Buyer-centricity and personalization are a top trend this year. This means providing buyers with the personalized experience they've grown to expect. McKinsey found that companies who successfully optimize the customer experience achieved:
- Increased win rates by 20-40%
- Reduced customer churn by 10-15%
- Lowered costs by 15-25%
One way to realize these amazing results and provide an excellent customer experience (CX) is through ongoing, and clear, communication between sales and customer success (CS). This creates harmony between the two, so they work like a well-oiled machine.
Instead of Sales focusing on closing the deal at any cost and CS dealing with unrealistic promises made to retain customers in spite of their disappointment, buyer-centric reps focus on knowing and understanding the customer. This enables them to provide the insights and guidance buyers desire and help prospects identify the best solution to their challenges. Then CS can pick up where Sales left off, to help customers fulfill their goals and create their envisioned outcomes.
How Sales and CS can create a harmonious relationship
Creating harmony between Sales and CS so your company provides a superior CX boils down to excellent communication that is beneficial to both groups, so they are always in sync. Here are a few types of information they can share that are critical to achieving the benefits mentioned above.
Ideal customer profile
Just as Sales provides Marketing with feedback on leads, CS can provide Sales with feedback on how well new customers match up with your solution. If Sales is making unrealistic promises that are not attainable with your product or service, it is up to CS to communicate this.
This prevents customers from basing purchase decisions on incorrect information, increasing customer satisfaction, and experience. The better customers meet the ideal customer profile, the easier it is for CS to help them meet their goals and create their desired outcomes. The result is greater customer retention.
Referrals
When customers are highly satisfied with your product or service and remain as long-term customers, they become excellent referral partners. This puts CS in the position to pass referrals on to Sales. And these warm leads are more likely to close than cold leads, enabling sales reps to close more deals in less time. Plus, the more referrals your company receives from retained customers, the less you need to spend to acquire leads.
Use case information
CS can share use case examples with Sales. This information is useful throughout the sales process. The more use cases reps are made aware of, the easier it will be to sell to different types of prospects. These examples help potential customers envision how they will put your product or service to use in their day-to-day work life to meet their goals and address their challenges. CS can share these examples in the form of call recording clips for Sales to hear. Then they gain the full context of how the customer is leveraging the solution and the outcomes they are receiving, in the customer’s words.
Cross sell/Upsell opportunities
Since CS works with customers to help them meet their goals and create their desired outcomes, they are always striving to continue driving growth and success for their accounts. So, when a customer is ready to expand their use of your products, CS can loop in Sales at the perfect time to re-engage the client.
Handoff from Sales to CS
When Sales closes the deal, there is an enormous amount of information that needs to be communicated to CS for a smooth transition from Sales to CS, including customer expectations, goals, and desired outcomes. For an excellent CX during the handoff, the more complete the communication and the faster the CS can get up to speed, the better. That’s why it’s helpful to share call summaries that cover the highlights from all the customer calls along the buying process in a very short time. Then CS can pick and choose which call recordings and call transcripts to review in more detail instead of needing to spend hours on calls that don’t cover essential information. Then CS won’t have to ask a customer to reiterate answers to questions Sales asked them previously.
Interested in creating harmony between Sales and CS to reduce customer churn? Book a demo with a member of our team to see how Jiminny can help improve communications between your teams.
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