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My company—Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA)—was working on a culture-change project in a client’s customer contact center, and a quote from Emerson kept going through my head: “Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.”

It was time for the all-hands meeting, and agents were arriving from every direction. From the north wing and upstairs they came, all gathering in the first-floor meeting center. I heard the chatter driven by the excitement that comes when agents have time off the phones, much like what children experience when they get snow day off from school. They all thought it was a celebration, and it was. But I knew that on this day we would drop the bomb that would truly make them do what they can.

I am, however, getting ahead of myself. The culture-change project started in earnest during September 2011. The goal of the project was to use a proven approach that I call the Quality Conversation to turn order-takers into consultative sales people. (Learn more about the Quality Conversation approach at www.robertcdavis.net/process.)

Before September, RCDA had completed a highly successful pilot program in the customer contact center with a small group of agents. They had increased their closing ratio on all calls by 13 percent and multi-product sales to single callers by 14 percent. We had won the hearts and minds of the pilot team, and in September we had started working hard to drive these sales increases across the entire enterprise.

We had conducted hundreds of hours of classroom training on the Quality Conversation so everyone would learn and master this process and its consultative approach to selling. We had spent thousands of hours coaching these skills for mastery and sustainability. Activities included running contests and providing rewards and recognition, and we were making progress on winning the hearts and minds of the agents enterprise-wide.

Although most agents had taken advantage of the training and coaching, many did not. At this point about 80 percent of the agents were following the process about 80 percent of the time. This was good, but not good enough. So we started a certification process with prizes and incentives to get certified on the Quality Conversation approach. During the first month we spent a great deal of time giving close guidance, coaching and feedback.

The standards for certification were high. As a result, only about five percent of the team became certified. At this point we had two choices—either lower standards or find something that, as the Emerson quote indicates, would make the agents do what they can.

This optimist became a realist. We decided that becoming certified would affect base pay. Agents who became certified would receive an additional $2. Those who did not would lose $2. This $4 per hour differential was significant, representing about 30 percent the agents’ base pay.

Failure not an option

We were, in essence, doing what the commanders of ancient Greek warriors did when they landed on enemy shores from the sea. “Burn the boats,” the commanders ordered. With no boats, the warriors had nowhere to retreat. There would be no turning back and no surrender. The warriors knew immediately that failure was not an option. The victory had to be won.

It was stunning when we made the announcement about base pay in the all-hands meeting. You could see in the agents’ faces that they did not consider it an acceptable option to lose $2 per hour. To them, failure was not an option. The look of determination in the agents’ eyes was the same as what must have been in those Greek warriors’ eyes. Their victory—getting certified and increasing base pay by $2—had to be won as well.

My team and I had never worked harder to win the hearts and minds of any team before we tied certification to base pay. This one bold move pushed the call center team from good results to great. Within the first week, nearly 100 percent of the agents were using the process nearly 100 percent of the time.

It would be easy to conclude that tying pay to performance is the only thing that is needed to turn a culture around, but we all know it is not that simple. We gave them the culture-changing tools first, and then used pay to drive the idea that failure is not an option. This is what drove the results over the top.

When Emerson said, “Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can,” he added, “This is the service of a friend.” So I did not feel so bad about effectively giving the command to burn the boats. With training and coaching followed by tying base pay to certification, we helped the agents do what they are capable of doing. In the end, that’s being a friend indeed.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscontactcenters.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.

The call came into a cruise line’s customer contact center. The caller, an older man, was having trouble navigating the company’s web site. He wanted to know how to select the best stateroom to suit his needs. The agent was very knowledgeable, competent and enthusiastic. She answered all of his questions, yet she asked very few questions of her own. Believe it or not, she did not even get the caller’s contact information! Although the customer was more than happy with the help, to the agent this call represented just another shopper who might buy—and then again might not.

What’s lacking in most customer contact centers

My firm, Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net) has been working on customer contact center effectiveness projects for years, and few have represented more promise than the effort to turn shoppers into buyers in the cruise line industry. Yet as the industry makes the transition from dealing mostly with travel agents to dealing with consumers, the skill sets required to make this transition are lacking in most customer contact centers.

