapport first. Despite the stress, it’s pretty simple though. 

Here’s a workable example of how you need to talk with this category of callers: “Yes, Mr. Miller, I see the issue. Let me have a couple of seconds to get things done”. 

And like this: “Ok, I’m sure we’ll figure this thing out together, so don’t worry Mr. Miller”. It’s the method called the “delaying of the stressful behavior”, you can achieve more information about this in the book by Maxwell Malts, Psycho-Cybernetics. 

By the way, there’re always a lot of workable solutions for both managers and agents, which you can use and improve your life and work today.

Practice proves this pattern over and over - when you make a call more personally and human-like. You’ll drastically reduce your overheads with the potential call escalation and consumer dissatisfaction. 

Plus your consumers will love you for your level of professionalism and friend attitude. More, subconsciously every consumer knows that you’re right and they are wrong. Just keep in mind that the person has nothing personally against you. 

Maybe they had a bad day (the conflicts with neighbors, car accidents, payment issues, etc.). If you keep yourself as we tell you, you’ll never regret it and always have the winning position.

What kind of thing is nearly every inbound sales agent doing wrong?

Common customer questions about product prices and specs are really frequent ones? Know that’s your bright sign to close the sale immediately. And here’s how. 

For instance, a consumer says: “I want to know the final price of the product, plus the delivery cost and overheads”.

Agent: “Yes, Mr. Miller, the final price of the product will be 370$, including the delivery, coverage, and 12 months guarantee.”

Can you read between the lines? The nearly 100% success method is not that you'll follow the great sales pitch designed by sales representatives and scripts. Because consumers these days are savvy. Tricks or gimmicks will not result in spending hard-earned money. 

The workable blueprint is to know about the product way more than your consumers. And specifically, you must find and keep in mind the answers to 3 main questions regarding your product, service, or whatever you are selling:

1. Your and your competitor’s product and why is your’s better?
   
   
2. The most frequent objections consumers have, and how can you anticipate and answer them?
   
   
3. The call to action is what you need to always mention in every phone conversation.
   
   

And you can find out all these questions from your senior or by your own research. But to have the astounding result, you have to request this information from the manager and then conduct your own research, if your answers to questions would be weak.  And keep your research until your answers will be easy to hear to the end then just hang up.

Based on the 1-2-3 answers listed above, you create a workable script that really works.

Hint: Never try to trick or use gimmicks in a sales conversation with the consumers. All you have is the mere results and lowering in sales. Instead, use the real knowledge about the product and services as your main arsenal.

The kind of data you need to keep before your eyes and the ways to use them 

Call center management is a vital part of the successful running of the business, and first of all, you’re interested in 4 things:

• What were your previous successes or failures: how many sales do you close per week/shift? Keep the data on paper or digital in your hand and give a brief view of them. When you think you need to pivot your inbound call strategy.

Find out the reasons why some consumers or your call center’s activities are changed. Answer questions such as: Is there a shortage on the market, aka money consumers have, product value changes, or your agent's performance goes down? 

• Your job as a head of the call center analyzes these things first to successfully build up your sales call center team to adequate expectations, and KPIs. And consequently business goals in the long haul. 

How can you improve your inbound customer service results? Are there some drastic changes necessary? Likewise, studying the product and service better. Plus, add to the agenda things like studying workable ways other call centers use in their product’s positioning. Their call center techniques and inbound sales strategies. 

• Further, using phone sales techniques, always set the period for your goals. For instance, you set the period for a month, quarter, etc. And always move towards the concrete and not the blurred goal. By checking the progress once in a while. 

• Keep your sales call center team organized by constantly checking the results, and refining expectations at least one time at the half of the period you've set. See if your results are different from your expectations. And re-set your goals based on the current situation.

The data about consumers’ activities literally build a sales call center team and have a positive effect in the long haul.

Having the information in your database or CRM about your callers means handling calls more efficiently. Agents will have an idea about what exactly they need to say based on the info. 

Always have at your fingertips the info about the consumer’s name, actions regarding products and services, the most frequent inquiries from a consumer, and the recency of inquiries (the date and time of the last inquiry). 

Further, if you can keep your data up-to-date there will be nothing that can stop you from closing the sale more efficiently. Because over and over, consumers are arguing about the fact - agents are asking irrelevant questions or have obsolete info while the situation changes. 

