An organization that sees its customer service department as a cost center is ignoring a significant opportunity to increase customer loyalty and lifetime value.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is taking software that you pay a little bit less in the beginning but regularly. Monthly, yearly, sometimes longer depending on the contract. Customer support and customer success teams are the ones that interact much more closely with the customer after the final sale of the contract. “Service to sale” thinking needs to be cemented in customer support.
Customer support is now the primary human touchpoint a brand has with buyers! End customers are trending towards self-service during the buying process. This reduces direct personal interaction with sales. When buyers are not able to fix simple customer service issues with self-service tools, customer support is often the first human contact they have with a brand. That makes interactions with support a critical and strategic advantage in building customer loyalty.
Every support interaction is an opportunity for a company to build a more personal relationship with a buyer. At the end of customer service interaction, a happy customer can be showcased in a marketing case study, events, G2, or Trustpilot review. Every unhappy customer can be called out for a follow-up to improve a business process, training, or product improvement.
Companies that don’t take a revenue-oriented approach to their customer services teams fail to unlock a lot of sales opportunities.
Top Reasons why Customer Support is Revenue
Customer retention is far less expensive than customer acquisition.
Excellent customer support improves public persona and strengthens the brand.
Existing customers are more likely to buy from you than new customers.
Your customers stay with you longer.
Word-of-mouth marketing is the best kind of marketing.
Great customer support opens doors for organic partnerships and opportunities.
Providing phenomenal product support results in a reduction of overall problems.
Support is the Voice of the Customer that improves the product drastically.
How AI can enable the pivot for Customer support into Sales ?
Today, AI-based platforms show the current and historical sentiment of the customer based on current and historical interactions. They also show product issues that are open to the customer. All this can be used to gauge when the time is right for a support agent to transition into a sales role. A happy customer, a customer who is thrilled after an issue is resolved, a customer who expresses a Wow moment of using a software feature, all of this is factored in.
When the agent is ready, the AI platform also suggests cross-sell and up-sell opportunities available for the customer enabling the ease of transition and an ability to pull a salesperson in at any given time. This is especially true for B2B sales, where issues are rarely closed in a single call.
So the question is- “Should support leaders advocate customer support as a revenue generator?”
Here is where you might agree, or perhaps differ- and this is the conversation that Ascendo AI and Support Driven are trying to facilitate!
Our speakers for the dialogue- Ahmad Shabazz and Mo McKibbin engage in an insightful conversation to bring to you their unique take on several topics related to ‘Growth Through Support’. Check it out in our Events section.
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