Author Archives: Michael Wilson

I recently posted a poll asking which kind of transmission is easier to operate when learning to drive. Even though a couple folks picked manuals, which I am still shocked by, the results looked pretty much the way I thought they would.

I learned to drive on an automatic transmission but did learn to drive a manual thanks to my college roommate teaching me. Pop the clutch, shift gears, monitor rpm’s, all while trying not to roll backwards down a hill after being stopped at a red light was annoying.

My automatic did all that shifting, popping, monitoring for me. All I had to do was just focus on the road. Press the gas pedal to go and hit the brake to stop. That was it. The learning curve wasn’t even close to the same and I learned I was cool sticking with an automatic.

Going through training as a contact center agent reminds me so much of learning to drive a manual transmission. Instead of pop the clutch, shift gears, monitor the rpm’s it’s look up data, switch systems, rekey data, navigate to the correct module, etc.

We recently started working with a contact center that has 17 different systems that their agents might need to interact with on any given call. Think about that. Remembering where to go and what to do on any given call is flat out complicated.

With all the new systems and tools that have been introduced to contact centers since the 1990’s, why hasn’t the agent journey been given the same attention that the digital customer journey has?

I get it, self service is great. But can anyone else relate to me when I say that I am guilty of not being able to figure something out and then smashing 0 for the operator when I really need some help. It’s the reason why there are still over 6 million contact center agents worldwide. People need help with complicated stuff. And let’s remember, when the consumer gets to the point that they need to call in they’re not always in the best mood. It’s not hard to understand why agents quit when their days consist of being spoken to rudely while having to remember all the manual call mechanics to solve a customer’s issue.

No matter how many screens, or sticky notes, or flow charts, or days of training, or Slack and Teams channels, or conversational AI tools an agent has, they’re still having to do all that manual shifting themselves. It doesn’t have to be that way.

The future of contact centers doesn’t look like 2 month long training classes so agents can remember what to do and when. An average agent turnover rate of between 30 and 45% yearly doesn’t have to be the status quo. Agents don’t have to wake up with anxiety every day because of all they have to remember while trying to help a customer.

The future of the contact center is one that will be much easier to navigate not by changing your core systems but by upgrading from a manual transmission to an automatic to eliminate those manual call mechanics that cause hold times and mistakes.

Cue adds CRM widget, expands telephony integration, and more.

Cue, an Atlanta-based software company, announced earlier this week the release of the newest version of their software solution that will further enable phone-based sales and service reps to improve productivity and drive results both during and after calls. 

By acting as an on-screen teleprompter, Cue helps inside sales and service reps navigate through conversations the right way, every time. Cue automatically updates fields in a customer’s existing system, which allows reps to complete work in real time that is historically left for post call wrap up. Cue also simplifies reps’ tech stack so reps no longer have to toggle between tabs and applications.

New features include:

  • CRM Widget: Cue’s new lightweight widget embeds directly into CRMs, allowing reps to gain the benefits of Cue while staying within a system they already know.
  • Telephony Integration: Handles inbound calls from new contacts within Cue and automatically creates new contacts in your CRM or other external system.
  • One-Step Integration: It’s easier than ever to connect Cue with your CRM, telephony and more thanks to Cue’s new one-step integration, Cue integrates with 200+ systems.

According to CEO & Founder, Michael Wilson, “Instead of having to change the way phone-based customer support and sales reps are used to working, companies can now simply embed Cue’s teleprompter-esque conversation guide right into the systems they’re already using. Between this CRM widget and our enhanced one-step integration, we’re excited to empower our customers to get up and running with Cue even faster and in turn, impact their sales and customer service success.” 

If you have any questions, please reach out to Cue at sales@itscue.com.

