5 Things Sales Teams Do Not Know About Customer Experience But Should
COVID-19 has had a direct and immediate influence on customer behavior.
Businesses that made million-dollar marketing plans also had to straighten their spine and evolve with the new world demands.
Customers are not just looking for a product or service. They are looking for an experience. Pick any industry you’d like – CX is the new metric every evolving business is considering.
In such tight competition where every business is giving their best to provide an all-around customer experience, it would be ignorant to think that your job is over when a deal is closed.
In fact, that’s where the real work starts!
Why Focus On After Sales Customer Service?
First of all, charging extra bucks for premium customer service is not adding any value to your CX.
Secondly, there’s no guarantee that a closed deal is a forever customer. Churn rate is one of the most important metrics businesses use to measure their CX. So, charging extra for premium support will end up becoming a reason to leave your product and pick your competitor.
Take a look at this graph below to see how much it costs, on average, to acquire one customer across industries.
Source: Ayetstudios
Again, this is the cost to acquire just one customer, beyond which customers are extremely expensive to acquire.
Here are some head-turning statistics by eConsultancy regarding this phenomenon:
- Acquiring a new client is five times as expensive as retaining one.
- The value of a lost customer, on average, is $243.
- The likelihood of selling to an existing customer is 60–70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%.
It makes more sense to nurture the existing customers rather than hunting for new ones. Of course, new customers are super-important but what’s the point of spending thousands of dollars on acquiring new customers when your major source of revenue is in direct danger.
So, what can salespeople do to improve the experience of customers?
Well, there are 5 core things sales teams have to understand about customer experience and start fixing them one after another.
Let’s start.
1. Confusing Information On Sales Pages
Sales pages can be real chaos for the new prospects.
As per Russell Brunson, the co-founder, and CEO of ClickFunnels, customers becoming disoriented because of the influx of so much information is the reason they frequently depart because they are either puzzled or unable to find what they are looking for.
Keep the sales pages simple for your prospects.
Show them how your product can provide the value they are looking for.
Always focus on delivering the message with simplicity. Customers will always have questions lined up. But your job is to showcase how your offerings can help another business.
To answer the burning questions of your prospects, you can implement a live chat solution on your website. Businesses can also assist customers by implementing video chat support on your website to guide them across sales pages and the overall process.
Video chat is a fantastic way to start building connections with your future customers right from the beginning. Not many businesses have started implementing video chat on their website at this stage. That can be a real game-changer for your brand.
2. Customers Seek Connections, Not Pushy Sales
Demonstrate to your consumer how much you appreciate their business. It really only takes a mere ‘Thank You’, yet these two words can have a serious influence on the post-purchase experience of your customer and contribute to the development of a long-term relationship.
To simplify the approach, think this way – My goal is not to sell the product, my goal is to show who as a company we are.
When I attend some live webinar sessions, I always find salespeople pushing their products to their attendees. But prospects don’t appreciate these techniques anymore. To be honest, it’s an instant switch-off for prospects when someone tries pushy sales.
From the first moment, your goal should be to educate your prospects about your product and how they can add value to their business.
3. Empathy In Sales & Its Impact On CX
What is empathy and why is it necessary?
Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings and experiences of another person, essentially by walking miles in their shoes.
Well, not miles, per se, but that is what it entails. As such, it can be hard to pull off and require emotional intelligence and the willingness to always try to proactively understand the reality of someone else to experience things from their vantage point.
Empathy is also crucial to developing positive customer perceptions and forming long-term relationships. Take the following scenario, for instance.
Imagine that you get an email with a miniature sales pitch that begins with, “COVID is a vastly uncertain time for most businesses and we are here to help.” While this is certainly a nice way to begin, it feels like sympathy and gives away the fact that the seller does not really understand your problems.
Instead, empathize with your customers, put yourselves in their situation and ask yourselves if you are doing enough and are truly understanding their situation. While this is no easy job, getting better at it will help you gain the trust of the customer. And trust is the bedrock of any successful relationship.
4. Personalized Sales Communication & CX
Personalization in communication is very popular nowadays. Marketers are becoming more conscious of tailored communication as a means of improving the consumer experience. According to this Single Grain article, 63% of customers are highly annoyed with generic advertising blasts.
Personalized sales communication gives off the impression that you are taking extra interest in interacting with users which fosters trust and boosts customer engagement. As per a study by WPForms, personalized email communications boost open rates by 26%. It also keeps the customer engaged at every stage of the customer journey.
Personalization in communication is the modern cornerstone of a stellar customer experience. Ensure that it is an intrinsic component of your email communication at every level and for every piece of communication. From sales proposals to a simple thank you email, everything can be personalized. The companies that put extra effort into personalization, will have higher chances of winning customers.
5. After Sales Communications
Ask any marketer about how to keep the customer experience at an all-time high. You will find that those that have a robust post-sale communication strategy always have a better chance to retain their customers.
We all know that businesses invest a huge deal into marketing to advertise their brand and acquire new customers. However, recurrent business means plowing money in marketing after the sale has been made. This often necessitates an amalgamation of your marketing and customer service teams to regularly check in with your customers to understand their current state of affairs and know if they need any questions answered.
Automating this process with a helpdesk can do away with the danger of missed chances by capturing customer requests from requisite channels. These systems can also be configured to automatically redirect incoming requests to specific team members, as well as send out notifications, thank-you(s), and FAQ(s) in advance. Any touchpoint that can be automated can be used to strengthen your relationship with the customer.
Conclusion
A customer experience strategy that simply focuses on the purchase as the ultimate objective is incomplete. All of the brand value, empathy, and confidence you built to induce the purchase are vulnerable to leaking out through this gap. Remember that selling to existing consumers is far simpler than converting new ones. It is thus worthwhile to consider the customer journey as a long-term relationship rather than a one-time transaction.
