管理层的高度l, sales and customer service are two of the most important functions to keep an eye on. Even more important? Alignment between these two teams.

Sure, you have directors and managers who oversee this process, but it's relevant for CEOs to consider, too, as this can make or break the relationship between the company and the customers.

To truly delight the people your business serves, you need to have a seamless process of going from prospect to customer. That's where sales and service alignment comes in. But how does this work? And why is this important?

To find out, we talked to executive customer success leaders about why you need to foster sales and service alignment and how to do it. Let's dive in.

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Are your sales and service organizations truly aligned, or do they work in silos separate from each other? According to the experts, while many organizations don't focus on sales and service alignment, they should.

Lauren Locke-Paddon, the VP of Customer Success atVocal Video,说:“认识到客户体验团队的价值作为收入团队的一部分的组织(又称销售/服务一致性的圣杯)将看到更强大的客户获取,保留和扩展。”

Keep in mind that when a prospect goes through the sales process, they're going through the customer experience. These teams need to be aligned because the customer experience starts at marketing, goes through sales, and then goes through customer service (and most likely, customers go round and round this journey).

"It's extremely difficult for a customer to have an amazing experience if Sales and Service lack alignment,"Helena Young,客户成功的副总裁League, Inc.says. "The ultimate goal is to set expectations amongst all parties to deliver an amazing customer experience."

调整销售的好处nd Customer Service Teams

由于客户的旅程不是线性的,因此不应是销售和服务的方法。这些团队需要在整个客户的体验中保持一致并共同努力,以使参与度超为个性化和相关。以下是使您的销售和服务团队对齐后,您会看到的一些主要好处。

Improved Customer Experience

Ultimately, the goal is to "formalize operational ‘bridges' across multiple levels (team to executive level), forcing a level of ongoing communication and alignment across the teams,"Karen Tang, VP of Customer Success atActiveCampaign,添加。

When your sales and customer service teams are aligned, you'll be able to serve the customer and help them grow, which will then help your company grow.

More Actionable Feedback

Nakul Kadaba, a Consulting Manager at HubSpot, says, "Sales and service teams with full alignment are consistent in structuring the right products/services for their customers, when appropriate. Furthermore, alignment allows for a feedback loop between both teams, and opportunities to improve internal operations."

With the right sales and service alignment, there will be clarity on your teams and a formalized method in place to receive feedback that can help your company grow.

viplove bhojwani, the CEO atMarketSquads, Inc., explains, "These are two essential pillars of an organization. If the service and sales team work together, it adds a lot of value to your company. You have recurring revenue, you have happy clients, you have more sales."

“归根结底,大规模的业务涉及减少摩擦。销售和服务一致性不仅重要;这是唯一的方法。”-HubSpot的客户支持经理Gustavo Nascimento。

1. Structure your teamwork.

To align the sales and customer service teams, you need to have structured teamwork in place. This means providing clarity on how these teams interact, how they can help each other, etc. Bhojwani says, "The responsibilities need to be aligned quite well. Everybody should know what their role is. Think about where sales and service reps need each other to build a relationship with a customer."

Additionally, it's important to make this alignment known across your organization. Locke-Paddon, says, "Bring the service organization along for the ride in the pre-sales processes, celebrations, & compensation. All too often customer service teams are left out of the attention lavished on sales. By creating a regular process for them to contribute to the pre-sales process with unbiased product expertise during interactions like demos, celebrating their contributions at sales meetings, and paying commissions on deals, CX teams can be motivated to greater alignment with sales."

2. Incentivize customer stories.

What's a great tactic for marketers and salespeople to attract people to your organization? Customer stories and testimonials.

“客户服务应该共享客户stories regularly with sales (as well as marketing, product, etc.)," Locke-Paddon explains. "Great customer stories often remain trapped with CX organizations because sharing them is often a favor outside the scope of the role. Fix that by making it a part of the job's key performance indicators (KPI)."

除了使客户故事成为KPI之外,您还可以通过努力通过有趣的,以文化为中心的活动来建立您的合作来激励客户故事。Nascimento说:“想想SQLS,比赛,回扣过程,并与魔术师放大派对。乐趣必须在您的角色中最有效。

3.提供推荐和帐户扩展的工具。

So far we've learned that we need to be intentional about sales and service alignment. Another way to do this is by providing tools and incentives for account expansion and referrals.

Tang explains, "Customer Service can convert a support interaction to a potential expansion opportunity. Create systematic handoff opportunities in your CRM that can track expansion leads to sales."

