The challenge

Associates for a major automaker were tasked with taking inbound calls, vetting callers, and transferring strong sales leads to local dealerships for follow-up. The associates’ goal was to fill the company’s pipeline with leads that were likely to convert to sales at the dealership level.

Quality experts listened to some of the inbound calls that didn’t get transferred to dealerships to gauge what could be improved, but the brand had a very narrow view of customer interactions and sentiment.

Our solution

TTEC worked with strategic partner LevelAI to gain a more complete understanding of what happened during customer interactions. The brand implemented LevelAI’s AI-enhanced quality and insights tool to listen to and analyze 100% of interactions. This generated much more data and a much clearer picture of what was occurring in the contact center. 

TTEC quality experts then examined the data and trends LevelAI produced to cull actionable insights and make recommendations for improvements. In examining the data, we identified four key behaviors that separated the top-performing associates (those who transferred the most calls to dealerships) from the bottom-performing ones.

Top performers typically excelled in four behaviors:

• Discovery: Frequently asking customer insightful questions and building trust
• Positive value statement: Reinforcing and validating a customer’s choice
• Active listening: Affirming customers’ wants and needs to form a deeper connection
• Warm transfer assumption: Proactively and confidently initiating transfers

Identifying these behaviors allowed us to improve associate coaching, making it more efficient and effective. Instead of relying on random call selection for training, the brand could now coach associates in near real time, improving their performance more quickly.

With these insights, we revamped associate training to focus on key areas and targeted training on low-performing associates to make the biggest impact. Training focused on role playing, the power of persuasion, reducing hesitation, and leveraging insights, among other areas.

We also streamlined call flows to quickly get customers to associates with specialized knowledge when needed.

The results

Our work led to improved coaching and training process, greater efficiency, and ultimately an increased rate of calls being transferred to dealerships.

In just three weeks, the brand saw a 10% increase in call transfer rate, which equated to $3.2 million in potential additional revenue from sales. The work also led to a 53% faster coaching process and a 60% increase in coaching sessions.