Transition phrases to take control of the call

The first step in turning shoppers into buyers is to take control of the call. The person asking the questions is in control. Use a transition phrase such as, “I would be happy to help you navigate our web site. So I can see what you are seeing, please tell me, which trip you are looking to take?” Let’s say the customer replies that he wants to take The Caribbean cruise. “The Caribbean cruise? That is so great! Have you ever been before?” Now the agent is in control of the conversation.

Making an emotional connection with the caller

I have written extensively on customer contact center agents holding what we call Quality Conversations with potential customers. One of the hallmarks of a Quality Conversation—and a critical difference between a customer service call and a sales call—is making an emotional connection with the customer. Use questions such as, “Are you celebrating something special with this cruise?” or “What was the best part of your last Caribbean vacation?” The customer will reply with something like, “Well, we really enjoyed seeing a double rainbow between the Pitons at sunset as the ship pulled out of port in Castries, St. Lucia.” At this point, you will have made that emotional connection.

Qualifying the customer

It is also essential to qualify the customer for time and commitment. Every caller represents a certain level of opportunity. Quality questions will help uncover how much opportunity each customer brings you, and how immediate that opportunity could be. Ask questions like, “When are you planning your next vacation?” or “When do you plan to make your decision on this trip?” These questions are critically important because the answers let the agent know where the customer stands in the buying process.

Understanding the customer’s buying process

Additionally, agents must understand the customer’s buying process. To do so, ask questions like:

• “How long have you and your wife been considering this cruise?”
• “What other cruise lines are you considering?”
• “What do you like most about our cruise line? What do you like the least?”
• “How will you go about making your selection process?”

Many agents try to avoid these questions because they like to avoid conflict. But these questions are an essential part of the Quality Conversation—and turning shoppers into buyers—because they show customers that the agent is genuinely interested in them. Agents who ask these questions show that they’re on the customers’ side and want what is best for each customer.

The Quality Conversation defined

Overall, I define the Quality Conversation as a meaningful and mutually rewarding dialog that occurs when a person takes and clearly conveys a genuine interest in another individual’s wants, interests and needs. It goes beyond building rapport to make an emotional connection and establish real trust. And The Quality Conversation is essential for any cruise line that wants to turn shoppers into buyers in the customer contact center. To learn more about the Quality Conversation—and the results it has driven for companies across a full spectrum of industries—visit www.robertcdavis.net/process/ and www.robertcdavis.net/results/ for more information.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscontactcenters.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.

Imagine the typical exchange between an agent in a cable company’s customer contact center and a subscriber who has called in with a billing question.

Agent: “It will be my pleasure to help you with your billing questions! While my computer pulls up your account information, may I ask, what is your favorite cable program?”

Subscriber: “You’re going to laugh, but it’s ‘Billy the Exterminator.’ I have gotten addicted to that show!”

At this point, the agent and the subscriber have a little laugh together, and in so doing they form an emotional connection. This is the beginning of what I call The Quality Conversation, an interaction that has the potential to become not only service delivered (the question answered) but also a new sale.

Of course it is possible today for a subscriber to have a satisfactory customer service experience without having an emotional connection with the agent. Often companies use technology to automate transactions, getting the job done without any kind of interaction between two human beings. Some might argue that this gets the job done effectively, and that an emotional connection really isn’t necessary.

But virtually every service call is an opportunity to transition to a sale, provided that the caller interacts with an agent who makes an emotional connection through The Quality Conversation. The challenge is that doing so requires proper training and coaching for the agents.

For the last 10 years, my company—Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA)—has provided training and coaching to empower agents to have Quality Conversations, and the results in revenue growth and customer retention for our client companies have been truly exceptional.

For example, using RCDA’s Quality Conversation approach to sales, an authorized reseller for major cable companies increased its closing ratio by 13 percentage points and its multi-product sales by 14 percentage points.

