Sales Improvement Project
The CEO (Jewellery Retailer) had declining margin in a number of his locations, and he was opening a new location that needed a fast start.
He said the reasons for the declining margin were:
Conversion ratio was low.
A high number of sales were discounted and the discounts were significant.
Customer and employee engagement were low.
Onirik helped him quickly develop capabilities to turn around his business challenge. The improvements were:
Customer letters of commendation started to flow – three in one month for one location that had received none for the previous twelve months.
Sales conversion tripled in his worst performing location and doubled in his best location. His new location ramped up to a conversion ratio equal to that of his best within three months (a feat that took previous locations twelve months).
Staff motivation and engagement skyrocketed and staff turnover dropped significantly.
The project paid for itself within two and one half months and yielded an ROI of more than 525%.
Productivity
The General Manager Customer Service and Claims' (Insurance industry) business issue was the extended time it took her staff to process claims with clients and advisors.
She said the reasons for this problem included:
Inability to handle declined claims complaints.
Unresourceful responses to dealing with emotion caused by death, grief and difficult financial matters.
Morale was low as was productivity.
Staff turnover was high.
Her team experienced limited behaviour change from previous staff training.
Onirik helped her quickly develop capabilities to turn around her business problem. The results were:
The team began enjoying more success with their difficult callers. Customer satisfaction and staff morale improved. Staff turnover dropped by 29%.
Productivity increased as average call duration decreased by 11%, after call handle time dropped by 16% and first call resolution rate increased by 8%.
The payback period was under three months, and the ROI was over 480%.
Customer Service
The General Manager of Sales & Customer Service (Telecommunications Utility) was frustrated by declining market share.
The crital issue was attributed to:
Increasing customer churn with strong competition in a deregulated market.
Customers often had "poor" telephone experiences.
Staff avoided anything that sounded like selling.
Where staff were willing to sell, they had a product based sales process.
Inconsistent and ineffective coaching was experienced as unhelpful and de-motivating.
Onirik helped the client rapidly develop capabilities she wanted. Initially the client ran a pilot and compared the improvement of a pilot (test) group to a control group.
Over the three month pilot:
- Sales revenue for the pilot team exceeded those for the control group by an average 20% and exceeded the average for all teams by 37%.
- Average talk time dropped by 4%.
- Customer satisfaction increased by 24% and led to a customer who bought a bunch of flowers into the contact centre to thank an agent in the pilot team for giving her the best telephone customer service experience she'd ever had. Concurrently letters of commendation increased and complaints dropped.
The project achieved a payback period of less than two months and an ROI of 690%.
