Going “Off-Script” to Increase Product Sales

The Client’s conversion rate was flat and product sales were declining

As part of the sales process, Agents were required to follow a very scripted sales process to avoid sales exceptions due to improper financial disclosures. However, the heavily scripted process did not support an interactive, conversational engagement between the agents and the customers. In particular, agents were instructed to use specific rebuttals in response to customer objections.

Over a 30-day period, our Quality team and Project Management team analyzed sales contacts. We also reviewed contacts that were disqualified sales due to script adherence exceptions.

With the help of our Analytics team, they were able to categorize the contacts to determine the ‘pitch’ and the rebuttal used, and the success rate for each.

Key findings included:

• Customers indicating ‘not interested’ as a general response were not given an opportunity to learn more about the program due to restrictive rebuttal script flow
• The majority of customer declines were due to incomplete or confusing pricing explanations
• Rebuttals did not naturally flow in a conversational tone