What is The Quality Conversation? I define it as a meaningful and mutually rewarding dialog that occurs when a person takes and clearly conveys a genuine interest in another individual’s wants, interests and needs. It goes beyond building rapport to make an emotional connection and establish real trust. And The Quality Conversation is essential for any cable company that wants to transition service calls into sales via its customer contact center.

Now it is true that many providers handle routine service calls online or through interactive voice response (IVR). This makes it even more important for your agents to be able to have Quality Conversations with customers, because the calls that come through to agents involve more complex issues that are more difficult to handle. On these calls, establishing an emotional connection with the customer is essential for there to be any real chance of transitioning service calls to sales.

Let’s look at the elements of The Quality Conversation:

• An enthusiastic greeting with an assurance of help.

• Full discovery. This allows the agent to fully understand the customer’s situation and the products and services the customer currently uses. It also gives the agent with enough knowledge about the customer’s situation to discuss additional products and services the company offers that will benefit the customer. The agent can dig deeper into existing offerings and broaden the conversation to include other valuable products and services that are likely to interest the customer.

• Genuine interest. Throughout the call, the agent shows a genuine interest in the customer, and this reaches right through the phone line to form that emotional connection.

• Customized solution. By listening to the customer’s wants, interests and needs, the agent learns enough to present a customized solution—the best match of products and services for that customer’s situation.

Using The Quality Conversation approach and making the emotional connection during the call establishes a strong rapport with the customer, who as a result is much more likely to accept the agent’s recommended solution. In other words, the close becomes virtually automatic.

While it is true that companies such as Amazon and Netflix offer competitive products that are appealing to cable subscribers, The Quality Conversation uncovers programming preferences like “Billy The Exterminator.” It reveals to the agent and the customer how the cable company offers the best value, the widest and deepest range of products and services, and the highest level of satisfaction. And it is a proven approach—with the power of an emotional connection—that will transition service to sales on call after call.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.

“I am not going to do it, and they can’t make me do it!”

This may sound like a five-year-old whining about eating the spinach on her plate. In fact it came from an adult customer service agent when she heard that her organization was moving from customer service to sales.

Hers is not the only customer contact center moving from service to sales. Research indicates that 70 percent of all customer contact centers worldwide are adding sales capabilities to their customer service queues. They are attempting to turn these cost centers into profit centers. It only makes sense to do so. In this economy companies need to maximize every resource.

For more than 25 years, my company—Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA)—has been helping customer contact centers around the world transition from service to sales. We understand the millions of dollars this process can add to our client company’s bottom line.

However, the process is not for the faint of heart. It takes commitment from the top to stay the course and to invest the resources required to see the organization through the challenges of this culture change in the customer contact center.

Many things need to happen to move a customer contact center from service to sales, including:

• A logical transition in the call flow
• A way to make an emotional connection with the customer
• Metrics that make sense
• Incentive plans that work
• Coaching that reinforces the new way of doing business
• And much more.

But before you take care of these issues, it is essential to address one thing that is foundational to transitioning from service to sales—agent attitude.

Attitude is an essential but often overlooked element in this cultural transformation. Our experience tells us that unless your agents have the right attitude about selling, your service to sales efforts will produce meager results at best—or may even fail completely.

Everyone knows the power of positive attitude. People talk about it so much that it has become a cliché. But has your organization ever had a training program on how to have a positive attitude? How can you help your agents have a positive attitude about selling?

Chances are, they need help. In a survey of recent college graduates, only six percent would even consider a job in sales. Most customer service representatives will tell you that they chose a customer service job because they don’t want to do sales.

But the game has changed. Customer service must include selling, and helping agents have the right attitude is a vital first step in the service-to-sales transition.

Few agents have ever been exposed to the idea that they control their own attitudes. As Abraham Lincoln said, “ We are as happy as we make up our minds to be.” The first step in helping agents have a positive attitude about selling to introduce them to this fact.

The second step is to actually teach agents how to control their attitudes. At RCDA, we have been teaching agents how to control their attitudes for more than 25 years. During that time we have discovered some practical principles that work wonders when it comes to controlling attitude. They include sales direction talks, goal visualization and projecting enthusiasm.

