Every business organization needs to function as a community with tightly-knit teams or departments working together to achieve a common goal.
Among those goals is the enhancement of customer experience — one of the biggest game changers in today’s business field. A Walker study even forecasted that by 2020, it will outstrip price and product as the key brand differentiator. Similarly, a 2014 McKinsey report revealed that implementing an excellent customer experience strategy has the potential to increase customer satisfaction by 20 percent. It also reduces customer churn, increases revenue and sales, builds stronger customer relationships, and creates competitive advantage.
There is no doubt, therefore, that more than 50 percent of organizations will redirect their investments to customer experience innovations this 2018, as Gartner predicted.
But as a business owner yourself, where, when, and how should you start formulating and implementing an effective customer experience strategy that actually works?
The role of marketing, sales, and service teams
The marketing, sales, and service teams are distinct departments in an organization, each with an entirely different roles from one another.
In the traditional business setting, each team work separately. The marketing department is in-charge of the company’s lead generation efforts by creating content for the targeted audience. They have access over insightful data which they can use to determine opportunities and turn it into messages that lead prospects to the buyer’s journey.
The sales team, on the other hand, guides those prospects along the buyer’s journey. They see to it whether the company has the answer to the prospects’ problems or not. In simple sense, they determine if the leads the marketing team has provided can be turned into a customer.
In comparison, the actions and activities of the marketing and sales team differ except for one thing: to drive more sales.
Meanwhile, the customer service team deals with inquiries, complaints, or even suggestions from actual customers. They are the public face (or voice) of the company — the endline — where a customer’s overall experience depends. This means that the customer experience team should have sufficient knowledge about the business. They should reflect the values that their organization stands for. If not, it will lead to an incoherent experience that will make customers unsatisfied.
A collective effort
Maintaining a business is like leading a community. To get the support of the population (prospects) — and to give them the best service — the head (business owner) should make sure that his subordinates (teams) have proper coordination. It is only through that that they can formulate an effective strategy that will work for everyone.
Keep in mind that misaligned teams cause missed opportunities, obstruct company growth, and result to unhappy and disengaged team.
Marketing-sales-customer service alignment
Basically, the role of the marketing team is to generate leads while the sales team is to convert those leads into actual sales.
The sales team should coordinate closely with the marketing team to see if the latter’s strategy and tactics, and the quality of leads it produces, are working. Together, they can craft curated, personalized content that meets the unique needs of each customer. They can use the data they have gathered and analyze it to see which strategy or tactic works best. It can enhance customer experience in a way that the marketing team can create contents that their audience finds useful and relatable while the sales team can connect with those prospects in a more personal level.
On the other hand, sales and customer service alignment leads to consistency of experience. The sales team is on the front line to win a customer and make a sale. Meanwhile, the customer service team is also on the front line to make sure that the customer is satisfied with the overall experience. They ensure that each complaint or problem of a customer is properly taken care of.
Because the customer service team knows the problems customers experience, they can give the sales team insightful feedback. They can work together to fine-tune sales messaging, sales practices, and post-sale experiences. By improving those processes, satisfaction will increase and will lead to lesser complaints and problems.
Creating a collaboration between the marketing and sales and the customer service team, therefore, enables each team to become more effective with their respective tasks.