洛克 - 帕登(Locke-Paddon)进一步扩展:“客户服务团队可以成为销售热门线索的重要来源。通过培训CX专业人员要求推荐(并为此付费),并使他们轻松与销售队友分享CX,专业人士确实可以在收入表中赢得席位。”

4. Harmonize the ideal customer.

Before we continue, let's review some basic information about business. You can't succeed without having anideal customerthat each team agrees on and works for.

Young says, "Architecting a strong Sales to Service transition begins with agreeing on the ideal customer. This process minimizes the strife associated with onboarding and operationalizing an ill-fit customer."

Each team needs to understand the ideal customer -- their wants, needs, challenges, and pain points. To make sure your organization is aligned, clearly communicate this information to both your sales and service teams.

5. Partner on solutions.

Sometimes when a prospect has a problem, they communicate that to the sales team during their purchasing process. At this point, the sales and service teams need to partner together to make sure your company can deliver the right solution. Think about questions like"What are the needs of the customer?"and"What do they want to see from your product or service?"

Young says, "Once a deal is at a certain degree of confidence it's important to partner on established solutions that will meet the needs of the customer. These steps allow us to align expectations with the customer, sales, and service."

没有这种伙伴关系和沟通,客bob综合博彩下载户成功经理将很难满足客户的需求并提供出色的客户服务。销售和服务团队需要共同努力,因此每个团队都需要提供从潜在客户到客户的一流体验所需的背景。

6. Facilitate debriefs along the customer journey.

For your sales and service teams to be aligned, they need to communicate with one another. One way to do this is to set up debriefs along the customer journey.

扬说:“在某些客户接触点之后,促进跨职能汇报为组织提供了一个机会,可以捕捉和将经验教训用于销售和服务过程。”

这意味着进行频繁和故意的沟通。Kadaba补充说:“无论是通过Slack等沟通平台,还是与来自两个团队的主要利益相关者进行反复会议,经常且故意沟通以实现完整的挑战,都可以描绘出问题,并提供一个设计解决方案的空间。”

此外,应该有正式的流程来分享团队之间的知识。唐说:“客户服务团队具有深厚的产品和技术专业知识(他们可以与销售团队共享)。利用您的支持团队正式地在销售和服务之间共享知识的方式。”

7.共同的愿景和共享指标。

一旦两支球队真正开始合作,衡量成功就很重要。唐建议“开发共享的OKR(目标和关键结果)以及销售和客户服务领导层的目标”。

Doing this will not only help you track success, but will also motivate your teams. Kadaba says, "Having a common vision and shared metrics between your sales and service teams motivates both to communicate actively on helping your customers find success, knowing they are incentivized similarly."

8.鼓励内部流动性。

Another way to foster sales and service alignment is to encourage internal mobility.

Kadaba says, "Encouraging internal mobility between your Sales and Service teams maintains knowledge sharing, and gives opportunities for those who made internal moves to identify where alignment can improve -- be it communication, process, or approach taken by either team."

This is something that we at HubSpot do as well. Nascimento comes from a background in sales but ended up in support leadership. He says, "In support, we send a lot of people to other departments but also receive recruits from other departments. Open doors from an internal mobility perspective serve to create some of the strongest foundational relationships within our business today, and build several of the leaders of tomorrow with vectors aligned."

To encourage internal mobility, you'll want to create unity and clarity from a skill development standpoint.

Nascimento recommends "establishing a holistic competency-based framework that applies to all employees regardless of role. Within any flywheel, there are going to be shared competencies required for the reduction of friction. We don't all do the same job but we do chase the same mission with many of the same tools."

9.使用正确的技术。

Of course, a huge component of alignment in this day and age is technology and automation. For sales and service teams to be aligned, they need to have the same customer information and know about previous conversations a customer has had with people on the sales or service teams.

Bhojwani says, "Tools like HubSpot can really help because when you create those funnels, everybody knows their responsibilities automatically. Automation and technology together can be very helpful. At the same time, you have to be improving the process because no process is perfect."

销售量and Customer Service Team Alignment is the CEOs Job

很明显,让您的销售和客户服务团队保持一致是多么重要。要开始努力对齐,请遵循这些专家技巧,并在两个部门之间建立故意沟通。

编者注:该帖子最初于2021年9月发表,并已更新以进行全面性。

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Originally published Sep 27, 2021 5:00:00 PM, updated December 21 2021

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