Service and Sales isn’t always a match made in Customer Experience Heaven. Fortunately, you can take a few steps to get them better aligned. Everyone in Service and Sales works toward a common goal – customer satisfaction – but some things have been known to get in their way of doing that in harmony.
Just like you need to strengthen customer relationships, you want to build the internal relationships that make the customer experience happen.
Try these tactics ways to make the relationship between Service and Sales even stronger.
1. Establish mutual understanding
Everyone needs to have the same definition of:
- a great customer experience
- customer expectations, and
- successful customer interactions
Sales and service pros need to work together to define these elements. Then they can start to define their exact roles in making each happen.
Tip: Schedule meetings at least quarterly with representatives or the entire staff of Service and Sales departments to review and refine (if necessary) customer expectations, experiences and successful transactions. Look at data to identify evolving customer demands and needs. Define new or emerging roles and how people and departments must interact to make the customer experience seamless
2. Monitor the workload
You probably can’t have a one-on-one ratio of sales and service reps working a territory or specific group of customers. But you don’t want to overload any one side either. If either or both sides feel overwhelmed, relationships will be further strained.
Tip: It’s best to keep service and sales pros in sync, helping the same customers. As a benchmark, many organizations try to keep one service rep to every three sales reps. But your customer base will help you determine the right number for you.
3. Encourage the relationships
Sales and service pros will connect professionally when they deal with the same group of customers. But that’s probably not enough interaction to build a strong relationship that benefits your company and customers.
Tip: Put some processes in place so customer service reps and salespeople must interact professionally. Require follow up calls (not just email) to make sure customer issues were resolved. Have them hand off leads face-to-face when possible. Let service reps join salespeople on calls. This helps build great customer relationships, too. And help them interact socially. Arrange training sessions with team-building exercises and out-of-work events such as sports games, cultural gatherings or family picnics.
