Customer Care Rep. (CCR) (Call Taker) Call Booking Percentage (too low)

[wpowers11]

We all know that phones ringing is the gas that fuels our sales engines. If we are not closing at the industry KPI (90%), and you will be surprised how many are not achieving that goal in the industry. We need to look in the mirror and make sure we are categorizing calls correctly so as to not skew our numbers. We need to be proactive in attacking this to keep our pipelines filled. Let's look at 2 areas managers can concentrate on to help achieve that KPI and build proactive behavior to keep our engines full and running: 

1. Your CCRs (call takers) are not answering the phones properly.
2. Your company is not staffed properly.

Management Actions:

1. Improve how you answer your phones.

• Monitor your calls.  Many companies offer services that will record every conversation your CCRs (call takers)—or anyone in your office—has with a potential client.  It will help you determine the skill level of your CCRs (call takers).
• Mystery-shop your office.  Have a friend or family member periodically call your company.  Take notice if your CCRs  (call takers) are correctly following through on their scripts and doing their best to persuade the person to schedule an appointment.
• Constantly track the number of calls each CCR (call takers) receives and books.  Each CCR (call takers) should be booking at a high percentage.  Regularly listen to phone conversations of your CCRs (call takers) that are not achieving performance expectations.  Train with those individuals even more.
• Constantly role-play with everyone on your CCR (call takers) team.  Consider sending each person to outside training or another center to see high performers in action.   
• There are outside consultants that can help you improve consider them to do your training. 
• 2.Address any staffing challenges that you may have.                                                                                             

• Investigate how many calls per hour your CCRs (call takers) are handling and the average booking time per CCR (call takers). If your CCRs  (call takers) are doing their jobs properly, and you still have an excess of calls coming in, consider hiring another CCR (call takers).  If you’re not in a position to hire an additional CCR(call takers) , train another person in your office to answer overflow calls. 
• If you’re consistently over-booked, consider hiring another technician.  Only hire enough technicians that you can keep consistently busy.  If you’re only busy during certain segments of the year—and it’s not enough to warrant another technician—consider temporarily allocating another technician from one department: for example, a scheduled service technician can assist on installations.
• If you have a backlog of work, start working on weekends and evenings.  Require that technicians must take turns working the weekend.  Or if the business is steady enough during those times, consider staggering your workweeks: for example, some technicians work from Wednesday through Sunday.

I know there is more we can do but lets do the basics right and that will keep your engines running and full.

[AmberC]

Love these best practices, @wpowers11! Thanks for sharing. 🙂