Automation leads to more human interaction. Paradox?

This is a guest blog by Pierce Buckley from babelforce, a global integration platform for communications. Pierce is a CX and Contact Center Expert who worked on babelConnect, an extension that allows you to make calls from your Zoho CRM account.

How can a contact center provide customers with an individual experience while also processing calls quickly and efficiently?

Figuring out how to provide that personal touch at scale has been a major obstacle in telesales since the beginning. Not that long ago, an outbound campaign meant a ring binder full of names and a touch-tone phone. It was laborious, slow, and decidedly impersonal. But with a modern CRM system, agents can go into each call with pretty decent information on their side.

Don't talk – communicate

There's no doubt about it – a well-deployed CRM system is a game changer for sales teams because it puts relationship building back in the mix. When reps can make a call with that customer's complete interaction history at their fingertips, breaking the ice is a whole lot easier.

At the level of individual contacts, that might be the full story. But what if we zoom out a little bit? At the macro level, call processing is the key to keeping your campaign running. Can that benefit from a technological intervention in the same way?

It's not a rhetorical question, folks – the answer is yes.

With babelConnect for Zoho CRM, automation makes a human touch possible. But isn't that an oxymoron? Not when you do automation right. If you take human labor out of repetitive chores, you're freeing time up for other tasks. Ask a room full of salespeople, “Who likes making connections and building relationships?” and you'll see a lot of hands go up. But ask the same people, “Who likes populating call lists?” and you're not likely to get the same enthusiasm.

How to find the balance

So what does this have to with CRM? Well, let's go back to our first question – how can you balance personal service with efficient processing?

The ingredients for a successful sales campaign are reliable customer data and good agent utilization. Consider all those mundane processing tasks that agents hate doing. There are three scenarios where you may want or need to handle those tasks manually:

1. When they need human oversight

2. When that's the quickest way to complete the job

3. When the task itself is really fun to do

It's safe to say that the act of scheduling tasks fails all three of these criteria.

The common chores that support sales activity might include recycling unanswered contacts or scheduling follow-up calls with high-value customers. There's rarely a good reason for these kinds of tasks to involve humans, yet many businesses commit valuable resources to managing them. As a result, scheduling takes longer, is less precise, and bores staff to tears.

Getting the most from leads

Some of the highest value leads a business can attract arrive through their website. Requests for information convert into easy sales, so they deserve your attention. According to HBR, businesses that respond to inquiries within one hour are seven times more likely to qualify leads.

So let's imagine the absolute best scenario that could follow: Customer data travels from your website straight to Zoho CRM. A profile is created for that customer, and the babelConnect app adds an entry to the outbound call schedule on priority status.

But when does a human get involved? Well, it's the first time a human is needed – when the call is actually placed. The value of babelConnect is that it multiplies the relationship-building power of Zoho CRM. Zoho holds the customer information needed to nurture leads; babelConnect identifies, schedules, and even dials leads that actually need nurturing.

Not convinced? Check the numbers: calculate how many sales conversations you'd get each month if the average talk time per sales agent increased from 40 to 50 minutes per hour. Most organizations see a 25% increase. Now think about the impact that would have on your bottom line! Then, if you factor in the reduced cost of preparing and updating lists manually, you’ll see that smart automation can transform your team's performance.

Interested? Come and talk to us, and find out how babelConnect for Zoho CRM can revolutionize your telesales operation. 

Or visit the Zoho Marketplace to preview and install the babelConnect integration directly.

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