Thanks,

The Cue Team

Simplifying Re-Enrollment Through Your Insurance Contact Centers

Every industry is feeling the impact of 2020 differently. For insurers, one new challenge is remotely onboarding new contact center agents—especially during open enrollment. This is a challenge every year, and during a global pandemic all of the challenges are magnified: training new agents to learn your systems, manage the conversation, make sure they capture customer information correctly, ensure compliance, and hit their call metrics. Whether your agents are remote or in the office, their needs are different this year and your work requires a different approach – a guided conversation tool that plugs into your CRM.

Let’s face it. The CRM tools you are using don’t do enough to address the reality we’re facing. When it comes to ensuring compliance, onboarding new reps, and routing calls quickly and precisely, no one could have anticipated a global pandemic. And as you train your reps, there are so many clicks and “shortcuts” to learn—it makes ramp-up overwhelming. In a normal year, many firms suffer high turnover, training costs, and lengthy onboarding time. And if you’re not prepared this year, the business of open enrollment could be a minefield.

As new hires work to produce results and meet targets, they must trust their training and stick to the script—questions must be answered the correct way and proper steps in the process must be followed. Agents and leadership must constantly consider the highly regulated nature of their industry, while developing strategies to guide agents through the call simply. With Cue®,  your agents can have customized conversation guidance at their fingertips, from scripts and prompts to common objections and FAQs—ensuring compliance, reducing call times, and routing calls faster. In fact, the average Cue user sees a 50% reduction in training times. Get your reps trained and on the floor faster, save money, and reduce headaches for everyone.

Good conversations are the lifeblood of your business and ours. Ensure your agents can better assist customers, streamline training, reduce talk time, and eliminate after-call work—all with the confidence that they possess the right tools to engage every person they speak to. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Cue, please submit your information and a Cue representative will reach out to you within 1 business day.

 

Meeting Demand In A Crisis

The urgency of the current crisis is requiring companies to adapt to the challenges of the market conditions. It’s tough to balance the challenges of battling the pandemic with the need to keep the economy going. Some people even feel that business needs to suspend during this period. We respect their perspective.

At the same time, we feel that there are businesses introducing much-needed innovation that can aid our community and make a difference in the world. These organizations need to surge their ability to reach the market, but many don’t have the communications or business development skills to reach out effectively.

We also know that there is a significant pool of business salespeople who are effectively shut down: Either their companies cannot get product to sell, their core markets are not buying right now, or the company has to furlough or let them go.

At Cue, we want to help. We want to connect companies offering critical products and services with skilled B2B salespeople. And we’re uniquely positioned to do that with our SaaS contact center platform.

Our platform enables the rapid onboarding of new virtual contact center agents with simple scripting and contact management. We come from the telesales world, so we know what’s needed to make salespeople successful. And we have the ability to quickly set upx and train these individuals to support market expansion for companies that have a significant need to reach and educate customers on solutions that will help in this crisis.

There is one caveat:

At this time, we are only offering this service to companies that we believe solve an urgent need within the market. We want to ensure that we are adding value rather than distracting many of the potential decision-makers who are working hard every day to keep their operations going and support their employees. We’ve found a number of companies like this, and we’d like to find others in critical industries such as healthcare, cleaning, automation, and others that are providing essential functions to keep our economy going.

The more we can do today to keep the economy moving, the more it will aid in recovery when we have gotten the pandemic under control.

How We Can Help Your Business

Our team is connecting organizations on the frontlines with temporary help to meet market demand and continue their work in industries that need their services now more than ever.

If your organization is facing surges in inquiries, we want to help you get out there and do the most good with the valuable resources you offer. Our rapid-response program will help you drive outreach, engagement, and expand your ability to meet demand.

And we can get you up and running on our agent desktop quickly while addressing your organization’s unique needs.

How We Can Help Agents

As industries are assessing the individual and economic impact of the global pandemic, many of us are also facing uncertainties in our careers. Many businesses’ customers are temporarily shut down. And contact center agents and business development professionals have been furloughed or experienced layoffs.

We’ve set up a program to match skilled professionals with companies that provide critical services—and need people like you to help them respond to inquiries and rapidly get in touch with the organizations that need them most.

