How Simplifying Lead Capture Revolutionized Our Call Center Efficiency
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Complete interview transcript below
INTERVIEWER
Um, next question. And For this one, I want you to focus on. A time where you made, you specifically, where you, you drove the change, um, where you were able to make something significantly simpler for your customers. At a high level, what was the change? And then I'm gonna obviously ask some follow-up questions.
CANDIDATE
Um, so to set the situation, um, I worked on a, uh, again that CRM product, and, um, one of the ways that we got, uh, lead or, um, customer record information in was, you know, a slew of customized fields, etc. And so within the process of gathering all that information, uh, it often wasn't essential, depending on how the initial interaction went with the customer. So Starting off, I had several interviews with sales representatives in a call center. They use our software and I felt some of their pain points and took this toward a decision of why it takes so long. They, they kind of felt restricted and they were locked in the gathering. What their manager said was the amount of information they have to get. It wasn't considered a lead captured it. They didn't get all of this information. Um, So taking that, um, and the, the time to close each call being a metric that they were beholden to. Um, we looked at ways that we could benefit by getting partial information and follow up information by the client. Um, so in a call sales center environment, and when you're on that call, the one piece of information that they had to get was the email address and get that clearly. And then they could spend more of their time talking about the, you know, describing the solutions and describing the, the, the value prop or whatever. Business they were in. But this, this rang true throughout the place. Most call center representatives were held accountable to how many calls they did, and literally till they, they didn't take bathroom breaks, they, you know, like, like that film, Will Smith, they, they actually were so cognizant to those, uh, those KPIs that they had to, um, adhere to. So anything that we did helped. So sorry, that's the situation. The, um, The, the, the change of these capture forms to, um, qualify a lead from its initial information. Traditionally ascertain at the start of one call to being ascertained over a period of time, meant that you could notify the people that needed to know about the new leads after they had fulfilled all the information that had to be gathered. So on the call, they could get all of the information or just a very basic email. Afterwards, it'd be a series of nurture emails that would help gather that information and bring them towards self, um, service based, uh, form capture, you know, just basic form, uh, Customer information gathering, and it was only after that, so it kind of took a lot of the The the weight that was in the calls, out of the call for information gathering, and it left it to an automated system and it went on to then just still get a significant amount of leads, but also reduced that time that the user was on the call and that they had to just spend, say it was a 3 minute call, spending 1 minute getting X, Y, and basic information that they, they didn't really need to know at that point in time specifically, and they were better spent upsetting, um, That the main purpose of call to sell the solutions, whatever product I can maybe sell.
INTERVIEWER
But at the outset, when you first started talking to the CS department, um, Why did you feel, based on their inputs and, and any other information you had, why did you feel that this change to the reclassification of the fields, why did you feel that that would drive value for the company? And because and let me be more specific with the question, right, because if there's talking to the CS reps who are goal and incentivized one way, they're gonna have strong opinions about something. And if you make changes to the quality, for lack of a better word, the quality of the information that you're gathering at at specific points in time, and that quality is improving because more data is being gathered. You're making a decision to artificially degrade the information, and I'm using degrade in in the sense of reduction, not make worse, right? So you're artificially degrading the information that you're capturing on the lead at the outset. Therefore, there is a risk, an unknown risk, but a risk to the company that, well, you're gonna mess up a bunch of other second order. Processes that relied on the information coming out of that, that, you know, that process at the outset. So, how, how did, why did you feel this change was going to drive value for the company?
CANDIDATE
I, I suppose, um, to, um, if you, if you classify that as a risk, which any sensible person would, and they, it's about risk mitigation. So, um, when you think about who was the traits that some of the best salespeople had and how they did it, they, they had different styles of how they use their script. They didn't, uh, in the interviews I did, they didn't always, um, Follow it, uh, verbatim and and go through, give me first name, last name, address, email, and continue on to sell the products. They, um, really, it just got the first name and got into the conversation. So when you observed some of the behaviors that the, uh, the high performing salespeople did, uh, our service sales or service, it was, it was the same when he got into what made them high performing in the eyes of their employer. It kind of also led through to more qualified leads later on the line. And they anecdotally, uh, specified that the most important thing is explaining the product, and this was validated against multiple use cases for multiple businesses where this was a trait that was more important. The lead, people could change their mind. No matter what. Most people that are calling up, they don't want to be ticked off by having to provide the same thing. More than likely, they're gonna ring several service providers to avail of that service, and if they have to do that several times, you're at a more of an advantage if you're talking about the product. And if your product is as good as it is, you don't need to, um, get some of their specific, their surname. Gotten on day one of the call is not as important as um getting them interested and getting the hook in. That was their terminology as salespeople, but um, Yeah, it is a risk, but it, it, it made sense because when they start, when, when they started using this, um, Slower capture of information. Um, it showed that they were getting the same, if not more, amount of leads generated, but they felt that the time was better spent, those 3 minutes, those vital time elements that they were measured against, um, because it was a combination of KPIs that each of these personnel on a company to company basis, but they, They measured them on how many calls they did, how many leads they generated, and in some cases, it was just in a service space as opposed to the sales space. It was about how quickly you could turn it around.
INTERVIEWER
But what drove you specifically, right, you as a person, you as a worker, you, you as a team lead to to implement this change? What was driving you?
CANDIDATE
Um, I, I, I think the main force that was the empathy. When I did the interviews with, um, the staff that were using these products, and the, the, the, the, not the empathy, you could empathize with them. Um, they, if they had a PC that ran slow, that would affect their bottom dollar, what they took home in their wage bracket. Um, if they had a, uh, Had, uh, to take time out to do the interviews with me, that was an inconvenience, and some of them had to reschedule. So, even getting these guys away from the phones for a minute showed how important that time was. So, it didn't become about how many, uh, minutes they are away from the phone, but how much they how they utilize their time on the phone. So, it was really getting to understand that problem and and and For me, someone who has a personal trait of, if I'm ringing up to get my car insurance, I'll ring 50 places, and I'll go through that pain. I know there's a lot of people out there that would also ring multiple providers, and people shop around, so, anything that is a repetitive action that is not really of any interest of the person who's doing the shopping. They don't want to provide their details everywhere. So if you make it easier for them, it's a win-win. Getting that information later after you've explained the product. If they walk away, it doesn't matter. You don't have their information. They might give you false information. It, it, it's more important to, to plant the seed than to, um, just canvass for information. It was more, In, I suppose in hindsight, most systems are like that now and they're mainly SAS based and they're not phone-based, but this is how our product works in the CRM space for everything from funeral parlors to, uh, you know, small plumbing providers. It was a myriad of, of, uh, service-based industries.