Top inbound calling techniques and technologies make success either manual or automatical 

Before any usage of the phone sales techniques. Try to think for a minute about techs that help you sell more with fewer efforts. The purpose of call center techs is to free up your agents by reducing manual dialing efforts and maximizing talking time, in their 8-hour shifts. It’s so easy to have it. All you need is the inbound call center software, headsets, and a good internet connection.

Consumers strive to solve obvious issues singlehandedly. And if you publish the materials such as user’s guide, FAQ, knowledge bases, etc. They will solve nearly all issues by themselves. 

However, when they are struggling with the issue, they call you immediately. So, to improve your inbound call strategy and reduce the efforts of customers. To improve customer satisfaction, you need to decrease the effort and time during the customer journey.

For example, you need to route prospects and customers with a relevant agent in your company.

The automatic call distribution (ACD) system does just that. Based on the customer account (ordinary or VIP), phone number (premium or not), personal information (name, address, etc.), history of calling (for example, frequent calls to technical or sales departments, of the particular phone number, etc.), the ACD system defines the best and fastest routing logic.

Frankly, since the beginning of ACD integration in call centers over the globe, it has generated billions of dollars. And prevented millions of customers from the long customer journey and hanging up. 

Notice that customers always hang up when they wait for too long in the queue or are routed to the irrelevant department or agent. Customer patience is a very limited resource. Every business owner and manager should remember that.

Moreover, the ACD system can be integrated with the customer relationships management (CRM) system that already has all the necessary data about customers for qualified routing. 

For example, when you set up call center software, your CRM system integrates with ACD, and all you have to do is wait for calls.

Minimize wait time when possible and optimize the sales process

Customers' waiting is the real enemy of sales and revenue growth. The more your customers wait, the better your chances of hanging up and complaining. Reducing waiting is the next issue the company needs to solve. The long waiting time has several most common reasons:

• Poor call center software or ACD system;
  
  
• Not enough agents in a call center;
  
  
• The high volume of calls, like seasonal picks or marketing campaigns;
  
  
• Agent's absenteeism;
  
  
• Technical disruptions in a call center such as electricity, telephony, and internet outages. As a result, incapacity to receive calls or contact with a customer.

There are more reasons that prevent streamlining of the work of call centers, yet these are the most frequent. Actually, it's easy to resolve them and the agile inbound sales process at every touchpoint. 

You need to think about these factors listed above and resolve them one by one. Investing in additional external telephony and internet lines, batteries for storing energy, and software for call centers resolve most of these issues. 

Make important information easy to access

Prospect's or customers' journeys toward a particular goal must be effortless and neat. First of all, to accelerate sales, you need to inform prospects and customers.

Websites, magazines, newspapers, and all other advertising materials must contain exact information or be workable (additional external phone numbers are optional), including in the case of outages. If you have any helpful information, highlight it in an easy-to-understand fashion.

Of course, when customers call you or send a message, agents must be in their places. Especially, during the working shifts, when customers call your office at the precise working time. You must answer or give a rapid callback or message. And if there will be no response whatsoever, that will offend them.

And offended customers buy less from you, complain more and go to your competitors. That's not the way your inbound sales strategies should work.

Build up your inbound call center sales techniques on the solid ground 

Always look at your previous call center's successes. See the difference between inbound and outbound calling successes? Are they working for you, or do you need changes?

In any case, these experiences, about great and lousy outcomes, are the gold mine, and you need to apply them in the future. Sometimes agents are creative and make their own decisions in conversations with a customer. That's great as long as it's profitable.

New or creative inbound sales call techniques must increase your sales and customer satisfaction.

By the way, do you want to achieve the tool for designing your customer service call script today? It's easy. Nail every kind of customer service call with the call center scripting software at a hand. And you can get it today. Just contact the Voiptime Cloud office. 

 Our lines are open from 8 AM to 1 PM Eastern, from Monday to Friday. And our phone number is:

1-720-362-5005 

Or fill out the brief form for prompt review and preparation of your call center software and request, especially when you reach us outside of working hours, on Saturday or Sunday. In case of order form, our team will contact you promptly and at the nearest time.

Self-service functions reduce the talking routines of your agents

One of the most valuable inbound phone sales tips you should apply - is investing in self-service. It does not grant presence across all channels but frees up your agents from a chore. 

