8 WAYS SALES AND CUSTOMER SERVICE CAN ACTUALLY WORK TOGETHER
8 WAYS SALES AND CUSTOMER SERVICE CAN ACTUALLY WORK TOGETHER
Businesses today confront bigger obstacles than ever before to keep customers satisfied.
It’s easier and less expensive than ever to start a new business, and a variety of different subscription and payment options make it easier to start using or switch to using new products. Plus, with a vast audience of social media followers at their fingertips, your customers have power and control over what the internet thinks about your brand – good or bad.
And, with so many options accessible today, even the smallest disturbance in the service they receive from your organization can send them running for the door to one of your competitors.
Whether it’s selling to a bad-fit consumer or failing to meet expectations after a customer has been closed, if customers don’t believe you’re keeping your half of the bargain, it’s quick and easy for them to discover a better option.
And clients have much higher expectations of the teams assisting them than ever before: They don’t want to sit through advertisements; they want you to provide them with the information they require. They don’t want to be sold to; instead, they want constructive advice.
They don’t want to contact a customer service number and wait on hold; instead, they want to connect with a support representative instantaneously via live chat. With the increased risk of customers churning in favor of less expensive competitors or due to missed expectations, it’s more important than ever for before sales and customer service to collaborate to achieve better alignment and communication in their shared missions to acquire and retain customers.
In this blog post, we’ll look at how sales and customer support teams should work together – and who oversees certain aspects of that collaboration.
Customer Service and Sales
When sales and customer care teams collaborate, they create a more comfortable, user-friendly buying experience. Sales staff assist clients in locating products and services, while customer service ensures that their interactions with the company remain favorable over time. This results in long-term consumer satisfaction and word-of-mouth referrals for potential leads.
Sales and customer service should work together to benefit each other in a variety of ways. After all, these two divisions spend the most time interacting with customers at your company. Because they have a personal connection with your consumer base, each has unique insights that can help the other. Your organization will generate a more delightful client experience by sharing information across the two divisions.
We’ve put together a few examples to show how sales and customer service teams can collaborate.
8 Case Studies of Successful Sales and Customer Service Alignment
- Salespeople should invest in their customers’ relationships.
Salespeople used to be able to conclude a deal and never speak to the consumer again.
Today’s salespeople should initiate the relationship and maintain it throughout the customer’s time working with their company.
That doesn’t mean the customer service representative or customer success manager (CSM) won’t continue to be the lead person in charge of resolving customer issues and guiding them toward the most effective use of your product or service to achieve their goals.
It simply implies that the salesperson should continue to create a relationship with them. Not to achieve anything transactional or to elicit additional purchases from the customer – but to create another point of contact between your customer and your brand without expecting anything in return.
Loyal consumers are satisfied clients that adore your brand as well as your goods or service. According to Harvard Business Review research, customers who have an emotional connection to a brand are twice as likely to be loyal than customers who are content with the goods and service they received.
Salespeople should maintain relationships with customers to better align and communicate with their customer service colleagues, but also to be lovely people that your customers like hearing from and interacting with on social media. These clients will share your content, be more adaptable and understanding of product issues or price changes, and will promote you to their relatives and friends.
- Customer support representatives should be aware of the sales process.
If you faced any resistance throughout the sales process that you believe may have an impact on the future relationship between a customer and your counterpart on the customer support team, notify the customer service rep as soon as possible so that there are no surprises in the future.
Both the seller and the customer service representative should correctly set expectations. However, if the salesperson is concerned that a customer will back out of the deal, or that pricing changes will be a major roadblock that will result in customer churning, the sooner the customer service rep is made aware, the sooner they can address misaligned expectations and save the relationship.
Before and after the sales-to-service transition, the salesperson and customer service representative should communicate to ensure that all sides are on the same page and exchanging best practices for managing what could be a difficult customer relationship.
- Customer service should share customer information.
For both the sales and customer service teams, proper documentation of the ongoing connection is crucial. Salespeople should be able to see continuous contacts with customer support to determine when to call out and whether a client is likely to churn or renew their subscription.
Meanwhile, customer service representatives should document their interactions with customers to help them keep track of the various conversations and emails that occur throughout the day, as well as to make it transparent across their team in case they need to collaborate with other specialists to resolve customer issues.
(Technology is critical in making this happen. Neubrain provides free CRM and shared inbox capabilities that allow numerous employees across teams to easily document and share information about various customer connections and interactions across channels.)
- Service representatives should look for opportunities to upsell and cross-sell.
Customer service representatives will be the best people to identify opportunities to upsell and cross-sell new items and services to consumers since they will communicate with them more frequently and spend more time monitoring their actions utilizing a product or service after they’ve closed.
It’s critical to find the perfect occasion to provide an upsell or cross-sell so that salespeople don’t come across as aggressive; rather, these offers should be seen as useful and relevant to the customer.
Customer service representatives can assist in identifying crucial points in the customer lifecycle to offer an upsell, or they can point out behaviors or activities customers are performing that indicate they are ready to spend more resources in a solution better suited to their needs. Then they can offer their sales colleague a heads up to complete the deal.
- Customer service representatives should offer comments.
If the customer service rep encounters any missed expectations later in the relationship, or if they notice trends among new customers that they encounter an obstacle after a certain period of use, they can share that feedback with salespeople to help them improve their positioning during the sales process.
This regular feedback is critical for ensuring that the sales and customer service teams are on the same page and that salespeople aren’t closing bad-fit customers who churn a few months later.
- Customer referrals should be generated via customer service.
After working with clients for a while, customer service representatives can discover possible prospects for brand evangelism. Happy customers that are invested in your product or service and enjoy working with you are excellent candidates to assist you in growing your business even further by writing reviews and testimonials, serving as case studies, or linking you with referrals.
Customer service representatives can gain credibility by developing a solid relationship with a customer and assisting them in achieving success. These customer evangelism initiatives can bring in highly qualified, warm leads that are free to produce for your sales staff, and these consumers are more likely to remain loyal to your brand, purchase more frequently, and spend more than others.
- Client service representatives should share customer stories.
Customer interactions are typically highly memorable when you provide excellent customer service. These kinds of testimonials are used by sales teams to boost the reputation of your business and promote the performance of your customer care team.
Another advantage is that it helps to build a brand voice. This advertisement is lighthearted and humorous, with values that the company’s target demographic can readily relate to and identify with. As salespeople know how to approach an ideal customer, this sets the tone for sales encounters.
- Sales should collaborate with customer success frequently.
Customer satisfaction is a proactive function of customer service. It seeks to eliminate bottlenecks before customers encounter them. Salespeople should check in with this branch of your customer support team frequently to uncover timely opportunities to upsell.
This is especially important throughout the onboarding process. If a new customer buys the basic version of your product but truly requires the premium membership, customer success can alert sales about the upgrade. This allows your team to capitalize on a prospective sale while still putting the consumer first.
CONCLUSION-
Want to learn more about how to effectively align sales and customer service? Then, to optimize the sales-to-service contact us. Our Experts are eager to skyrocket your sales and make your service be the footprint of your Success!
At Neubrain, we have developed proven marketing strategies through SEO, Content Marketing, Personal Outreach, and other B2B marketing techniques that have a long term impact on the business.