Our platform makes it easy for you to onboard quickly and help these organizations open up their sales funnel while they do the important work of mitigating the effects of this crisis.

Cue® provides a simple agent desktop that streamlines workflow and enables phone-based agents to complete all functions of their job in one place, instead of having to navigate between multiple systems. With Cue®, agents can better assist customers, streamline training, reduce talk time, and eliminate after-call work—all with the confidence that they possess the right tools to engage every person they speak to. 

Increase Your Contact Center Agent Efficiency

Break the 80/20 Rule to Scripting

The Pareto Principle

As with many things in life, the Pareto Principle, named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, applies to contact center efficiencies, too. And in a call center, it might mean that the 20% of calls that go off script require 80% of the time agents spend on the phone.

We also see it in the inverse relationship between call scripting and agent institutional knowledge.

You’re Not Alone

For most contact centers, efforts to manage this 80% usually go one of two ways. Leaders are faced with the problem of increased call volumes while trying to reduce call times. And many aim to streamline processes by making their scripts overly simple, leaving out crucial information that might be needed to complete a customer’s request or appropriately triage.

When this occurs, sales and service representatives have to improvise and use excuses such as, “Sorry, my system is running slow,” while they navigate their way to the tool that can help them help you. In even more frustrating scenarios agents can end up giving incorrect answers to specific questions or even immediately send the caller to 2nd tier support too early in the conversation.

Others make workflows so complex and rigid, that it can be a challenge for agents to grow comfortable and gain the knowledge required to be successful.

Simplifying scripting increases the training time required to establish institutional knowledge. But attempting to anticipate everything risks overwhelming new agents. Neither of these options serve the objective of increasing productivity, reducing handle times, and making training and coaching more efficient.

If this sounds relatable, you’re not alone. Businesses are constantly trying to solve this problem and get time back. Tools and trainings are offered constantly to help develop more robust documentation and agile scripts. But what if it’s easier than that?

Don’t Let Process Disrupt The Conversation

What would it look like for an organization like yours to rethink their agent desktop—to mitigate redundant conversations and duplicated efforts and reduce the volume of paper all over an agent’s cube? It shouldn’t feel impossible to make onboarding efficient or streamline your various systems and technology.

The 80/20 rule originated as a commentary on the distribution of wealth and became an essential business philosophy, informing the way we run our organizations and manage our teams. But it certainly isn’t the law. You don’t have to resign yourself or your team to long calls and inadequate scripts.

Think about what it means to break that rule. Perhaps you need to automate more of your process. Or maybe the key is in developing new ways to put knowledge at your agents’ fingertips. Whatever it is, implementing it successfully could optimize both scripting and training in the process.

What steps can you take to centralize your processes and ensure your agents are handling calls the right way, every time?

Cue® provides a simple agent desktop that streamlines workflow and enables phone-based agents to complete all functions of their job in one place, instead of having to navigate between multiple systems. With Cue®, agents can better assist customers, streamline training, reduce talk time, and eliminate after-call work—all with the confidence that they possess the right tools to engage every person they speak to. 

Boost Productivity With These Tools

Time is money. Most of us have been hearing that longer than we can remember. And as we go about our jobs, we’re constantly figuring out how to make the most of the limited time we do have. Time management strategies, productivity apps, or spreadsheets might be a part of your process as you figure out how to boost productivity. 

Today there are countless apps and tools out there for computers and smartphones alike, and it can feel overwhelming to navigate them all. As you’re considering what might help you, think about your own needs. Do you need to-do list tracking? Maybe you’re looking for more robust-project management. Or perhaps you need something that helps centralize all of your files and information. Once you’ve figured out what you need, you’ll be well on your way to maximizing your productivity and reducing stress.

Here are 4 apps that work for different members of our team:

Toggl

Track the time you’re spending on projects and tasks. If you’re working on project-based work, have multiple clients, or even just wear a lot of hats in your role, Toggl is a great place to start. In order to improve your time management, you have to understand how you’re spending your time—and Toggl helps you do exactly that.