Technologies and software actually work for you and reduce strain from agents on all levels. For example, if there is an issue that customers could resolve by themselves, consider about interactive voice response system (IVR). 

This is one of the many remarkable call center tools for call centers that reduce the tremendous amount of calling volume from agents. What it does, specifically, is it lets customers resolve their issues through press-key mechanisms and pre-recorded messages.

Moreover, in the case prospects or customers need to speak with the live agent, the IVR system will immediately connect them with an agent or department.

Companies that use this technology reduce strain on agents, keeping them energized during the day and giving them only challenging assignments. And this is almost everything you need.

Track only valuable main inbound call center KPI and forget the irrelevant one

This could be one of the most valuable inbound call center sales tips in this article. It concerns tracking and monitoring crucial metrics and results. Key performance indicators (KPI) give you a big picture about conversations with customers. 

The main benefit of KPI is that it highlights the invisible sides of your call center. And call centers have many of them. The most common call center KPIs that are important:

• Abandon rate. Indicates how many customers hung up before a sales conversation with a customer. If this rate is high, there are reasons for that: not enough agents in the call center. Or the inbound volume is so huge that the queue line is too long. Anyway, you need to keep this KPI at the lowest level for two reasons: 

a) Because your consumers are dissatisfied when they are unable to talk with the real person. 

b) The high level of the abandonment rate is the subject of legal fines in the most developed countries such as the US, Canada, and the UK. 

• On hold or queue time. When prospects or customers wait for resolutions after a conversation with agents. And queue time is the time that customers and prospects wait before a conversation with an agent. 

Reduce these waiting timings to a minimum, if possible. Because at the end of the day - your results have paramount importance and not the time you are spent on the solution.

• The time to resolution. This metric shows how long, on average, agents work on resolving customers' issues. In some cases, it's obvious to have a long time for the resolution of challenging issues. And no complaints you'll meet during these tasks.

• The first call resolution. An important metric is that issue is solved within one call. If customers call to call center on the same issue, that decreases the FCR rate and customer satisfaction (CSAT).

• Customer satisfaction or (CSAT). It indicates overall customer experience and whether most of their issues are solved or not. 

Agent training is much a goldmine than anything else

If you have everything set on the technical side of your call center, it's time to upgrade your staff. The best way to improve inbound sales calls is to arrange meetings for training sessions and practices.

Some agents constantly develop their skills without any second thought. And other agents neglect any training sessions or studying whatsoever. To achieve sustainable results, you need to train both parties. The most common inbound sales techniques and training sessions for call center agents: 

 Even experienced agents make mistakes. Yet every mistake must be defined, checked, and solved. If particular agents make the same mistake over and over again. Managers must leverage their authority to compel retrain and deliver better performance. Work on the mistakes.

Of course, the best way to solve a problem is through a personal demonstration. The demonstration is always better than wise claims. Real-time training looks as follows: a manager initiates or receives a particular call that agents struggle to solve. 

During a call, a manager shows how to handle it. After the call, managers explain their actions step-by-step. Then they encourage every agent to do the same way. Until staff generates holistic ideas on how to handle calls by themselves in their unique way.

Hint: Actually, there is no fundamental secret to successful inbound sales techniques, it's just a matter of work. The reason is the laziness of particular agents, which want to deliver poordeliver a poor service.

These consequences will be poor customer satisfaction, at least from a particular agent. Again, meetings and training on solving these issues will be helpful. 

Knowledge must be complete and unified, which means agents must know their products and services and how to solve or answer a particular question. And how to use their software or technology.

Sometimes, especially newbies, good enough for occasional inbound call handling. Yet they lack knowledge about the productive usage of software and hardware. As a result, they just struggle to find fast solutions or use technology profitably. The head of call centers needs to keep an eye on the newbies until strong confidence in their performance.

The call center quality assurance process improves the weak sides of the company

Inbound call centers are valuable for any type of business. If everything works perfectly, that increases customer satisfaction and brand image. Also, it sustainably generates additional cash flow.

As a manager or head of a call center, you need constant review, monitor, and improve inbound sales calls and results. Specifically, you need to check KPI metrics, the volume of calls for a week, and the results of conversations.

Excellent inbound call center sales techniques are easy to develop

It's much easier to lure prospects or customers to make an order during inbound sales calls than in outbound calling. These prospective customers saw your promotional materials, magazine ads, TV or radio commercials, and direct response packages, and now they're qualified enough for purchase.

