What is BANT?
What is “BANT”?
BANT is a method for narrowing down prospects in B2B sales that was introduced by IBM in the 1960s. It is a sales framework in which
salespeople match four conditions to each prospect to determine the likelihood of them purchasing a service .
▽BANT Information
Budget
Authority
Needs
Time frame
A service or product will sell if there is a budget, someone with decision-making authority feels the need for it, and the timing for implementation is clear.
BANT in one word
In short, it can be summarised as above.
Nowadays, there are various frameworks that apply BANT, such as BANTC and MEDDIC, and some people say that "BANT is outdated," but in my personal opinion, "BANT" is still a very useful framework .
It has a good ring to it, is easy to remember, and is simple and easy to use, which are its points that make it unrivaled.
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Running a call center with "BANT"?
Customers purchase new brazil telegram phone number list services and products to solve their current problems and improve their current situation.
In fact, the mindset when contacting a call center is similar; customers contact the call center to solve their current problems and improve their situation.
As mentioned at the beginning, we tried to consider optimal call center operations from the customer's perspective by applying the sales framework "BANT" to call center operations.
Is that even possible?!
Budget
We have listed the budget that customers need when calling the call center.
Telephone charges
Although free flat-rate plans for mobile phones are on the rise, for those who have contracts that incur communication fees, the cost of calling is a visible burden.
If companies provide pay-per-call services such as toll-free numbers and free calls, this can reduce the burden on customers and lead to high levels of satisfaction.
It is often said that "time is money," but the time it takes to respond to an inquiry is also a cost, since it takes up the customer's valuable time.
It is important to shorten the time from inquiry to resolution, such as when it is difficult to get through on the phone, when a case takes a long time to be dealt with, or when a customer is put on hold for a long time.
Paid support
In some cases, support may be paid for, such as when a customer visits the company in response to an inquiry.
If the support is not covered by free support, it is of course a necessary cost, but there are many complaints from customers that they "didn't know there would be a fee .
" The fact that there will be a fee is a disadvantage for customers, and it is difficult to tell them, but that is why it is especially important to always explain things thoroughly and make sure they understand.
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Authority
When making inquiries to a call center, there are various patterns for the person who makes the decision for the case.
In many cases, the response flow is based on the "person" making the inquiry, but there are also many cases where a parent, child, sibling, or other relative, a roommate, or a friend makes an inquiry on behalf of the customer.
When designing your contact point in advance, you will be able to provide appropriate service to all customers every time by clearly defining the items required to verify the identity of the customer and the representative , as well as the conditions for the representative that can be requested depending on the case.
Needs
Customers make inquiries because they need to.
And when that need arises, there is no way to resolve the issue if they don't know where and how to resolve it.
It is necessary to display the contact methods on products, websites, flyers, and various other media, and to spread the information to customers. There are
various methods, such as telephone, chat, inquiry forms, and community sites, but customer convenience should be prioritized and a contact point that can meet demand should be provided.
Even now, when inquiry channels have diversified, the channel with the most demand remains telephone.
Unless there is a very good reason, we recommend that you have at least a telephone contact point available as a minimum .
Time frame
If we define the T in BANT as "the timing of requesting support" and think of it as the reception hours of a call center, the best support system would undoubtedly be one that operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
A system where "you can make inquiries whenever you want" is a great system for customers.
However, it is realistically difficult to have fully trained employees in-house respond to all customer requests 24 hours a day. We would like to design a support system that suits our company in various ways, such as concentrating
support hours on core times such as weekdays during the day, utilizing chatbots, and utilizing outsourcing .
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summary
This time, we will introduce the standard sales framework "BANT" and use this as a basis to consider the call center operations that customers want.
"BANT" measures the degree of customer purchase intent and enables us to propose the best service at the best time.
In this article, we applied it to a call center and used it as a methodology to provide the best support at the best time when the customer wants support.
There are probably many more items that fall under the "BANT" criteria, and even if you meet these criteria, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will have the best counter.
We hope that this will be of some use to you as you make daily improvements and increase the number of great counters for your customers.
