When sales and customer-service teams collaborate, they improve the customer experience.
Your sales and customer-service teams have the closest relationships with your customers. They deal with prospective and existing customers every day, and they play a significant role in the customer experience. While these teams are traditionally separate, they shouldn't be.
If your sales and customer-service teams work in silos, you miss valuable opportunities. Your face a higher risk of customer dissatisfaction and churn. By fostering collaboration between sales and customer service, you improve the customer experience and increase your customers’ lifetime value. But where to start? How do you bring sales and customer service together? Keep these tips in mind.
1. Ensure a smooth handoff between sales and customer service.
After the sales team has successfully onboarded a new client, the handoff to customer service should be seamless. Ensure the customer feels valued and isn’t treated like a number once the deal closes.
The sales team should facilitate this transition and personally hand off the new client to a customer-service rep, or provide detailed (but easy-to-follow) advice on how to access customer service.
2. Properly introduce the customer to the customer service team.
As part of the handoff, the salesperson should update customer service about the client. Do they have any unique needs or concerns? What issues could prevent the sale? The sales team should share any information that will help provide optimal customer support.
3. Share feedback about customers with the sales team.
Once the customer-service group gets to know your new client, they should share feedback with the sales team. They should alert them which customers are valuable, and which are a poor fit. It’s not productive to arbitrarily onboard customers; a sales team must build a most valuable client base.
4. Create a consistent sales and service experience.
Customers should also enjoy a consistent brand experience across sales and customer service. If the sales team was buttoned-up and professional, the customer service team should follow. If the sales team acts casually and friendly, customer service should do likewise.
People expect consistent brand experiences. Sales and customer service reps have differing personalities, but how they treat customers should align with your brand image. If a customer holds a perception about your company, it’s jarring to learn the company behaves otherwise.
5. Foster emotional connections with your brand.
Your customer service team’s central focus should be customer satisfaction. Your sales team will succeed when prospective customers feel well served by the sales process. But satisfaction is not enough; you need to forge bonds with customers.
When customers have emotional connections with brands, they are twice as likely to be loyal customers than customers who are merely satisfied. You keep customers satisfied by providing great products or services. Customer service helps them navigate the buying process and answers their questions.
How do you foster emotional connections? By appealing to emotional motivators. Leverage the idea that your products or services will help customers join a group, improve their future, or make them more secure. When your business helps customers feel a sense of belonging, protect their world, or meet their expectations, they feel satisfied. But more importantly, they love your brand.
In most cases, this emotional connection does not come from the product or service. It comes from interactions with sales and customer service.
6. Have salespeople check in with customers.
To facilitate emotional connections, the sales team must check in with new customers. They don't have to use check-ins to make sales. Instead, they should reconnect with the customer. They should ensure a customer’s positive brand experience. They should ask if they can help access customer-service tools or improve their experience in other ways.
7. Train customer service to look for upselling or cross-selling opportunities.
Customer service knows your clients. They understand customers’ relationships with your products or services. Train them to look for actions that indicate a customer wants more from your company and engage the sales team to upsell or cross-sell.
Sales and customer service often overlap. Your sales team acts like brand ambassadors when they're onboarding new clients. Customer service often handles the upselling and cross-selling. To make the most of their skills, create opportunities for these teams to mentor and support each other. Also, make sure to give these teams the tools to collaborate and share information.
Contact MetaGrowth to improve your sales team
MetaGrowth helps companies recruit, train, and manage world-class sales teams. We understand what sales teams need to do to be successful, and working with the customer service team is a big part of that process. Ready to take your business to the next level? Want scalable, sustainable growth? Contact us today to discuss how our services can help your business.
Written by
Joe Arioto