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Often the face of the business when things go wrong, the customer service offered to clients can be the difference between retaining loyal customers or developing a bad reputation. Sometimes there will be a specific function in place to manage customer service, other times it will be part of the sales function to manage the accounts - however it works for your business, getting this crucial part of the business working well can affect profits and revenue. In this section we will look at the customer service function: - If you don't have an agreed customer communications programme in place
- You will not maximise loyalty and sales opportunities
- Messages and customer experience will not be consistent & could be off-message
- If you don't have an agreed policy for customer care
- You won't know whether what you deliver matches what customers want
- Sales close ratios are impacted because
- Many customers want to know they will be looked after
- The sales force is comforted when there is one
- Sales won't know when they are doing something wrong because it is not fed back
- You don't link your database with sales & marketing
- Multiple databases of the same contacts leads to waste & lost opportunity
- Opportunities for further selling are missed
- Renewal closure rates are impacted because sales are ‘flying blind'
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