Designing the Customer Experience Calls for Sales/Service Symbiosis

Here’s a cliché as old as enterprise itself: Keep the customer satisfied. But it’s also a platitude that should be put to rest. Today, it’s not enough to merely please your clientele. To attract new business and retain loyal patrons, you must delight and amaze them.

And to do this, you have to start by delivering an exceptional customer experience.

CX is constantly evolving, and those businesses that meet the challenge of continuous improvement— – the key to earning and keeping your customers— – know how to adapt. A truly well-designed digital customer experience calls for forethought and cohesion—one that takes the following two factors into account.

1. Connect and integrate sales and service on a human level

If your sales and service departments are still operating in siloes, Houston, you have a problem. Customers don’t necessarily make a distinction between the two functions. They want a clear, trouble-free journey that moves them seamlessly from prospect to client, and— – ideally—to loyal brand ambassador. Your business would do well to take your cue from them.

Right now, your sales teams and your contact center agents might both be meeting all of the targets you’ve set. That’s encouraging. But connecting their roles improves the performance of both teams exponentially.

Consider the following scenario: One of your sales reps has learned a lot about a new customer in the onboarding process. She’s heard about the pain points the customer experienced with previous products and services. Perhaps a rebate was hard to retrieve or a contact center agent was poorly informed. That’s valuable information that a contact center agent can use to ensure that these issues don’t happen in the future. For their part, contact center agents can return the favor. They can let your salespeople know what’s working for their customers and what’s falling between the cracks, so that your salespeople can adapt and improve their approaches accordingly. They can move proactively with discounts or add-ons if they’re in danger of losing a customer. Or they can offer ever-more-personalized loyalty incentives to keep longstanding clients engaged.

Legacy organizations with entrenched mindsets about roles and responsibilities need to shake things up. Pull your people together. Recalibrate your mission to make customer satisfaction everyone’s one-and-only priority. Encourage department leaders to open lines of communication between teams. Have regular, brief cross-team meetings to compare notes.

Make sure the right and left hand are in direct contact. Service agents managing major customers should keep sales people in the loop about those client’s needs and vice versa.

Rethink remuneration, too. Salespeople who rely only on commissions have no incentive to reach out to contact center agents. Meanwhile, contact center agents doing shift work for set pay also have no skin in the game that encourages them to think beyond their immediate responsibilities. But if you can isolate where the two teams potentially intersect— – upselling and cross-selling are possibilities—you can create bonuses that reward parties in both groups.

The effort is worth it. One study showed that 89% of consumers have ceased doing business with a company because of poor customer service. The takeaway here is that if customer service is failing, sales will plunge too, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to share insights and advice.

And here’s an even more transformational thought. Consider hiring hybrid talent— – people with great skills in both sales and service. Business evolution suggests that today’s call center agent is metamorphosing into a new, multifaceted expert, equipped to handle flexible responsibilities and new technologies.

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2. Connect and integrate with digital technologies

That leads us to the second factor. The human touch is key to making your organization a purveyor of flawless CX. But today’s tech tools make communication between stakeholders so much smoother. It’s now economically possible for even small companies to digitally connect sales and service (not to mention IT, HR, and other functions) with business intelligence software that also provides granular and big-picture analytics. AI— – a once lofty and scary concept for many firms—has come solidly down to earth and is easily accessible on any device.

Now that you’ve got your people sharing insights, help them do so by using the added heft of tools that let them import, analyze, and exploit data that is finally at their fingertips. The right technology ensures that your customers reach the right service or contact person quickly, with no friction.

Today’s sophisticated platforms also let your teams benefit from a visual data flow and algorithms translated into everyday language that help them determine in real time how to improve your customers’ lives. They provide your sales and service people with data-driven answers no matter where they are, so that they can address customer issues and requests painlessly and smoothly.

All of which is to say, the time to act is now. Best-in-class CX is no longer too challenging to implement. And the same goes for AI. Today, advanced technologies are increasingly becoming part of our everyday experiences. From customers to your salesforce, CX is on everyone’s mind. It’s time to make sure your team is fully connected.