Oleksii Skrypka, founder and CEO of EVE.calls, shares some tips and tricks on how business owners can improve their call center conversion rate in times of crisis. This is an edited version, read the full article here.

Economic crisis squeezes consumers' purchasing power, and business owners are normally unable to expand call centers and make more outbound calls. The only way out is to work on increasing sales conversion rates with the employees you already have. 

This can be done in three ways:

• entrust calls to artificial intelligence
• quickly teach employees some powerful sales techniques outlined below
• make AI and your sales staff work together

Now I'll give you some tried-and-tested selling techniques not all call center managers know. And yet they are great tools to strategically lead customers through your sales cycle and increase conversion rate at no cost.

Build trust: Address a potential customer by name and introduce yourself, but in such a way that he/she immediately understands that you can be of service.

You need to create an association with something familiar: if you're a big-name brand, telling its name should be enough to grab attention. But if not, you better mention some of the major clients you have or had.

For example, an exhibition manager would listen more closely if you’d say say that you work with some leading exhibition managers (if that's true, of course).

And another tip: it will be easier to gain trust if you briefly highlight the key achievements of your company and mention your position.

Confirm the customer's need: Make sure the customer actually has a problem you can solve. But ask this delicately – most people wouldn’t cry on a stranger's shoulder.

Speak in a roundabout way, for example, ask whether the person is satisfied with the current situation or the goods and services he/she uses now.

Reinforce the need: point out that if left unresolved, the problem may tend to grow. And right after that, help the client imagine a different, positive scenario.

For example, he is frustrated with low sales - 3-5 per day but would like to achieve 10-15 sales per day.

Your move is to ask if his business would cope with the flow of customers in case he made 20-25 sales per day. And by doing so, you make it clear to him that such a scenario is quite real.

Offer a solution with a deadline and a measurable result: specify precisely what and when the client will get once they agree to the proposal. For example, sales will gain 30% in a month.

And remember, when clients say they need some time to consider and promise to call you back, they will most certainly forget.

Make a time-limited offer and encourage to take immediate action, such as following a temporary link and signing up. If this isn't a good time for the client, ask when you can call back and remind them of the upcoming deadlines.

Handle objections thoroughly: in case a client refuses, ask why. If it's about money, you should take another shot at delivering the value of the product and show that your offer will bring more profit in the long run.

Ensure that your salespeople are armed with these best practices, and our voice robot has mastered them already. So the choice is yours - to make do with the call center only, entrust communication to artificial intelligence, or adopt a hybrid approach.

In most cases, the third option, namely the joint efforts of managers and voice AI, turns out to be the best.

Eve can easily replace the first line of your call center, identifying and categorizing customer needs and getting them interested in the product. And this will be followed by further targeted work carried out by the managers.

But it must be taken into account that each company’s business processes have their specific features and need a nuanced, market-specific approach to choosing forms of customer communication. We have already developed effective strategies for dozens of enterprises of all sizes and sectors. So we believe our deep expertise will help you find a solution that would suit your business's unique needs.