Service-to-Sales Sounds Great But...

It makes so much sense when you think about it.  The customer is already engaged in a conversation with your customer service department, why the heck wouldn't you seize the opportunity to cross-sell the customer a complementary product ("you want a new bank account to go with that brokerage account?") or up-sell the customer into the premium level product or service ("how about 10,000 additional text messages for only $5.00 more per month?")?  The devil is in the details though so make sure you come prepared when you pitch this "no-brainer" idea to the Customer Service department.  That said, the following are a few key questions and concerns you will likely be confronted with when you finally make your pitch.

This Messes Up Our Metrics

Because customer service reps are evaluated mostly on call stats (i.e. number of calls answered, average talk time, after call wrap up time, etc.) adding a sales pitch to every inbound call will most certainly effect all of these key metrics.  To address this issue, you should be prepared with estimated increases (or decreases) for each metric.  Here's a few examples:

• Number of calls answered per shift will decrease by approximately 20 calls
• Average talk time will increase by approximately 30 seconds
• After call wrap up time will increase by 1 minute

Of course, to offset the negative impact your proposal will likely have on the key metrics above, you will want to have the estimated increase in sales in your back pocket.

What's In It For Me?

This will most certainly be in the minds of the customer service reps and line managers.  To address this, you should have an incentive program in your proposal, otherwise there will be little motivation for the customer service reps to add a sales pitch to each call.

I know How to Fix Problems, Not Sell

Because most customer service reps are not sales people, you will need to provide a service-to-sales training course.  The course should focus on:

• Identifying cross-sell or up-sell opportunities
• Training the customer service rep how to transition from the customer service portion of the call to the sales portion of the call in a "soft" and unobtrusive manner (obviously stressing that the customer service portion of the call should come first).
• Training the customer service rep how to enter orders into the sales order system and/or enter leads into the CRM system

These are just a few key topics to cover in the training course.  The important thing to know here is service-to-sales training is essential for your program to be successful.  As such, you should have this covered in your proposal.

Having a well thought out and realistic service-to-sales proposal and implementation plan will greatly assist you in getting your proposal accepted as well as having a successful program launch.  Without this, your career advancing service-to-sales idea will likely turn out to be a service-to-headache disaster.