As part of our continuing KPI series, we are looking into the key performance measures that high-performing contact centers measure. In this article, we are focusing on conversion rates.
What Is Conversion Rate and What Does It Measure?
Conversion rate measures when an agent completes a desired goal. The more conversions agents make, the higher your conversion rate will be.
The most important part of determining the conversion rate is deciding what qualifies as a conversion. For some organizations, this may include turning a contact into a marketing qualified lead (MQL). For other organizations, conversion may be defined strictly as a sale. How you define it is up to you, but it’s crucial to be consistent to have accurate benchmarks.
Here’s how you calculate the conversion rate.
The Conversion Rate Formula
Conversion Rate = Conversions / Contact Center Touchpoints x 100
For example, if you had 10 conversions for 100 contacts, your conversion rate would be 10/100 x 100 = 10%. Conversion rates can vary widely depending on what unit is being used to measure against, whether it’s sales completed, support tickets resolved, etc. Unsurprisingly, inbound call centers typically see significantly higher conversion rates than outbound call centers. This is because customers are actively calling in and looking for solutions or to make a purchase; they are often conversations that require less persuasion.
Why Is Conversion Rate Important to Contact Centers?
Conversion rates are important to contact centers because they measure how effective your team is in meeting the goal. High conversion rates for closed sales add to the bottom line. High conversion rates for leads generate more prospects in the sale funnel. High conversion rates for support tickets translate to improved customer service. You get the idea.
No matter how you define a conversion, it is one of the most critical KPI to measure because of its operational impact. If agents aren’t converting sales or satisfied customers, the organization will flounder. High-performing contact centers create a conversion baseline measurement and then monitor performance regularly against the baseline.
How Can Organizations Improve Conversion Rates?
Improving conversion rates takes a combination of training, monitoring, and experience. However, it starts with providing the right tools for your team.
Provide the Right Tools
High-performing contact centers are adopting real-time guidance platforms that help agents say the right thing on every call to optimize the conversation. The right software will pick up the audio in real-time and guide the conversation. AI listens and offers the next step designed to move the conversation forward towards the goal.
The best real-time guidance platforms will provide an AI-guided checklist that automatically checks off items when it hears them and provide dynamic prompts to surface the right information exactly when it’s needed. When agents are confident they are saying the best thing possible to win the call, they are more likely to do so.
For outbound call centers, investment in answering machine detection provides both accuracy and speed by increasing contract rates and, therefore, conversions.
Invest in Training
Contact centers with high conversion rates invest heavily in training. Group sessions and individual coaching sessions play a big role in improving performance, but according to a 2021 survey of more than 500 managers, the first coaching session is only effective 8% of the time and agents need an average of three re-coaching sessions after the first before the new skill gets implemented.
That’s why many contact centers are turning to real-time coaching. Rather than spot-checking calls or reading through transcripts, real-time coaching tools can listen to every call and provide immediate feedback on performance. Managers are alerted of coaching opportunities so they can provide on-the-spot feedback to help make lessons stick.
Monitor Performance
If you want to improve any part of your operation, it’s important to set goals and monitor performance while considering important factors such as call center contact rate vs. connection rate. While there are many ways to monitor performance, from manually spot-checking calls to post-call analysis, the right contact center platform will automatically score 100% of your calls against customized scorecards. You should be able to get an overall score for each call with the ability to drill down into different areas to identify the root cause of any less-than-optimal scores.
This provides additional coaching opportunities and allows you to focus on the key areas that need improvement for better quality assurance.
Focus on Onboarding and Retention
One of the biggest challenges in any contact center is turnover. With attrition rates as high as 30% to 45%, this means you’re constantly onboarding new agents. As such, ramp time is a crucial concern. You can significantly reduce ramp time and increase conversions by employing AI-powered playbooks that help agents know what to say.
Providing the right tools not only improves ramp time and performance but also takes some of the stress off of contact center agents because they’ll know the best way to handle the contact. This can reduce burnout and improve retention. When you can hang on to experienced agents longer, your conversion rates are more likely to improve, as agents will be more confident and can even help improve conversations with new approaches and ideas for call success.
Improve Your Conversion Rates Today
Improving your conversion rates is key to becoming a high-performing contact center. With the right tools, training, coaching, and measurement, you can make it happen.
To improve contact center conversation rates, many of the industry’s top performers turn to Balto, a real-time guidance platform built for contact centers To learn more about how Balto can give your conversation rates a boost, book a demo today.
