As integration partners, Base and Zendesk work together to unify sales and support teams to provide more streamlined customer experiences. This is the final post in our four-part blog series dedicated to exploring the ways that sales and support can partner to help drive each other’s KPIs and business objectives.
Driving customer retention and focusing on customer growth both have very clear monetary gains. The deeper and longer your client relationships, the more these customers will invest in your business.
However, 80% of customer service organizations use customer satisfaction (CSAT) as the main metric for measuring customer experience – not retention or growth.
This makes sense when you realize that 13% of dissatisfied customers tell 15+ people about their poor experience, while 72% of satisfied customers will share their positive experience with 6 or more people. Clearly, customer satisfaction has the ability to make or break your business – not to mention, satisfied customers are much easier to retain and upsell.
As we noted in the first post of our series, two of the teams with the heaviest influence on customer experience are sales and support. Although CSAT may be the #1 metric for customer service teams, there are definitely ways that sales can help support create better customer experiences.
Provide Seamless Transitions
Sales reps are your customers’ primary points of contact throughout the buying cycle, educating them about your offering, answering their after-hour questions and generally guiding the entire purchase process. If your reps are good at what they do, it only makes sense that your clients will get attached.
Shifting customers away from this trusted confidant as soon as a contract is signed can cause confusion and anxiety for them if not done correctly. Post-sale transition alignment between sales and support is key for maintaining customer satisfaction and starting support’s relationship with the client off on the right foot.
Sales can facilitate this seamless transition by making sure that their customers know what they will be getting from their company in terms of people, not just product. Who will they communicate with on the support team? When and how should they submit a ticket? How soon can they expect a response?
Provide new customers with the answers to these types of questions upfront. We also suggest going so far as to introduce them to support via a quick phone call or email. Finally, the ability for support teams to see critical CRM data like account and deal information directly within their customer service platforms enables them to provide truly satisfying customer experiences straight out the gate.
While sales and support are two distinct departments, each with its own unique set of challenges and opportunities, this separation must never be felt by customers if CSAT is truly a priority for your organization.
Drive Resource Awareness
Has your customer success team created a support portal where customers can get answers to frequently asked questions? Do they conduct regular product webinars or have a host of “how-to” white papers? If so, don’t let your customers stumble upon these resources in a time of need.
Leading companies see up to 7x the number of issue resolutions through self-service support portals compared to live support interactions. Making sure that prospects and customers are aware of the support resources at their disposal is critical to timely and effective issue resolution, which in turn impacts customer satisfaction.
This same philosophy applies for when a customer reaches back out to their sales rep with a support question. When replying with the answer to a customer inquiry, sales should simply state that while they’re happy to provide assistance, the support team is available and may be able to answer questions more quickly and thoroughly. Offer up your support line number or email address (even if you know that they already have it), or even cc someone on the team and make an introduction.
Reminding clients that they have multiple avenues for help and directing them toward the team best equipped to handle their needs is sure to have positive long-term effects on your company’s CSAT scores.
Increase CSAT ASAP
Integrating sales and support tools makes it possible for customer service and sales teams to work together like never before. By aligning around account transitions and available resources, sales and support can create positive customer experiences that keep clients highly satisfied.
Source: B2C
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