The third step—as with any agent training—is to reinforce the learning. Coaching by the first-line supervisors is, of course, the secret sauce of a service-to-sales transformation. A customer contact center that is not focused on sales can get away with having first-line supervisors do everything from payroll to reports, leaving minimal time for coaching. But a successful sales operation requires at least 50 percent of the supervisors’ time be spent coaching. Attitude control skills, once taught, need continuous reinforcement in the service-to-sales process.

Over the years RCDA has coined the phrase The Quality Conversation. I define it as a meaningful and mutually rewarding dialog that occurs when a person takes and clearly conveys a genuine interest in another individual’s wants, interests and needs. It goes beyond building rapport to make an emotional connection and establish real trust.

Without a doubt, having Quality Conversations with customers is essential in transitioning from customer service to sales. But attitude is critical in one’s ability to hold a Quality Conversation.

In short, agents need to have:

• A great attitude about themselves
• A genuine interest in the customer
• A positive attitude about selling and how it benefits the company, the customers and themselves.

When agents understand that they can control their attitudes, and that sales is a critically important part of their jobs, they will make their own transformation.  Instead of saying, “I am not going to do it, and they can’t make me do it,” they’ll say, “I really love the extra value I am bringing to my company, my customers and myself!”

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.

Cable companies are faced with competition today like never before. Not only do they have to deal with traditional competitors, they also have competition from content owners, game consoles and cloud-based competitors. All of this has led to the practice called cord cutting.

Whether or not you believe cord cutting is just beginning and will gain momentum, it is impossible to argue with the numbers. The cable industry has lost more subscribers in the last quarter than any other quarter in history.

The number-one driver of this loss is that customers are pursuing lower-priced alternatives. The second most common reason is that cable customers are leaving for bundled products and services elsewhere.

Here are three ways to make your retention efforts more successful.

Requests for help versus true cancellation intent

So how do you save a customer who calls in to quit? Well, 50 percent of these calls begin with requests for help related to affordability. Customers start off by saying something like, “I have to do something about my bill! It is just too high and we need to cut back everywhere.” In these cases it is very easy for the agent to jump on the fix and eliminate the premium channels. In fact, this is the number-one solution presented. But is it always the best solution?

And what is the best way to handle calls from customers who have a clear cancellation intent?

My company, Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA), works extensively with customer contact centers for cable providers and many other types of companies, and we have found that the best approach for saving canceling customers is to enter into what we call The Quality Conversation with them. To do so requires certain attitudes on the part of the cable CSR.

The importance of showing genuine interest

The most important attitude CSRs need to engage in The Quality Conversation is one of genuine interest in customers and their wants, interests and needs. Much like you can hear a smile over the telephone, genuine interest comes right through to customers and sets the stage for the save. Unfortunately, not having an attitude of genuine interest comes across the phone line, too.

Discovering the true cancellation reason

Perhaps not surprisingly to anyone who has worked in a customer contact center, most callers don’t at first volunteer the real reason they are canceling. Our studies show that on 53 percent of all cancellation calls, the first reason a customer gives the CSR for cancellation is not the real one. Beyond showing genuine interest, The Quality Conversation is centered on a process that includes using discovery questions to find the true cancellation reason. This is extremely important. After all, if CSRs don’t know the true cancellation reason, they’ll focus on fixing problems that don’t resolve the real issues.

The real magic bullet is to use a complete process—full discovery—to help customers realize the value that they see in the service. For most customers, watching TV drives many positive emotions. The Quality Conversation and the full discovery that is part of the process get customers talking about these emotions and their underlying value.

Here’s an example of how it all works. Imagine that a customer is calling in to cancel HBO because he needs to save money. Through initial discovery, you determine that this is the true cancellation reason. Moving through full discovery, the next question you might ask is, “What show are you going to miss the most once you cancel?” More often than not, the customer will answer by saying something like, “Well, I was looking forward to the new season of “Boardwalk” (or whatever program is the customer’s favorite). Once customers start talking about what they’ll miss, it is very likely that they will reconsider their cancellation request. “You know what? I am going to find another way to save money,” the customer will say. “Let’s keep my HBO.”

