Selling Begins With Service
During an economic downturn, transforming service into sales is a top priority for companies in nearly every industry. Yet, many companies that are attempting to transition from service to sales are ignoring one key component in that process: Service!
The Customer Service Hall of Shame has become an annual feature at msn.com. Here’s a link to their fourth annual survey.
A sample of customer comments from the past Hall of Shame reports:
- “Every month there is a mistake or over charge on my bill. I have to call customer service and I am on the phone for 1 hour. It is so bad now I actually plan for it.”
- “Whatever happened to offering existing long time customers a great deal once in a while? I was told to cancel my service and then reorder to get the discount . . .”
- “I spent 100 minutes on the phone with technical support and spoke to 4 people to fix a problem that the last guy corrected in – 3 MINUTES!!”
- “After a year and a half of being an on-time customer, I got a ‘friendly reminder’ phone call to see when I would be paying my bill. I hadn’t even received my bill yet!”
- “(the) abusive automated interactive phone system . . . is very time consuming and irritating. When you do get through the screening process, they are always experiencing high volumes of calls and it will be a while. This happens no matter what time you call.”
Give Your Representatives A Chance!
Transforming service into sales is not just about providing service representatives with sales skills and giving them a sales objective. You need to create an end-to-end service experience that enables service representatives to open the door to a sales conversation.
Test out your own company. Think about a situation where – as a customer – you would need to talk with a representative instead of using a self-service option. Then call your customer service department. How long does it take you to actually reach a person who can help you? Which of these annoying practices does your company inflict on you (and your customers)?
- Endless menus supposedly designed to help you save time in reaching the right person.
- Asking you to enter account information which you then have to repeat to the representative.
- Providing information you didn’t ask for – like account balance, last payment, next due date, available credit – instead of connecting you to a person who can help with the real reason you called.
- Putting you on hold while telling you how important your call is.
Is it any wonder that many customers are not open to upselling – or to anything that would extend the length of their calls?
Best Practices At The Moment Of Truth
If your service system and processes are not punishing your customers, then your representatives have an opportunity to transform service into sales. Best practices include:
- Provide great service to sell the customer on doing business with your company.
- Earn the right to sell by delivering an ESP™ experience: Emotional, Simple, Personal.
- Open the door to sales in a way that provides extra value to the customer.
Service To Sales Tips
Remember that customer service upselling has to be based on customer service:
- Provide great service to sell the customer on doing business with your company.
- Earn the right to sell by delivering an ESP™ experience: Emotional, Simple, Personal.
- Open the door to sales in a way that provides extra value to the customer.