What is Cross-selling?
Cross-selling means getting customers to purchase additional products from your business (share of wallet). It's typically an active process, which means, in the context of a call center, that an agent has to make an offer to a customer to purchase add-on products or services, often at a reduced price. Cross-selling works best when customers are offered products that are complementary to the one(s) they have purchased.
Catalogers are often heavy users of cross-selling strategies. For example, a women's clothing cataloger may try to sell customers accessories from a predesignated list when they call to place an order. Similarly, agents may offer warranties to callers who purchase phones or small appliances. Cross-selling should not be confused with up-selling, which is the process of selling customers a more expensive item than they originally intended to purchase, say a fine leather jacket instead of a cotton hoodie. Not only is successful cross-selling good for revenue, but getting customers to purchase more of your company’s products could increase brand loyalty.
Cross-selling in practice
Some agents struggle with cross-selling because they think it's pushy. This, and other agent objections, can be overcome with a well-executed rollout that includes training as well as role-playing. Agents also benefit from listening to call recordings in which other agents model successful cross-selling techniques. Additionally, cross-selling efforts can gain from offering individual or team incentives. Even if there are no incentives, businesses should measure cross-selling results and make the information visible on the call center floor.
How NICE can help
NICE CXone is the market leading call center software in use by thousands of customers of all sizes around the world. Our solutions support the successful rollout and management of cross-selling campaigns. CXone is a cloud native, unified suite of applications designed to help a company holistically run its call (or contact) center operations. CXone includes:
Omnichannel Routing – routing and interaction management that empowers agents to positively and productively interact with customers in digital and voice channels. These solutions include an automatic call distributor (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), interaction channel support and proactive outbound dialer.
Workforce Optimization – unlocks the potential of your team by inspiring employees' self-improvement, amplifying quality management efforts to enhance customer experience and reducing labor waste. These solutions include workforce management (WFM), quality management (QM), recording and performance management (PM).
Analytics – turns insights into results by making data relevant, easy to consume and actionable to drive measurable improvements and understand the omnichannel experience customers receive. These solutions include interaction analytics, customer surveys, reporting and performance management.
CXone also includes pre-defined CRM integrations and UCaaS integrations with most leading solutions on the market. These integrations provide a holistic call center software solution capable of elevating customer experiences for companies of all sizes.