Trello

This project management app works by creating cards for each item that needs to be completed. Think of it like an online bulletin board. You can move items between “boards,” like To Do, In Progress, Completed, etc., and add attachments, keep comments threaded, and assign due dates—directly to the individual task or “card.” Trello is incredibly flexible and highly visual. Some users have even adapted it for personal projects, like family activities and wedding planning.

 Slack

Where would we be without Slack? Instant, organized team communication is a must, and Slack makes it easy—no matter how big your organization is. Slack integrates with a variety of different apps so you can more easily centralize file storage, calendar management, and project management. 

LastPass

We all struggle to remember passwords, especially when security measures require us to change them on a regular basis. LastPass uses multi-factor authentication and other features to  to manage all of your logins and keep your information secure. And you can use it across multiple devices. LastPass also has features to audit your passwords and help you create better and more secure passwords. 

What apps help you improve productivity and stay focused? We’d love to hear from you.

Objection Handling: Common Sales Objections & How to Respond

If you’ve worked in sales for any length of time, you’ve probably faced at least a few objections from prospects and customers. Objections don’t always have to be a hard no. In fact, when a prospect gives a reason, they’re presenting you with an opportunity to clarify or reiterate the value proposition and address their specific concerns. But objection handling is truly an art, and you have to make the most of these moments when they present themselves. Usually you only have a brief opportunity to communicate and clarify before the call or meeting comes to a close.

Here are a few common objections and some thoughts on how to address them:

We already work with [competitor or similar product].

It’s so important to understand why you’re unique—to understand why what you offer is unlike anything else—and be able to explain it in clear terms. We’re all busy people, and something made your prospect think of an existing vendor or software. This is your chance to change their mindset and explain why they need the specific value only you can provide. Make it clear you don’t want to send their current tools or process into upheaval, but you would like to take time to explain the value. 

But does your product do a specific thing or have a certain feature?

More than an objection, this can feel like an obstacle to qualifying or setting up the next appointment. It can be hard not to climb into an in-depth conversation about features, benefits, and example scenarios. Take questions like this as a sign of interest and offer to set up the next appointment with a specialist who can answer these questions and more as they come up.

Email me the information. I’ll get back to you.

If this feels like they’re brushing you off, it’s because they are. But that doesn’t mean it’s futile. Depending on when it comes up in your conversations, there’s still opportunity to get and hold their interest. For example, if you’ve already delivered your value proposition and talked about what you do, they might still be interested. But whenever it comes up, you need to understand where they are. You can ask specific questions to understand their specific needs more clearly, figure out if they don’t understand the value, or aren’t ready to discuss making a purchase. Once you understand where they are, you can respond accordingly.

Let’s connect another time/next quarter/etc.

Like you, prospects are busy and trying to make the most of the limited minutes and hours we have in a day. If they can push a call to another day, they will. But you can briefly express the value of your solution and ask them to make the time. Perhaps even clarify that it isn’t a buying conversation—you just want to show them what you do or set up a demo, and if they’re not interested then they don’t have to worry about you continuing to reach out.

But don’t forget: It’s important to know when no really does mean no. If they hear you out and still say no, it might be time to let it go. You can’t qualify a prospect against their will, and you don’t want to make them uncomfortable. 

At the end of the day, an easy-to-navigate, dynamic database of these questions and objections can help you and your team ensure and increase success. If you’d like to see what Cue can do for you, from handling objections to providing a wealth of other resources, reach out to us for a free trial.

5 Business Podcasts We Love

There are more than 700,000 podcasts out there with close to 30 million episodes. And whether it’s for business, education, entertainment, or motivation, approximately 62 million people listen to podcasts every week.

These numbers increase every day. As podcasts evolve, it can be hard to choose which ones to listen to. Here are a few of our favorites to stay current on the latest business trends, industry tips, and technology updates.

