Before partnering with Cresta, Sleep Number piloted chat as a channel for customer care around 2011. “Our plan was to build a department around a model of primarily customer service, along with a consultative sales experience,” explained Alan Smith, Digital Experience Manager at Sleep Number. However, several years after implementation, the team noticed that customers were more and more drawn to this model for sales-related inquiries – and that it carried a lot of revenue potential.
“Around 2018, we started to see this real exponential growth in revenue,” Smith told us. “And we started seeing this increase in percentage penetration to the overall company’s revenue.”
While the team was generating incredible success, the approach was not without its challenges. “Agents are simultaneously providing customer service and driving revenue for the company, while taking multiple chats with multiple contacts,” Smith explained. “With over 30 years worth of products, this involves having to have a super broad expansive knowledge of our products. Our sales process is constantly updating.”
To keep the team performing at unprecedented levels, the team needed to stay on the cutting edge of modern automation. And that’s where Cresta came in.
Cresta Agent Assist has helped Sleep Number to hone their unique sales-to-service model, where agents start with rigorous sales training and experience before going through any service training. “That way, they can really focus on honing their skills, focus on receptivity and adoption. This is another place that Cresta really comes in and is incredibly useful,” Smith explained. “It helps frame up what the expectations of their role are going to be far better. We see a difference in performance of those folks – their long-term tenure with the company and their satisfaction with their role is night and day.”
For Sleep Number, it was about reframing how their agents saw themselves – rather than solely focusing on customer service, as contact centers traditionally have, these agents “think of themselves as sales agents who also handle service.” Through Cresta Agent Assist, Smith and his team of managers have been able to shine a spotlight on the behaviors that are – or sometimes more critically are not – performing, allowing them to quickly rethink their approach to training and coaching. Prior to Cresta, Smith’s team had an agent-to-leader ratio that created “too large of a group to be able to meaningfully coach in a one-on-one scenario on a regular basis” Smith told us. With instant access to how different agents are performing, managers are able to clearly see the opportunities and the necessary ways to continually level the team up – something they previously could not have done without Cresta.
“From the standpoint of the sales process, we’ve seen significant improvement.”
To learn more about how Sleep Number has implemented Cresta and seen incredible success across their contact center team, read our newest case study now!
