In this article, we discuss customer service strategies that can increase sales and revenue.
Every customer service interaction is an opportunity to create a positive experience. Do that consistently and those good vibe interactions become a conduit for introducing new products and solutions.
Sounds easy, right?
Like many things, it is made more complicated than it actually is. One mistake is treating sales and service as separate functions with no overlap. This overlooks the shared skills between the groups: the ability to listen, represent the brand, and seek solutions to customer issues.
The two disciplines are not identical, but they are complementary.
How Should You Measure the Impact of Customer Service on Sales?
How do you measure the impact of customer care on sales?
It begins with what you are measuring. Performance metrics driven by rapid call handle times, first-contact resolution, and productivity indicate service through a cost-center viewpoint. The goal is to attack as many support issues as possible, as accurately as possible, in as short a time as possible. Efficient, effective, optimized, but not necessarily an “experience.”
But when the metrics include conversion rates, per-contact revenue, and CSAT, you’re in the revenue zone. Handle time may still matter, but now it comes with a dollar figure to support the added minutes taken with a customer. Money and time, a combination within almost every financial transaction. And since agents have access to customers’ buying histories and preferences, they should be able to recognize potential sales opportunities when presented with one.
These twin sets of KPIs can be merged to take advantage of the service agent’s success in resolving the issue and product line expertise, and combine it with a salesperson’s ability to engage and ask further questions based on a customer’s habits. Merging the two is the hurdle. It involves transitioning from the linear mindset of support – see the issue, fix the issue, go to the next one – to an approach that resolves the problem but also sees a potential opportunity to pursue.
How to Pivot from Support to Sales?
Settling a customer’s service issue gains credibility for the agent. In this scenario, the agent uses that goodwill to extend the relationship and can confidently pivot from being a problem-solver to being something of an adviser who will pursue a possible sale.
It’s important to remember the use of “possible” sales. Every single service contact will not result in new revenue, nor should that be the expectation. As we discussed in a previous post, How to Improve Customer Retention providing consistently high-quality service can have its own impact on revenue through greater customer retention.
Learning to pivot from customer service to sales requires additional training on things such as customer buying habits, the complementary nature of products, and keeping an inventory of what customers say.
In speaking with customers every day, agents will be attuned to brewing trends or emerging pain points and, as such, will be in a strong position to recognize when an additional product can help.
If the client has a new product that prevents today’s problem from recurring, is the agent who talks about the product committing an act of customer service or attempting to make a sale? Doing both results in the best possible user experience.
Examples
We provided technical support for a web hosting and IT services client struggling with new sales. The in-house sales team was averaging about one dollar in revenue-per-contact.
We implemented a sales-based training program using chat as the primary communication channel. Agents were instructed to take extra time to gauge individual customer needs and how add-on services can provide lasting value.
Within six months, per-contact sales had increased by more than 1,700%. The client incorporated our training methodology internally, the in-house staff also saw success, and customer retention improved.
A second client was experiencing unexpected churn and had to address retention before any thought could be paid to more revenue.
We dug into the factors driving tech support traffic and, to a lesser extent, causing dissatisfaction among customers. That analysis led to an improved onboarding program that created agents who were more empowered and better able to meet customer expectations, which increased retention.
We built on that momentum and used tech support as the springboard to new sales, generating almost 200% more revenue than the client pays us for customer care.
Identifying Decision Points for Upsell and Cross Sell
This is not aggressive, ‘hard’ sales in the pursuit of quotas. People may love to buy, but very few of us enjoy being sold. The point here is to create an environment where an upsell is possible. Customers may be unaware of add-on products that could be of value.
The agent’s role is to create awareness of those products and provide the user with the knowledge required to make an informed decision. There is neither pressure nor coercion, just a turn of the conversation.
Effective customer engagement requires asking questions and developing a deeper understanding of the customer’s preferred outcome.
How does that customer define success?
From understanding what customers need, agents can proactively offer solutions. The agent is educating and informing, which dovetails with the mental makeup of tech support personnel as problem solvers.
Agents have already been trained on the value of the user experience, the importance of active engagement, and the importance of listening to the voice of the customer. What they have since learned is how to take those three factors and, when the opportunity arises, pivot from a support frame of mind to a sales posture.
