Six Tips to Upsell in the Contact Center

Upselling is an essential element of retail marketing, and contact centers are ideally suited to do it effectively and efficiently. Contact Centers should be every retailer’s conduit to upselling for greater profitability.

Here’s how our company, educational toy seller MindWare, has found success with our contact center, Global Response.

Keep the number of upsell products manageable
We boil it down to three to five products across different categories. Too many options become confusing and reduce efficiency.

Offer great value
Often retailers will upsell in order to get rid of products that don’t move. We found that this conventional wisdom doesn’t make sense. Our agents at Global Response are encouraged to upsell best selling products at great discounts. They “uptell” – by simply telling the consumer about such great deals, the mission is halfway completed.

Upsell strategically
We encourage upselling of our own products, rather than those of another manufacturer – the margins are better.

Train and touch
When we train the agents at Global Response on our products, they feel, touch, use and play with them. They really know the games and toys and have hands-on experience. That kind of training comes through when they speak with customers. They can share a personal anecdote – it offers a sense of identification with the consumer and makes the upsell much easier.

Motivate and congratulate
We are in contact with our product manager at Global Response every day, and we review the statistics. This gives everyone the chance to share kudos and be recognized – and to motivate others to do the same. It’s all part of a team effort and everyone is in it together. Yes, monetary incentives are also available, but it isn’t unusual for the proverbial pat on the back to provide just the right motivation.

Be flexible and trust your contact center
If you have a good relationship with your contact center, as we do with Global Response, trust the judgment of the people on the team. It’s okay to give guidelines, but scripted sales pitches sound too stiff and rehearsed and are ultimately less effective. We don’t like to be rigid and we have found that with the right training, strategy and product, the upsell program is a real success.

Matt Reutiman is the customer service operations manager at MindWare Holdings.