It's different in your outbound calling strategy when agents must compel customers, warm up, establish the mood of trust and safety, and after all this close a sale. It's also true that the percentage of selling for an inbound call center is much higher.

To achieve bold results in your inbound sales calls just do this

The first rule of every call center should be that they must make their calls as personal as possible. If a prospect or customer calls you and you know their name, address, finances, and other valuable pieces of information, you need to always use it.

If customers call you and hear their name, it creates a mood of trust and the imagination that “I'm someone special for these people, not just another prospect”.

Inbound calls and your conversation with customers with the purpose of the purchase will often be less than three minutes. The first impression is the best step towards selling. Depending on the first impression that the customer achieves in the first 20 seconds, grant 50% of success or loss of sale.

The first thing that every agent can do to improve relationships with prospective customers is to introduce themselves. The proper introduction and greetings should be like this: “Hello Mr. Jones, my name is Kelly from the sales department of Voiptime Сloud, how can I help you today?”.

Or it may look like that for a prospective customer: “Hello, the technical department of Voiptime Сloud, my name is Jane, how can I help you today?”

As you see, it's possible to make a call as personal as possible in both cases.

If a prospect calls you for the first time, after a call, you should place their name and address in your CRM or database to make future calls personal.

Avoid putting hot phone leads on hold for too long

When prospects call you the first time, let your sales call center team share with the maximum attention as possible and reduce on-hold or queue time to a minimum. These hot phone leads will build their impression from the first seconds of the call. And if you put them on hold for a long time, it establishes controversial feelings.

Establish a fast rapport between consumers and the sales call center team 

Customers call to achieve something from you. And they're not always emphasized with agents from the beginning. The job of agents is to find the keys to a successful conversation and achieve the result.

Here are phone sales tips and techniques on how to build a successful rapport with a customer:

• When prospects or customers call, they have something in their minds. Agents must build their strategy of conversation based on the first words and the emotional state of the caller. If customers call for a sale, they're likely to be in a proper mood for conversations. However, calls from customers with angry attitudes, and complaints require another strategy from an agent. Identify the purpose of the call by active listening.

• Especially important to let customers vent in situations when they have complaints or achieved disservice. They will talk, talk a lot, and with anger. Yet, the worst thing an agent can do in this situation is to interrupt them. Interrupting is a very scary tactic because it blocks the venting of a customer's emotions. As a result, a customer could explode and say offensive things and never have business relationships with the company. Let them talk proactively.

• Empathy is a powerful weapon of agents for the successful handling of calls. In selling this is even more important. An agent needs to feel the mood of the customer to successfully close a sale. Show empathy.

The first thing that every customer will feel is the emotional state of the agent. When an agent is in a good and energized mood it's the best environment for sale.

Ask open questions that clarify the lead's situation on 100%

It's not easy to always understand a prospect and customer's goals. Moreover, it's dangerous to rely on your own opinion about the situation all the time. To resolve this issue, you need to ask open-ended questions.

You allow customers to elaborate and explain some crucial purposes of their call. It's vital when the agent is not sure about the issue or concern. For example: “Mr. Miller, you ordered the new MasterCard and you want to receive it as soon as possible, is that correct?”. The questions of that type will give a clue and the necessary outcome of a conversation.

Proven inbound phone sales techniques that already worked and are meant to work most effectively

How to do effective sales calls, and what strategy do you need to apply to generate revenue today?

When you sell something, it's not enough to describe the features of your product. Moreover, it's dangerous to do so. Customers that are interested in the product already know what a particular product or service is. What really concerns them is what a product does.

They really want to hear how a particular product will improve their lives and the lives of their family. Is there a decent advantage for them to buy it? Or it's just another garbage. Tips on how to sell particular products: 

• Insurance. If you sell insurance, tell customers how much money they will save if they choose your insurance. Tell them that your insurance is more cost-effective than others. And don't forget to include proofs.
  
  
• Solar. If you sell solar panels, mention how it will save money annually. Include in your speech exact facts about the average consumption of electricity in a particular region. Tell them about the benefits of solar energy, that it's not only cost-effective, yet in comparison with rising electrical bills it will be even more economical.
  
  
• Real estate. Mention that house located near the police department (if it does). Or Mention that this particular district has a nice road that will quickly lead them to home and backward.
  
