Successful inbound and outbound sales: This is what a successful telephone call sounds like

Which KPIs do you measure in your sales team or service center?

Average call duration, first-time resolution rate, service level, conversion, recalls, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, sick rates, turnover, productive turnover, productivity, contract hourly turnover and sometimes even the mouse movement distance multiplied by the keystroke per employee per hour. Monitoring all these indicators, and thus the focus of day-to-day activities is all too often the sole responsibility of those responsible for large teams and their results. The half-hourly results are updated over and over again, either to present the results to the supervisor or the client - or to exert even more pressure on the employees.

Not everybody can work better under pressure

The constant comparison of projects, teams and even individual employees with each other primarily creates pressure. **Pressure to perform, which goes against the actual goal. "Faster phone calls!" "Don't let it ring so long!" "Reduce post-processing time!" This or something similar is what you read on the treadmills of the wallboards in the open-plan office. This puts stress on the employees and doesn't make telephone calls any better, just more typical for call centres. And then there are the superstars - the few who have it in their blood and who drive the odds into galactic dimensions. Sales talents who do it well and enjoy their work even under pressure.

Strengthen your strenghts

Anyone who cares about the strengths of his employees instead of constantly trying to improve the weaknesses of the weak should be aware of the set screws and what the success factors in telephony actually are. Compare successful telephone calls with each other and use them for your coaching sessions with employees. Use the potential of the respective employees and show them, especially through their own conversations, what has worked and what can still be improved. Your employees will feel (more) confident on the phone.

What is working well, and where is my potential for improvement

Use voice analysis software to find out what really works in your service centre and which calls lead to the desired result at a high percentage. In addition, such software shows which calls are "out of line". In other words, the telephone calls that were made far away from the average particularly well or particularly poorly. At the push of a button you can also show which employees and which topics require urgent training? What concerns do your customers have that your staff should be prepared for?

Learning from within

Which employees made which offers in which telephone calls and which telephone calls had no sales approach whatsoever, which approach was successful? You get this overview quite simply via a dashboard. Which objections were successful and were objections dealt with at all? Show your employees how successful they are on the phone by finding the appropriate phone recordings for your training topic in seconds. Your employees can thus learn from their colleagues in a practical way and sales success is achieved automatically.

You can also document clearly** that sales have been made correctly, because with the appropriate software this can be documented and proven. Here, the "faster is better" principle does not count, because cancellations are expensive and if the customer has not clearly agreed to a purchase, a telephone call without a sales agreement is still cheaper than a returns processing.

KPIs are always only indicators that quickly reveal abnormalities. However, the success of a telephone call or even of the entire call centre cannot always be determined on the basis of the AHT or the service level. The fastest telephone call is not necessarily the most successful. The goal should not be the fulfilment of quotas, but the success on the phone - and you can make this visible today, completely without quota bashing.