Sales, the future of customer service

That’s precisely where opportunities lie for your company. Customer service is seen by many entrepreneurs as a department that only costs money. With the rise of Omnichannel Marketing and the blurring of boundaries between different channels, your service channels can also be deployed as sales machines. Service and sales will grow ever closer together.

Be proactive for an optimal client experience

Waiting until a client contacts your customer service themselves to file a complaint or ask a question is an outdated image of how it should be. In fact: you can cultivate loyal and dedicated clients yourself, by requiring your service teams to be proactive in supporting the client. You offer them a helping hand with a problem you have already identified, but which they haven’t yet raised themselves. The client experiences this as a positive experience with your company or brand. They will therefore return more often, because they know they are optimally served.

Serving the client before they have discovered their problem themselves is something we will increasingly see. Yet it is already being applied in today’s society. Think of a luxury car brand like Mercedes. At Mercedes they have set up a special service team. They act immediately when your car automatically signals a malfunction or software problem. They then contact the client, without the client already being aware of it themselves.

Collaboration between departments

That the boundaries between all departments are blurring is by now clear. The opportunities this offers you as an entrepreneur have thereby increased considerably. Do you want your customer service to no longer be a necessary cost, but even to become a profitable department? Then several departments will also have to collaborate better. Customer service staff need to be trained in sales skills, so that they know how to deal with sales opportunities.

Sales becomes customer service

Of course, this also applies the other way around. Customer service staff must learn sales skills, but salespeople can also learn something from customer service staff. Satisfied clients stay. With that in mind, it is up to you to think carefully, with your organisation, about how you can offer added value and an optimal client experience to all your clients.

The goal of your sales department should be to build a bond with your clients. Instead of foisting all sorts of things on the client, you should offer solutions that really help them. It’s all about creating a personal connection. Although this requires different competencies from your sales department, customer service can help them with this. So an interplay between the two departments.