Helping customers find the value they see in the service is so important, yet CSRs cannot lead them to it without engaging in The Quality Conversation.

Learn more about The Quality Conversation online athttp://robertcdavis.net/process/ or call 678-548-1775.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.

We were three weeks into a service-to-sales project in a large customer contact center when I overheard the following comment from an agent passing the training room on her way to the break room.

“I wasn’t hire to sell. I don’t care what they say,” the agent said. “I am not going to do it!”

This is not an uncommon reaction to change. My company, Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA), has been helping organizations turn service into sales for many years. We have found that this is a journey to win the hearts and minds of the agents—a journey that is well worth taking.

For example, we helped the billing department of one company move from zero sales to 90,000 sales in just six months. We helped the tech support organization of another company move from .02 sales per 100 calls to 1.8 sales per 100 calls—a 900-percent improvement!

How exactly do you obtain gains like these?

The main way to get there is to engage in what we call The Quality Conversation. If you don’t build a strong emotional connection with customers while solving their technical problem or billing issue quickly and efficiently, your chances of turning the service call into a sale are very small. On the other hand, if you use the following elements of The Quality Conversation on the call, your chances of converting the call to a sale increase greatly:

• Show genuine interest in the customer.
• Handle the call with sincere enthusiasm.
• Engage in full discovery of not only the issue at hand but also the customer’s wants, interests and needs.

The Quality Conversation seems quite simple. The big question is, what prevents agents from carrying it out?

First, you have to address the natural reaction to change. Any time you ask people to change how they do something, they react in stages:

1. Denial (“I can’t believe they’re making us do this.”)
2. Anger (“This really makes me mad. I’m not doing it.”)
3. Bargaining (“Can’t we just keep doing things the way we’ve always done for while?”)
4. Depression (“Why even try? I’ll never be able to do this.”)
5. Acceptance (“Well, it’s mandatory. I might as well learn how to do it.”)

If you understand and expect these stages of reaction to change, you’re better able to help team members move quickly to acceptance of a Quality Conversation initiative.

The other key to changing a team from a service orientation to a sales orientation is to understand comfort zones. People tend to keep doing what they are comfortable doing, regardless of whether or not it produces results. The role of the supervisor or coach is critical. The job is to help agents stay outside their comfort zone using The Quality Conversation approach until they are comfortable with it.

Here are some effective techniques for moving from service to sales:

1. Make a strong transition statement. Once agents have taken care of the issue at hand, they need to make a smooth transition statement. This means saying something like, “Now that we have fixed your billing issue, let me ask you a couple of questions to determine if we can add even more value on this call.” If agents make this statement confidently, the customer will usually react positively. This will help agents move to acceptance of the change, because they’ll see that it works.
2. Move to full discovery. Instead of just making a product pitch, agents must ask questions that will allow them to truly understand how they can add value for the customer. RCDA has been working on service-to-sales transitions with cable providers using this approach. Agents become amazed when they see how full discovery focuses on customer wants, interests and needs and consequently creates a positive experience for the customer. The agents see for themselves how willing customers are to answer discovery questions from the agent who drives that positive experience. The customers talk about their wants, interests and needs as related to their phone and Internet service—and how additional products and services can add value. In the end, the process helps customers sell themselves.
3. Coach for sustainability. Coaching from supervisors is critical during the roll-out of a Quality Conversation service-to-sales transition. They need to reinforce all of the new behaviors on a daily basis or the agents will revert back to their comfort zone—doing their job the old, familiar (albeit less effective) way. Side-by-side coaching, skill transfer, small group practice sessions, commitment sessions, and following up on those commitments are all key to succeeding with a service-to-sales transition and sustaining it.

More information on The Quality Conversation and how to make your service-to-sales transition work, visit RCDA’s website atwww.robertcdavis.net.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.