Customer service is the key to any business model.
Good customer service has the power to keep clients engaged, and great customer service has the power to convince clients to refer new business. But bad customer service can drive a client to a competitor, no matter how low your price or how great your product or service.
I read a quote recently by writer, consultant and teacher Peter Drucker: “Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.”
It should always be the goal of a company to help clients get the most out of its products and services. The more a client can get from your product or service, the more loyal they are going to be to your brand.
Many times, companies rely on their sales teams to not only sell their products and services but also to up-sell and cross-sell long after the initial engagement has occurred. This can lead to a multitude of missed opportunities.
The downside to this theory is that the person the client is mostly in contact with may not be a sales associate but someone else within the company. From help desk to accounting to engineering, there are many people within a company that clients and prospective clients come in contact with. Making sure those individuals are trained in not only product knowledge but how to sell the product can mean the difference between getting a client engaged at many different levels within your company and only having them engaged at one level with half the revenue.
In a truly customer service-centered environment within a company, up-sales may begin to trickle in from other departments. Combining sales and customer service training can be invaluable to a corporate culture. Everyone from the office manager to the marketing manager feels more valued in their positions, and the sales team appreciates the added benefits and suggestions that are contributed.
Every industry, from architecture to law to manufacturing, has internal divisions through which prospective clients interact.
Imagine you are the president of an architecture company. When a prospective client calls your office, the first person he speaks with is often not a salesperson. The first piece of literature he sees is not something a salesperson created. Perhaps the first person a prospective client speaks with is someone in your marketing department who is promoting an event or topic at a conference or via a social media tool. Perhaps at some point during their engagement with your company, the client will interact with a help desk professional, an engineer or accounts receivable staff member. These individuals must be able to up-sell and cross-sell in your marketplace. In today’s business environment, positions and departments are becoming more and more integrated, and as a result, each function of a company must know and understand what the other is doing.
Consider this: If your inside operations team is not helping to make you money, then, by default, they are costing you money.
Your goal for the remainder of 2011 should be to focus on how to make every department within your company a revenue-generating function.
Brett Baker is a managing partner for TrustPoint Management Group in Springfield. He can be reached at brett@trustpointllc.com and followed on Twitter @TrustPointMO.[[In-content Ad]]
