In the last post, we discussed the importance of establishing an empathetic connection with your customers. Building a line of open dialogue and showing genuine interest and care in a customer interaction is key to establishing trust.

Today we will examine another innovative strategy that companies are using, to turn customer support into a powerful profit center, all while increasing customer satisfaction.

Identifying Gaps in Customer Services/Needs

Once empathy and trust have been established and a good rapport has been built, it’s time to look for gaps in products and services that will sincerely benefit the customer.

I can’t overemphasize how much sincerity matters here —people quickly realize when an agent is genuinely trying to help them or simply trying to push product and hit quota. All suggestions should be tied to benefits for that specific customer, based on previous product usage, cost-savings, improvements, new products and services, discounts they may be eligible for, etc.

These are all benefits that the majority of people are willing to listen to, and make common sense to pursue.

In our own experience, having agents that are adept at recognizing these gaps is critical. Providing them with the technology needed to do a quick customer review is essential as well, as they will need to be able to readily recognize gaps and understand how to best speak to them.

A strategy that’s been effectively used by many companies is to tie the call to a, “one-time only” phone-support discount. This ensures that companies close the sale on the call, and makes the most of inbound contact without having to make a hard sell. The soon-to-expire benefit serves as the closing tool itself.

For example, when I recently called in with questions on a refrigerator issue, I spoke with an agent who handled my questions, started a conversation about the area I lived in, and asked helpful questions regarding how the refrigerator had performed so far.

So when it came time to wrap up the call, I didn’t mind when he said, “By the way, I know you’re probably going to need a water filter for it soon; they typically need changing every six months so you’re not drinking sludge. Because you called in with a service issue today, I have an offer on my screen that entitles you to 20% discount for anything you buy on this call. If you’re interested, I could save you some money on something you’re probably going to be buying in a few weeks anyway.” Turns out, I was, he did, and he made a sale as a result—all parties won. Everything that needed to be in place for the call was in place, so it made sense and was successful.

However, I want to point out that if the agent had approached this differently—speaking in a monotone, transferring me to multiple parties, having me wait for 20+ minutes before speaking to an agent, pushing products that didn’t matter to me, trying to bring this up prior to complete issue resolution… it would have failed and resulted in poor follow up CSAT scores.

To read the full report, and learn the other five strategies, visit https://clearharbor.leadpages.net/sixinnovativestrategies/.

The post Identifying Gaps in Customer Service appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The following post is a guest blog written by Errol Greene, Solutions Development Manager for Clear Harbor, LLC. Missed the first post in this series? Click here to read it now.

In the last post, we discussed the importance of offering a customer service review. Presenting your customers with the opportunity to provide a review will allow customer advocates the chance to praise and highlight the good qualities of your customer experience. On the flip side of that, any criticism or feedback found in a review can be used to improve future interactions.

Today we will examine another innovative strategy that companies are using, to turn customer support into a powerful profit center, all while increasing customer satisfaction.

Establish an Empathetic Connection First

You’ve heard it before, but it remains true; no one cares what you know until they know that you care. Critical to establishing trust and building a line of open dialogue, is establishing empathy and trust early in the call. By demonstrating empathy, anger is diffused, and the call can transition from antagonism and complaints, to negotiation and resolution. Until this is done, and the caller feels that he or she is being heard and understood, there’s zero potential for upselling and cross-selling. “The agent has to earn the right to sell to the customer, and that comes first as a result of caring,” says Bob Davis, President and Founder of Bob Davis Associates, a training, coaching and inside sales consultation company based in Alpharetta, Ga.

“Genuinely caring about the person on the other end of the phone is a decision that agents can make—management needs to expose them to the concept.

They can choose to be genuinely interested, which will transfer to the person on the other end of the phone. Making this connection will also help agents enjoy their jobs more as well.” Davis makes an extremely valid point— attempting to sell without this in place would be highly counter-productive; resulting in the customer feeling the company cared only about making a sale, not about issue resolution, or their satisfaction. A key ingredient in upsell/cross-sell is first effectively addressing the customer’s issue. Agents must relate to them. They need to establish an open dialogue, telling the customer that it’s important to them that their immediate concerns be taken care of as soon as possible, and that their frustration is understandable—in a sincere tone. Then, once the issue is fully addressed to the customer’s satisfaction and trust has been formed, then the door will open to a potential sales opportunity.

To read the full report, and learn the other five strategies, visit https://clearharbor.leadpages.net/sixinnovativestrategies/.

The post The Power of Empathy in Customer Service appeared first on Execs In The Know.

It’s a given that customer service is currently experiencing a renaissance in many regards—ground-breaking companies are starting to realize that the CSR’s role has become far more than simple issue resolution. They are now recognized as a direct face of the company—critical brand ambassadors, vital to customer experience.

Innovative companies are realizing the benefits of having an existing customer reach back to them, and the resulting opportunity it provides to present an outstanding customer experience, as well as a chance to entrench the customer more deeply to the company.

As an upshot, service-based suggestive up-selling and cross-selling have become integral to many companies revenue plans, increasing them by as much as 10% annually. Some companies have become so effective at this that their customer support departments are no longer cost centers, but profit centers instead. So how do they do it—without angering the customer or being pushy, and causing customer satisfaction to suffer?

Done correctly, a powerful new revenue stream can be created. However, done wrong, companies risk turning formerly satisfied customers into newly disgruntled ones. So what are the steps needed to walk the fine line of upselling and cross-selling… without losing customers in the process? What are the secrets to being able to effectively sell on a support call while actually increasing customer satisfaction at the same time?

At the end of each call, offer a customer review:

I recently had a real pro demonstrate this with me at my bank. I called in to close an account, and wound up having the best support call of my life.

First, my banker made sure and completed what I asked her to do; close an account that I no longer needed.

However, while she was doing this, she happened to mention that my home equity line of credit seemed to be at a high interest rate. “You should consider re-financing that—it would likely save you a lot of money in interest every month.” I was listening. In essence, she was telling me I could now keep two-thousand four-hundred dollars a year that I was currently spending needlessly.

That’s an extra vacation every year, or $2,400 more annually towards retirement.

Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity—any intelligent person would. She made the value proposition of doing business so strong that to say ‘no’ would have been counter-productive and frankly, absurd.

It was clear to me that all of her suggestions were sincerely helping me. And while she may have also been trying to upsell, she was at the same time, presenting only options that would genuinely be of benefit. I wound up going to the bank, meeting with her and another banker and saving even more than $200 a month— and by the time we were done, it turned out to be closer to $500. I was ecstatic.

I was then asked to rate her performance following the call. I not only gave her the highest scores I could, I also added a comment; “She’s a credit to the bank, and I just wish you had more people there like her” in my review. She kept her word and saved me over $500 a month. I’m now no longer a customer– I’m an advocate of this bank… and my new favorite banker. I’ve since spoken with other people about this particular branch and all are absolute advocates as well. They wouldn’t even consider defecting from this bank.

It all started with a sincere customer service review, looking for ways to authentically improve my life and make it better. It came across with all of her recommendations and her tone of voice—she wasn’t reading from a script, she was engaging in a dialogue with me.
By solving my initial issue successfully and showing she first cared about me, she had earned the right to ask more questions. The stage was perfectly set to move forward, make a sale, and create a customer advocate.

To read the full report, and learn the other five strategies, visit https://clearharbor.leadpages.net/sixinnovativestrategies/. 

The post Innovative Strategies Companies Are Using to Turn Customer Support Into a Powerful Profit Center…While Increasing Customer Satisfaction appeared first on Execs In The Know.