Presale and Upselling with Customer Support Talent: Helpful Tips
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How to Use Presale and Upselling Approaches in Customer Support?

  • Presale and upselling techniques help businesses increase revenues, retain existing customers, and boost customer satisfaction.
  • More than 500 sales professionals, 72% of salespeople who upsell and 74% who cross-sell, say it drives up to 30% of their revenue.
  • They allow for addressing customers’ needs, reducing risks of negative user experience, increasing conversion rates, and building trust and loyalty to the brand.
  • Customer support should use presale and upselling approaches to meet the client’s needs but not overwhelm them with offerings.
  • It’s essential to highlight the value of suggestions and be transparent about the offers.
 

Expanding your services with existing customers and turning them loyal to your brand is one of the most effective ways of growing a business. Moreover, the costs of preselling or upselling to the existing customer are much lower than those spent on acquiring and nurturing new leads. Companies can build long-term customer relationships and ensure excellent user satisfaction by adopting presale and upselling approaches. Win-win!

Why and How Address Presale and Upselling?

Many small startups to global corporations utilize such techniques to boost their revenues, meet the customers’ needs, and ensure a great customer experience. For instance, Amazon confirms 35% of its revenue is due to upselling techniques.

The team with great potential to utilize presale and upselling approaches is customer support. Of course, support agents typically concentrate on solving a particular problem or answering the question asked. However, they can help the business drive more sales by engaging customers in considering more beneficial purchasing options.

If you need help with how to go about it correctly, what different selling terms mean, and what advantages presale and upselling offer to all parties, keep reading this article to find clear explanations and practical recommendations.

upsale presale by means of customer service

What to Presell and When to Upsell: Understanding The Terms

Before we dive into tips and tricks for utilizing presale and upselling approaches, let’s identify the meaning of each term you may encounter:

  1. Presale: A visitor finds your business’s offer/products/services beneficial. They get interested and check the details of the favored product.
  2. Upselling: A user checks a smartphone model, and you recommend another one with many advanced features but at a slightly higher price. The offer still looks beneficial to the customer.
  3. Cross-sale: A client wants to buy your goods/services, and you suggest accessories/complementary products/warranty services at an additional cost.
  4. Post-sale: A client bought some goods/services from you recently. Based on the online customer journey on the website, you may offer them some viewed products at a discount in a follow-up email a week after the purchase.
 

Today, we will concentrate on the first two methods, as these make a huge difference for the business once implemented. Presale and upselling approaches are the first steps to ensure top-level customer experience and business growth.

How Do Presale and Upselling Approaches Help Your Business?

By implementing presale and upselling approaches, businesses can:

  • Address unspoken customers’ needs;
  • Show the product or service value;
  • Guide on the offers;
  • Remove purchase barriers;
  • Increase conversion rates;
  • Achieve great customer experience;
  • Increase brand recognition;
  • Build loyalty and trust in the business;
  • Engage with customers more;
  • Make them brand advocates.

upsale presale by customer service outsourcing

How to Increase Upsellings & Cross-Sales Through Communication Channels?

1. Hire an Experienced Customer Support Team

Proper business communication is the key to having satisfied customers. However, the retailer is usually responsible for both hiring and solving business issues. Therefore, they are switching to outsourced customer support providers, such as WOW 24-7. The agents can handle multiple chats and email interactions at the same time. It allows them to resolve problems quickly and maintain high customer service even during peak periods. Outsourced live chat support has diverse experience in communicating with clients. The team uses psychological approaches and knowledge about specific business offers to help the company increase its sales level.

2. Create an Accurate Client Profile and Update It Regularly

It’s essential to approach the clients’ needs individually and know every customer’s preferences. If a person has always been buying Apple products, there is no point in offering an Android-based smartphone. Collecting data about the client’s behavior, the customer support team obtains analytics to show potential client’s needs and desires.

3. Transform a Product Catalog and Contact Center Software

Switching between dozens of open tabs during one interaction is confusing for agents. Therefore, the company should upgrade contact center software regularly to make the agents’ work more convenient. The agent needs an accessible and well-structured product catalog, smart CRM tips about each client’s preferences, and information about promotions/discounts to navigate and meet the customer’s expectations quickly. 

5 Tips for Presale and Upselling With Customer Support

1. The Offer Must Meet the Customer’s Needs and Goals

If highlighting the most critical point, the upselling offer should meet the needs and wants of the particular customer. Obviously, users contact customer support to get professional assistance, not for sales pitches. However, when the upgrade offer meets the customer’s needs and goals, they will likely consider it. 

Thus, customer support should dedicate time and effort to checking user information, purchase history, internal notes, and so on to understand the customer’s preferences and potential interests.

2. Show the Value

Upselling won’t work if the customer doesn’t see the offer’s value. Therefore, it’s crucial to highlight the upgrade value and how it can benefit their personal/business needs. If the customer support agent delivers the value message correctly, the customer will move forward with the upgrade and be sincerely grateful for the recommendation.

3. Seek Insights to Make Relevant Suggestions

Every business has its target auditory with interests, preferences, values, etc. Moreover, returning customers, especially loyal ones, usually have many conversations with customer support. Based on previous conversations, support agents can learn more about the customers and put relevant upselling suggestions.

4. Be Clear About the Offer Terms

The support agent should never mislead customers on how to get the upselling. product/feature. For instance, if the user mentions they have a stringent budget and want the selected product at $3,000, there’s no point in talking about an ultra-modern model at $30,000. Besides, if the more advanced product version is out of stock, and there are no exact terms of its arrival, do not offer inaccessible “upgrades.”

5. Act when Appropriate

Lastly, customer support agents should understand the timing and the customer’s mood to using pitches. If the customer is here for the exact product, there’s no need to push them as it may result in a negative user experience. Customer support should be empathetic enough to see when upselling is relevant and coincides with customer goals. Upselling is about both money and the offered value.

Final Remarks

Follow the tips above and arrange your support services the way the agents will solve problems and make valuable suggestions to the customers that, in the long run, will make winning differences for the company’s results and user satisfaction.

Working with a reliable service provider is essential if you decide to outsource your customer support. We at Wow24-7 believe that high-end customer support is always proactive, helpful, and empathetic. It allows us to deliver top-notch support services to customers worldwide.

Need a skilled support team that knows how to presale and upsell? Schedule a call with our representative or calculate the cost of delegating support services to our experts. Let’s make your clients say WOW!

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