In the Direct Response industry, your call center agents are like athletes in a football game. The sales agents are your front-line, assertive minds that dig their heels in and “go for it”. They typically have more of that “competitive edge” and they are motivated by money or just numbers in general. They are the ones with the loud voice and want to be known or have the upper hand, or at least that is what most employers want in a sales employee.

But what about if you need an agent that works in customer service? What characteristics equate to the perfect support agent? In many centers, if your conversion numbers do not meet the needs of the sales floor, you are transferred to customer service, but depending on the dynamics of your company, if the agent does not make it in the sales department, chances are, they are not well suited for customer service either. 

In many ways, recruiters are looking for the same qualities in a sales agent that they are for a customer service agent but they just don’t realize it. If you are hiring for your sales floor, you need someone who works well in a team environment, has little to no issues with authority figures, is assertive and feels comfortable making suggestions to a customer, has the persuasive tendency to be able to “sell” a customer,  and just over all, a bold, and out-going personality right? 

If you are hiring for your customer service department, you want someone who works well in a team environment, has no issues dealing with figures of authority, can be suggestive to a customer…noticing a trend here?

 Working in customer service for 9 years, I can verify that when hiring, whether it is for sales or c.s. you should be seeking the exact same type of person, a supportive thinker, innovative, respectful, professional, dynamic, and a “roll with the punches” attitude because the DR world is ever changing. What is MOST important, is finding out what the potential employee enjoys doing most. In most cases, that is the “driving” factor.

 In several instances over the years, my best c.s. agents were the best agents when it came to “saves” (customer retention) and they had the highest revenue for reorders, as well as converted more sales than anyone else in the department. These same individuals, were also successful on the sales floor, but chose to come to customer service because they were “happier” doing it. A “happy” agent = successful agent.

 So how do you get the best of both worlds? Look for the same individual, but find out where they feel most comfortable. Provide the same type of training for all employees. Sales training integrated with a customer service supportive philosophy, and then you have your hybrid employee that can take either sales or c.s calls depending on call volume. After all, whether you are playing on the front line, or your position is safety, we all should be thinking customer retention.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Customer Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.