by Dan Ross, SVP, Commercial Sales, Salesforce
Today’s customers are more demanding than ever. They want:
All these things will become commonplace for customer service in the future. The problem is that customers want them now. Manual processes and disconnected systems just aren’t suitable to meet these increasing demands, and what it all boils down to is this: Your business can’t be successful without a complete tech solution.
The customer experience is more important than price.
Think for a minute about companies you particularly love — maybe Amazon, Virgin, Zappos, or any other companies — and chances are they have one thing in common: a great customer experience.
Service and support have become differentiators. Today’s customers only want to buy from companies that provide a quality “experience” or a top-notch end-to-end service.
That means the customer experience is now just as important as price — and even as important as the very product a company sells.
Effective customer service teams are actively embracing four trends to create an outstanding customer experience, bring in more revenue, and create repeat customers. Let’s take a look.
Customers expect great service, so you’ve got to provide it. To do that, customer service teams have to go to where the customer is: Every channel, every touchpoint, every line of business. This ensures timely responses, but it’s also how your customer service team starts to function as a brand ambassador and additional sales channel.
Located a problem? Effective customer service teams would swoop in to provide help and recommend solutions. All this in turn, helps to create a unified front across the entire business to provide a great experience.
That unified front line I mentioned? It’s only possible if agents are empowered. Help your entire organisation to collaborate and put the customer first. Empower them to go above and beyond to ensure a great experience. To do that, you’ve got to go back to the basics:
Start-ups don’t fail due to a lack of funding; they fail due to a lack of customers. To stay on top of your business, you’ve got to share not just data and metrics, but also targets and accountability. As in, both sales and service are measured in the same categories.
For example, if your sales reps were measured by renewals or customer satisfaction scores, wouldn’t they be more helpful in customer implementations? If your support reps were measured on cross sell, wouldn’t they become more curious with customers and more collaborative with our sales team? Absolutely: High performing teams are 1.8x more likely to share goals (not just data) than under-performers.
Speaking of metrics, effective customer service teams are collecting, analysing, and acting on customer feedback. 79% of SMBs (small to medium sized businesses) believe it’s extremely, very, or somewhat important to their customers to work with support agents who know their service histories. So that’s what customers want, but how many companies can actually deliver? Intelligent service lets you answer questions, provide proactive solutions, and solve problems before the customer asks.
Created specifically for small businesses, the new Salesforce Service Cloud Essentials helps you capitalise on these four trends and offer an amazing customer experience.
Related: How Coca-Cola Aced Its Customer Service
Article first appeared on the Salesforce Blog.
Lava is an authorised Salesforce Partner in Malaysia and has more than a decade of experience in cloud solutions which includes marketing automation, CRM implementation, change management, and consultation. We pride ourselves in not just being a CRM partner but in also understanding the needs of our customers and taking their business to the next level.