Kohler Increases Set Rates by 50% & Exceeds Sales Goals with 800response

Background:

Kohler has been working with 800response consistently exceeding sales goals since 2016. 800response’s lead tracking data and interaction analytics are instrumental to Kohler developing national advertising strategies and evaluating Dealer performance with an eye on business growth. The partnership has helped Kohler optimize marketing investments and efficiently monitor calls for quality assurance and script compliance across their network of 27 Dealers.

Neil Jochman, Senior Sales Executive for Kohler’s Direct Response business, is responsible for launching Kohler’s call center operations. With 10 years of experience running enterprise call centers, Jochman has a keen understanding of compliance processes and the importance of quality assurance to improve the contact center’s revenue performance.

Challenge #1: Attribution Metrics & Access to Customer Insights

Kohler invests a substantial amount in marketing and advertising to generate tens of thousands of leads every month. Identifying top-performing marketing channels and measuring conversion rates are vital to formulating strategies and budgets to support their independent Dealers.

Jochman identified some needed enhancements for their call centers to efficiently receive and respond to inbound leads, increase set rates, and improve the attribution metrics and demographic data to better understand their target customers.

Solution: Accurate Lead Analytics & Custom CRM Integration

800response provides household income and home value data on every caller, which Kohler uses to accurately track marketing channel performance and the quality of each lead. Jochman’s team leverages these analytics to identify opportunities for improving marketing messaging and making more informed decisions on which channels to invest their marketing dollars.

“We strive to take advantage of the customer data that 800response delivers to us for every inbound caller in a couple important ways,” says Jochman. “Our first goal is to attribute every inbound lead to the correct marketing channel, which I think is really important in understanding how all of our marketing plays together at any given point in time.”

800response worked with Jochman to build a direct connection to Kohler’s existing CRM, enabling Kohler to drastically reduce lead response times. Through a combination of integrations, Jochman’s team can now instantly feed leads into their CRM, which are then immediately sent to a Dealer to follow up and set an appointment. 

Jochman adds, “We have hundreds of different marketing sources for lead generation. By filtering lead attribution data into a system that also provides additional customer data, we now have the ability to run more advanced analytics in the back end.”

Results: High Caliber Leads + Speed to Lead = 30% More Sales

With enhanced customer demographic data and live CRM feeds, Kohler responds to every inbound caller in less than 30 seconds, maintaining what they call “speed to lead.” This has increased Kohler’s appointment set rate by 50%, and conversion to sale by 30%.

According to Jochman, “There have been studies on lead to conversion rates, and there’s a substantial increase in conversion if you can connect with a customer in less than a minute. Getting to them in 30 seconds is a difficult task, and there’s a lot of factors that go into that beyond just an API, like staffing, but it’s certainly an important part, and it’s proving to pay off.” Jochman and his team track these KPIs regularly with lead tracking tools from 800response.

With the combination of attribution tracking and customer analytics, Kohler can see that over 95% of their leads come in during regular business hours. These insights allow them to work with Dealers to schedule staff accordingly to cover peak hours when customers call to schedule appointments.

Challenge #2: Inability to Efficiently Monitor Large Call Volumes

With Jochman’s call center experience, he understands the importance of analyzing customer interactions. He also knows how difficult it is to evaluate the customer experience with traditional manual QA. Kohler worked with 800response and CallFinder to analyze the company’s needs and use SaaS quality monitoring technology to make the QA process at Kohler more efficient.

Solution: Automated Insights for Every Interaction

Kohler now uses automated interaction analytics gained from the 800response and CallFinder solutions to:

1. Monitor calls to uncover trends, such as empathy and peace-of-mind statements
2. Develop scripts based on those trends and monitor Dealers’ script compliance
3. Gain insights into how independent Dealers position the brand and products
4. Deliver exceptional customer experiences on-brand with Kohler’s expectations

Jochman’s team leaned on the CallFinder team to build automated scorecards for Kohler’s call center managers. The scorecards provide an unbiased evaluation of every agent interaction based on a set of mandatory criteria for each phone conversation between a Dealer and a customer. The CallFinder solution lets Kohler measure the quality of 100% of phone conversations to ensure Dealers are compliant and providing the best possible experience for Kohler’s customers. 

Jochman explains, “I’m sure it’s not surprising that our brand image in the marketplace is very important to us, and it is something we constantly analyze. CallFinder’s automated scorecards are instrumental in improving the quality of our customer interactions and are a big part of understanding how our call center agents interact with customers.”

Combined Results = Exceeding Sales Goals: 50% Increase in Set Rates + 30% More Sales

Identifying Training Opportunities: Jochman and his team have used agent insights to develop training programs focused on increasing conversions. Jochman shares, “We found that a very specific phrase, ‘I’m sorry that you’re going through these challenges. I think you did the right thing by calling us,’ led to a 50% increase in set rates for our Dealers when that one phrase was present in the conversation with callers. Discovering those valuable insights with CallFinder has led to dedicated coaching initiatives for our Dealers, focused on continued improvements in set rates and conversions.”

Exceeding Sales Targets: Since using CallFinder, one of Kohler’s key takeaways is understanding that showing empathy on every call is critical to establishing trust and comfort with their customers. This led to a better customer experience, and as a result of those relationship-building efforts, Kohler is reaping the rewards with 30% more sales.

Making Data-based Business Decisions: Leveraging CallFinder’s solution and in-depth interaction analytics, Kohler is now making business decisions based on data, not hunches. The company is using those insights to generate sales conversions and promote positive customer experiences based on agent insights and sentiment analysis of interactions.

Final Thoughts from Kohler

Jochman shares some final thoughts on Kohler’s success from working with 800response and CallFinder: “It’s a great efficiency and success story. We can assure our Dealers are providing valuable, empathetic interactions on the thousands of customer calls each month, which builds our invaluable reputation in the market. All of these interactions are daunting to manage, especially when the management team is small. The only way we can do that is through the efficiency that comes from the call analytics that the 800response and CallFinder solutions provide.”