Cross-selling is becoming a growing priority in contact centres as organisations realise agents’ potential to gauge customer requirements, assess purchase information, and offer customisations. One research study found that optimising your cross-selling strategy could enormously increase your revenue per call. It suggested that an optimised strategy could lead to over 90% of the sales achieved via 75% of cross-selling attempts, at an impressively low personnel requirement level.
In other words, it is a good idea to leverage the unique knowledge of customer intent and experience owned by your contact centre to drive cross-selling at the time of service delivery.
Types of Cross-Selling Opportunities
To increase cross-selling activities among agents is important to first understand the term and its various types. Cross-selling can be defined as the practice of selling a different but similarly priced product or service to an existing customer based on their previous purchases and customer interest forecasts. Typically, you will encounter the following cross-selling opportunities in a contact centre:
- Past purchase-based - You look at their most preferred categories and recommend the most popular products from these categories
- Discounts - Discounted product bundles, free delivery, etc., can also encourage the customer to buy more
- Similar interests - The agent tells the customer about what others are buying, and natural curiosity will encourage the customer to explore new products
- Customer segmentation - The full customer profile, including demographic information, behaviour, etc., is leveraged to create a segment associated with a specific type of product
- Product bundles - products will frequently come in natural bundles such as a pair of earrings with a dress or a stylus with a tablet
- Loyalty points - Loyal customers are awarded points that can be redeemed at no or nominal costs for a different product
- Maintenance - Products that require upkeep such as cars, computers, workout equipment, etc., are prime candidates for cross-selling maintenance services via agents
Tips for Better Cross-Selling at Your Contact Centre
Cross-selling has to be a formalised program if it is to show optimal results. To achieve this, follow the best practices: