Most businesses approach to sales is different to their approach to customer service. Sales teams have targets. They are on commission. They have lots of meetings, and generally have varied schedules and busy diaries. Customer service teams on the other hand are in the office 100% of the time, usually with the same schedule every day.
These two integral business teams may seem like polar opposites, they are actually 2 sides of the same coin: the happy customer coin.
Understanding how to leverage this will help your business deliver a better customer experience from the time they call for a quote to the time they call for support years later. Here we outline the 4 things that will ensure your organisation makes the most of this service opportunity.
Realise the fine line between sales and service. Customer service spans both pre-purchase and post-purchase activities. Sales activities target new and existing customers. There is not much difference between the conversations that customer service agents and inside sales reps have prior to a customer purchase — explaining the details of a product or helping properly onboard a customer. In addition, the technology capabilities that these roles use to interact with customers are similar, even though they are currently provided via separate sales automation and customer service application ecosystems.
Deliver highly personal engagement. Relationships matter — and customers expect interactions personalised to who they are, what they have done, and what they are currently doing. To meet these expectations, sales and service personnel must have a full view of the customer; details about their industry; their interaction and transaction history; their current account status, which includes open incidents; and even their current context and journey. Accessing this information quickly makes for a better customer experience, which is why business telephone system – CRM integration is gaining huge popularity. With it, callers CRM records pop up on screen as the phone rings amongst other benefits.
Learn to work side by side with online sales and service portals. In today’s online sales and service world, humanised customer relationships become rarer and even more important. Sales and customer service personnel must learn how to work side by side and leverage the online experience, exploiting the unique advantages it offers. For example, customers can learn a great deal about products online before ever actually speaking to a sales rep. Use this to your advantage by skipping the product pitch and delve right into answering questions and addressing how you can help with their unique needs.
Use collaboration tools that allow for real-time internal interactions. It isn’t just telephony-CRM integration technology that will make a big difference to your customer journey. Sales and support teams need the tools to speak to each other, instantaneously. Collaboration tools such as instant chat, phone presence (availability) and file sharing mean that a sales rep and support rep can communicate to solve a problem in a matter of seconds, while the customer waits. This is a huge driver in customer satisfaction numbers — people like their problems to be solved quickly.
About VTSL
VTSL offers hosted VoIP business telephony for organisations looking to modernise their communications system. The service includes the ability for employees to work from anywhere, as well as dozens of features from auto-attendants, to on-hold music, to call queues and integration with CRM systems. VTSL were awarded Best Business VoIP Provider by industry body ITSPA last year, and are the only company in the UK to offer VoIP business telephony on the user-friendly Silhouette platform. Learn more about how your business can get ahead with the right unified communications technology by calling 020 7078 3200 or emailing info@vtsl.net today.
