Call Center Management Featured Article
Customer Service in the Age of On-Demand Services
Successful sales people tend to be big picture individuals. They’re all about closing the deal. And that’s great, because that’s what we need to make business succeed.
However, because sales people are so keenly focused on closing deals so they can get their commissions, they sometimes forget about after sale support. And that’s not so great.
As a result, customers may feel ignored and become frustrated. That can lead to bad worth of mouth and customer churn.
Customer churn is not good for business, because it costs more to win new customers than to onboard new ones. Plus, new on-demand service models mean businesses increasingly rely on recurring revenue from their customers.
In the new world of sales, the days of one-and-done customer interactions don’t really work anymore. So sales people need to keep in touch with customers, quickly respond to their requests for help, understand their needs at the time of sale and over time, and provide them with intelligence and offers to keep customers abreast of new opportunities.
Some sales people are great at this kind of thing, and they’ve been doing it all along. Others need to change their thinking and processes to better address this new sales imperative. But both types stand to benefit from solutions like advanced CRM, intelligent help desk software, sales acceleration, and marketing automation solutions that are now available.
Advanced CRM solutions can help sales people better understand their customers so they can offer the right solutions at the right time. Context-aware help desk software can allow customers to share complaints and change their services so sales people and others on staff know what’s happening and can respond appropriately. And sales acceleration and marketing automation can help sales staff keep in touch with customers and prospects with a steady (but not overwhelming) stream of relevant educational content and company offers.
Edited by Maurice Nagle