Jeremy Straker, SVP Sales International, Vonage
Customer experience (CX) is set to be the key brand differentiator from 2020 but implementing great CX is just the first step.
Creating emotional connections with your customers and prospects will set your company apart and is increasingly valuable to you as a business.
Download ‘The Perpetual Challenges of Inside Sales Teams’ whitepaper
The Forrester CX Index found that emotional connections with brands mean people are twice as likely to purchase from companies.
Creating emotional connections
Customers navigate a complex and saturated market every day, so making yourself stand out can be a challenge. This is set to increase as CX becomes the defining factor between you and another company.
But you can create a stronger connection with your customers by providing more than just great contact centre CX; it’s time to develop and implement an emotional connection-based strategy across the entire CX journey.
We’ve identified five areas that should be addressed:
Adoption of customer relationship management (CRM)
Create personalised, seamless, and integrated experiences for salespeople, ensuring that your CRM platform is kept up to date. It’s often a challenge for sales reps to add customer touchpoints to their system though they may manage their pipeline effectively.
There is tech and software available to help reps add touchpoints as soon as they appear. For example, using a cloud contact centre solution such as Vonage’s, that automatically adds conversations for a full picture.
Lack of visibility
Without CRM data, it’s difficult to make strategic decisions about the business and inform a rigorous communications strategy. It’s hard to foster emotional connections if there’s no understanding of customer touchpoints.
Finding ways to create easy pathways to the CRM platform can provide you with the data you need, decide what information is pertinent to your planning and strategy, and then look for ways to add this to your system.
Replicate top performers
There are top performers in every business, the people who smash their targets every time, so understanding how they achieve this is important. Their behaviours and attitudes can be brought across the team to improve general sales. Take time to learn from them about their work as a thorough approach is necessary to be able to disseminate key information.
Ramping new starters
There’s a low period between hiring a new salesperson and when the new hire ramps up to their optimum level, and this can be the biggest cost to a business.
Decide what success looks like for the sales team and create sales enablement approaches that can dramatically cut the time to productivity.
Sales and marketing disconnect
There is often a disconnect between the sales and marketing teams, creating conflict over inbound lead quality as a result.
Marketing develops prospects’ journeys to generate inbound leads, and salespeople must convert these leads. A lack of visibility on both sides means it’s difficult to measure success. Teams should have sight of other departments’ activities to understand their approach and work.
It’s important that the right technology is put in place to generate the required data. Data can be automatically captured and uploaded to a central location for further analysis. Allowing teams to access this data is useful to create campaigns that have impact, drive traffic and generate quality leads.
Understand where your customers connect with you and learn their touchpoints, such as customer queries and social media profiles. Invest in touchpoints that drive connections. Customers who engage in an omnichannel experience are more emotionally connected to the brand.
Download ‘The Perpetual Challenges of Inside Sales Teams’ whitepaper, to find out how Vonage can help you build an army of best sellers.
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— Will Corry (@slievemore) March 5, 2019