Inside Sales Relationships: The Importance Of Customer Service
Posted by
Matt Fitts on Tue, Apr 24, 2024 @ 04:48 PM
If you have read my blogs in the past, you know I that follow the Harvard Business Review on Twitter and enjoy reading the many articles, blogs, and “management tips” they post online. Well I am going to reference another one today!
I was looking at the HBR’s “The Management Tip” posted on April 20th that was focused on customer relationships. Naturally, the title caught my eye, “Make Service Easy for Your Customers” because of my role as Director of Client Operations at AG Salesworks. While my primary responsibility is to ensure the overall success of a clients teleprospecting program with AG Salesworks, I break this responsibility down into two areas. First area would consist of empowering my team of inside sales reps with the knowledge, tools, and support mechanisms that enable them to be successful and happy. Second, making sure that I am exceeding my client expectations at every turn so that the program we are partnered in is a success for both organizations.
The HBR management tip states that “most customers just want simple, quick solutions to their problems, and your company should make that possible” which seems self explanatory. The tip continues by questioning the current service initiatives in place at your organization and their value. This portion of the tip made the wheels start moving quickly in my head as I have been trying to do a lot of introspective thinking lately on my role in the organization, structure of my organization, and how it fits with our organizational goals and achievement of those goals. The final line of the tip is what leads me to this blog post – “Start with frontline employees since they likely interact with customers the most. Make sure they have the skills, permission, and the incentive to reduce customer effort.”
As I mentioned above, my role is both to enable my inside sales team with the support to be successful and also ensure that the clients’ expectations are exceeded. The idea of starting with the “frontline employees” makes perfect sense as it is through their deliverables that my clients’ expectations are ultimately met. If the folks on my team are uncovering fully qualified sales opportunities that convert to pipeline and bottom line revenue, and they are being incented to uncover those opportunities properly while interacting with the client and uncovering market intelligence along the way – then I believe we have a win-win. So this begs the question –what can someone on an inside sales team do to help “reduce customer effort”?
First, I promote and foster an extremely close relationship between our reps and the sales reps they are passing the opportunities to. This relationship can take many forms, for example; a quick call to strategize on a strategic account or a “warm” hand-off of an opportunity, or questions on a specific objection or response tactic. All of these items, while seeming to be adding booked time to the calendar, they in fact will make for “reduced” customer effort” on the sales team as the learning that occurs during this interaction and rapport that is built will go a long way towards achieving the goals of the engagement.
Second, preparation, preparation, preparation which should be something we can understand and relate to in sales and marketing. The more we are prepared, the easier and smoother tasks can be tackled. Preparations for a weekly client call, monthly review, or scheduled opportunity call are all items requiring our attention and focus.
I believe that these are just starting points that will lead to a stronger and more successful partnership. What are your thoughts on the idea of making service easy for your customers?