As the world embraces the digital age and AI becomes more ubiquitous, some organizations are still searching for the best way to harness this type of technology for their specific goals.
For retailers, conversion rates and customer experience are vital. But if increased sales and higher customer satisfaction are the destinations, what insights fuel the journey?
There are many ways that AI sheds light on opportunities to boost these metrics; we’ll explore some of the most important ones.
1. Illuminates Pain Points
Every retailer has at least a general sense of their customers’ most pressing questions and concerns; in fact, some barriers to success are common across virtually all sales teams. A 2021 survey found that the most common objections salespeople report encountering are budget, timing, and decision making. Still, every business is different, so retailers need to confirm their unique hurdles, and AI can help.
When sales reps encounter an objection, AI can recognize and categorize it. Retailers can then take a holistic view of call performance and see which concerns arise most often.
Armed with this information, retailers can confidently make necessary adjustments to address customers’ pain points—whether that means considering a price change, adjusting explanations to prevent confusion, or simply honing the best objection responses.
2. Optimizes the Sales Process
More often than not, sales reps follow a script designed to drive sales. AI provides insight into how closely agents are following that script, but—perhaps even more importantly—it can also show which talking points are most successful at quickly converting potential customers, leading to a sharper, more effective flow of conversation.
In the past, managers had to listen to hours of calls and manually score just a fraction of agents’ interactions for quality assurance and coaching opportunities. Now, AI can provide insight into every call for a comprehensive view of what’s working and what’s not.
With a greater depth and breadth of information, retailers can learn from past calls and streamline their sales processes.
3. Identifies Top Performers
When the same agents consistently have the highest close rates, they’re obviously doing something right. AI can help identify what top-performing agents are doing differently and make those habits easier to scale.
The ability to scale success is particularly important considering contact center managers report numerous difficulties when it comes to coaching, namely that agents need an average of 4 coaching sessions before implementing a new skill, which requires a 10-14 hour time commitment from managers.
AI can help call center management coach their entire teams with their best agents’ methods. And they won’t have to sink hundreds of hours into coaching to make it happen.
Building Success for the 21st Century
Established retailers know that being adaptable is an essential ingredient in the recipe for long-term success.
Retail is an undeniably people-focused industry, but it turns out that AI is a perfect partner for retailers who want to enjoy machine-like win rates without losing their human touch.
Balto’s Real-Time technology sheds light on customer satisfaction and close rates while ranking every agent on a leaderboard and uncovering a clear path for improvement on an organizational scale. Learn more about Balto’s Real-Time solutions, or schedule a demo to see those solutions in action.