  
• Health care. When you're selling health issues, empathize with customers in the way you understand their health problems. Highlight that your services or care will restore health and the time wasted at the doctor's office.
  
  These issues will restore the dignity that customers lost during uncomfortable or frightening conversations with medicians. In selling health supplements, mention that these supplements are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
  
  
• Mutual funds or the stock market. In investments, customers are really afraid to put large sums of money into investing. To compel them, you need to add real financial benefits. As an example, you need to mention that your company complies with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), so there are no losses on the legal side. 

In selling of any type, you need to add credentials to your sales pitch. Tell customers not only your toll-free number, yet tell them about your office's number. Tell them about your exact address. Tell about your famous companies or customers you are working with for a long or short period of time.

Sometimes the mention of a famous company/person/celebrity adds high value to your sales pitch. Tell the customer that the mayor of a particular region approved your product as legal and that federal agencies checked you.

Selling value and not features are something that customers want to achieve.

In every niche of the market, demonstrate that you know everything about your product or service. A decent knowledge of the subject of selling will give you the edge in the conversations. Customers are intelligent, and they ask intelligent questions.

Yet they're not experts in the products: manufacturing, packaging, delivering, legal issues, news, etc. And you as a seller must know all of these little pieces of information about your product or service.

Achieve knowledge about the usage of products. Know what the product does, including specific technical features, like electricity consumption, wattage, material, capacity, color, etc. All that you need to know because it demonstrates to customers that you're the expert in a particular product.

The strongest objections you can meet

Every customer has an objection when they want to buy from you. All kinds of objections are usually related to the product, effectiveness, or the price you're offering. In general, there are three main objections customers have about purchasing from you:

• Why is your product or service superior to others?
  
  
• Why should I believe you?
  
  
• Why do I need to buy from you right now?

The most dangerous objection of customers is a delay in the sale. If there is no urgency in buying from you right now, this factor of delays kills the inbound sales process. With a factor of a delay, customers rethink your offer and can buy from your competitor because they were smart and add the factor of urgency to the sale.

For example, eliminating factor delay looks as follows: “If you buy a particular product or service today, you will achieve a 30% discount. This offer is accessible on a limited basis, and you can't achieve it tomorrow”.

Cross-sell is twice as effective as any other successful conversation

One of the most profitable selling techniques on the phone is cross-selling. If the customer buys a product or service, you can sell additional equipment to the customer. 

Or if a customer purchased real estate, maybe it's reasonable to ask for buying parking space. If a customer purchases insurance for one year, it's better to offer five-year insurance with a decent discount.

And it's possible to cross-sell something whenever a customer calls you.

Adjust customer interactions based on the client's specific needs

Customer interaction with your inbound sales team should be natural. For example, If you sell real estate to lawyers or doctors to someone who is likely to have a bachelor's degree, it's better to operate with words that will be considered highly proficient.

Many agents and heads of call centers ask the question: How can I dive into the mind of my prospect or customer? Actually, it's pretty easy though, all you need to do is:

• Read the hottest magazines, books, articles, and materials that your customers value;
  
  
• Interview customers and define main pain points;
  
  
• Arrange meetings with customers, talk with them personally, listen to them, watch them, and highlight the words they're using.

If you do all these things listed above, you'll achieve great ideas on how to sell to a particular targeted audience. And you'll get an additional advantage over your competitors.

However, if you don't do your homework, your conversion rates will be decreased by tenfold. Therefore, knowledge about customers is the same as important as knowledge about your product.

How to never scratch the surface in the call center business?

This article showed you the real how-to tips on how to organize inbound call center and inbound call center sales techniques.

All of these techniques are proven and generated millions of dollars for companies all over the world. Especially, these inbound call center sales techniques will be interesting for small and mid-sized businesses. Why is that so important for them?

For instance, Voiptime Cloud company mainly works with small and mid-sized businesses over the globe for more than a decade. We have strong business relationships with our partners, and we know how to flourish their businesses.

And firstly, our company is interested in keeping our partner's intelligence on the different types of subjects, regarding their business. In addition, we provide exact call center software that gives small and mid-sized businesses real call center tools to increase their ROI.

Want to make the global reach easy and fast using a customer service call script? The Voiptime call center software requires the minimum from clients.

Originally published on 09/17/2021, updated on 09/12/2021