Performing well on inbound calls is an important part of running a successful business. But that’s not always as easy as it sounds. In the modern of choice and personalization, customers expect a more tailored experience – even when they call you.

But how do you do that?

We created this article to tell you. Keep reading to discover the power of personalization in inbound calls and for detailed guidance on how bringing personalization to your inbound process can improve your company’s performance.

The Power of Personalization in Inbound Calls

Nearly every stat you look at confirms the importance of personalization in modern marketing, customer service, and sales processes.

For example, 90% of leading marketers say personalization significantly contributes to business profitability. 89% of businesses are investing in personalization because of that, and 64% of customers now expect a personalized shopping experience.

But why is that?

The answer is almost common sense. But it’s still something that not enough businesses are applying to their inbound calls. Customers value personalization because they want products and services that are as closely aligned with their needs and preferences as possible.

When you give someone a generic experience on an inbound call, it may or may not be the experience they want. But if you offer each caller a personalized conversation, you’re going to give them exactly what they’re looking for every time – or at least much more consistently than you would by offering the same generic experience to every caller.

The bottom line is that personalization helps businesses win and retain more customers by giving each potential client the exact support or sales experience they want. That’s a lesson that applies company-wide – not just to your inbound calls.

Crafting Personalized Inbound Call Scripts

So – now that we’ve covered why personalization is worth pursuing, let’s talk about how you can add it to your inbound call scripts. Here are some tips to get you started.

Understand Your Audience

A good first step is to improve your understanding of your target audience. When we talk about personalization, it means providing a unique experience to every caller. But what you’ll find is that the callers you receive tend to fall into distinct categories.

For example, some callers may want a streamlined sales experience, whereas others may be looking for a longer conversation and someone who can answer some questions for them. Making distinctions like this early in the conversation can help a sales representative choose the right script for the conversation more often, which can improve customer satisfaction rates and reconversions.

The key here is understanding the different types of inbound calls you receive and trying to group them into categories based on shared characteristics. If you can do that and create inbound scripts for each type of caller, your inbound call experience is instantly going to feel much more personalized to the customer.

Use Customer Data Effectively

Splitting your target audience into distinct groups is something you may be able to start doing on your own. But if you really want to make sure you get it right, then you need to take customer data into account so that the decisions you make are as objectively right as possible.

You can leverage the power of data analytics to do this. There are various tools that will take customer data as input and produce insights into their preferences and habits as output.

Finding these tools and building them into your business process could be the key to taking your inbound call personalization to the next level. If you need help with that process, consider contacting The Cattalyst for a free consultation. Our experts can help you find and integrate the right technology so that your business can use the data it’s likely generating much more effectively than it is currently.

Use Real-World Case Studies

Another great way to bring powerful personalization to your inbound call scripts is by leveraging real-world case studies that are relevant to your caller’s interests.

For example, if a caller wants some information about one of your products, try to have a sales representative tell them about how a similar client has used that product to achieve the results that this client wants. If you can do that and back the information up with real data, you’re going to achieve a level of personalization in the sales process that the competition won’t be able to match.

To do this, you may need to commission someone to write up real-world case studies in a compelling way. You might also need to contact a trusted client to see if they would be willing to be featured in such a case study.

Overcoming Challenges in Personalization

Personalization is a tactic that can have a huge impact on your inbound call performance. But it’s not without its challenges. You may find that you struggle to get as much value out of the strategy as you could be.

If that happens to you, then altering your approach in a few key ways could be all that it takes to get back on track. Here are four ways you can do that to overcome challenges in personalization.

Measure Your Results

Perhaps the most important thing you can do to overcome challenges in personalization is to start measuring your results. The only way to truly know if what you’re doing is working is to measure the impact that the changes you’ve made are having on the metrics that matter to your business.

For example, when measuring the success rate of inbound calls, you might look at the percentage of calls that lead to a purchase. A simple measurement you could do would be to compare the success rate of your inbound calls before and after instituting personalization. If the improvements aren’t as much as you’d hoped, it’s a clear sign that changes are needed.

Just make sure that you’re leaving enough time for the changes that you make to have an impact. Some changes may take weeks or even months to play out to the point where you have reliable enough data to make decisions about how they’re working.

A/B Test Different Ideas

Measuring your general success rate on inbound calls can be helpful. But it doesn’t tell you what changes you should make in the future to find even more success. A/B testing is a practice that can do exactly that.

A/B testing is the strategy of testing out two similar ideas with one key difference. For example, you might use two inbound scripts that are entirely the same except for the opener used by the sales rep. You would then measure the results for each script and see which one does better for you. The one that wins has the better opener and it’s the one you should adopt moving forward.

This is something you can do with every aspect of your inbound call script. As you go through and A/B test each section of your script, your results should get better and better until you truly feel like you have the perfect personalized scripts for every situation.

Adapt to Changing Customer Preferences

Another thing to keep in mind about personalization is that consumers aren’t static entities. Their desires, needs, and preferences will change and evolve over time. That means the personalization work you do today may be entirely irrelevant several years from now.

It’s why you should never stop measuring your results. You’ll know that it’s time to adapt your script when messaging that was previously working for you is starting to decline in efficacy.

Retrain Your Sales Agents

As a business leader working on integrating personalization into your inbound calls, the truth is, you can do everything right and still not see the results you want. When you feel like that’s starting to happen, it’s likely a sign that you need to put your sales or customer service agents through additional training.

It’s possible that the weakness of your personalization strategy isn’t in the decisions that you making, but in the people who are executing your plan. At this point, it could make sense to bring in an outside expert who can identify your team’s biggest issues and help them move forward with new training on the latest methods in handling inbound calls.

The Cattalyst Can Help You Unlock the Power of Personalization in Inbound Calls

Personalization is a simple strategy that can be very difficult to do well. If your efforts aren’t having the impact you want, then consider getting in touch with The Cattalyst.

We have decades of experience in the call service industry and offer a wide variety of services that help companies like yours grow and improve. From technological consulting to sales training, our experts can help your business take the next step toward its goals.

So why wait?

Get in touch with us today for a free consultation and we’ll tell you more about what we can do to help.