HBR IdeaCast

Many of us probably aspire to read the Harvard Business Review more often than we do. But it’s hard to find the time. This podcast is the next best thing. In each episode, HBR editors interview leaders and experts in business and management.

Business Wars

Get to know the challenges faced by the biggest brands in the world. Each season of this podcast analyzes the relationship (or even conflict) between two businesses competing within an industry—from Nike and Adidas to Blockbuster and Netflix and many others.

How I Built This

This NPR podcast takes a look at the origins of the most well-known and beloved companies in the world. With fresh perspective, it explores the struggles and success of companies. Episode after episode offers unique insights into the journeys of these companies and their owners.

The Modern Customer Podcast

In this podcast, Blake Morgan interviews with leaders from different customer-focused brands. Leaders from companies like Allstate, Microsoft, Wayfair, and PwC discuss what sets their organizations apart—from how they invest in their teams and leverage technology to leadership insights.

Experience This!

An encouraging and actionable podcast featuring companies and individual stories about exceptional customer experience. Each episode is entertaining and leaves us thinking about ways to make our customer experience even better than it already is.  

As a bonus, here’s another podcast to get you thinking about your work in a different way:

Weird Work

This fun, off-the-wall podcast highlights some of the most fascinating business professionals out there. The featured jobs are a little out of the ordinary at best. You might find you have common successes and struggles with even the most unusual jobs out there.

What business podcasts would you add to the list? Tell us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

3 Tips For Sales Coaching Success

Sales coaching is an art and a science. And it’s a key component to effective sales management. In fact, today’s sales leaders count coaching as one of their top priorities at work, investing more time and effort now than ever before. Yet not all salespeople who get coached—even by the best coaches—do better.

Keep these tips in mind to help your teams get results:

FOCUS ON THE MIDDLE

Leaders often prioritize the top and bottom performers on their teams. They want the lowest performers to meet their quotas, and they want to help the best reps keep doing what they’re doing. But what about the middle?

Sales Executive Council leaders and authors of The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adams, explored how sales reps performed and how often they met their targets—from the highest performers to the lowest. They found that coaching didn’t make as significant an impact with the weakest or strongest performers. Instead, with the right tools, average-performing reps made the most progress—successfully delivering a buying experience that led to growth and customer loyalty.

When all is said and done, who you coach matters just as much as how you coach.  

REWARDS AND INCENTIVES WORK—IF THEY’RE EFFECTIVE

Sales contests, incentives, and individual prizes work when they’re changing behaviors, not reinforcing existing ones.  It isn’t as helpful to just offer cash to the first rep that makes a sale that day.

Are there things that your sales team is doing that you’d like them to stop? Or things they aren’t doing that you’d like them to? Design your contests and personal rewards around those actions. It might look like extra incentives for team members who hit a target number of sales for a specific product or working with an individual rep to identify opportunities for improvement and rewards for that improvement.

If you’re not sure what to offer as a prize, learn what motivates your team members. Don’t be afraid to ask them directly.

LEARN WHAT DRIVES YOUR TEAM

Each person on your team is unique. And programs like rewards and incentives work best when you understand what each salesperson’s drivers are. Yes, most of them are motivated by making money, but their goals for that money are probably different. Someone might be saving for a wedding, another might be paying off student loans. And some of your reps probably work in sales because they are self-motivated and enjoy the autonomy.

Take the time to get to know your team. Learn what their priorities are in their personal and professional lives. Ask them about their short and long term goals, how they get and stay motivated, and discuss what steps to take if they don’t seem motivated—for both you and the individual rep. These insights will help you understand how to coach each individual effectively, as well as help you get a better view of your team as a whole.

And in these conversations, tell your team members how they’re contributing to the company’s success. Give them more than financial goals, setting targets that help them feel fulfilled in ways that aren’t just monetary. Help them think beyond quotas and selling specific amounts. Instead, identify what matters to them—is it breaking a company record? Or selling in a specific market/industry?

Revamping your coaching strategy? Better conversations start with Cue. Try it today!