How to Empower Sales People for Better Customer Service
The idea of Sales and Finance working together for improved customer service is an obvious one, but also one that many companies without cloud based, integrated systems aren’t able to leverage.
I recently asked several of our customers how increased visibility of receivables information for customer facing employees impacts their billing and cash collection process. The answers I received gave such a clear message around the improvements to cash flow and better customer service that it led to the creation of this video.
In it, customers from both the US and UK talk about how transparency of finances is empowering Sales and Service departments with the information they need to offer a better customer experience. Imagine the scenario. An account has an overdue invoice. This is Chattered to the rest of the business so that the people with the customer relationship can speak with the customer about the outstanding invoices on their next visit. By having a conversation with the customer, they find out that there is a query over one item on the invoice which is why it has not been paid. This is fed back to Finance who can amend and re-issue the invoice which then gets paid. Not only is this a more efficient process leading to enhanced cash generation, but the customer’s experience, which may have been negative after receiving the incorrect invoice, has been turned into a positive one.
In a siloed business, Finance would be dealing with these issues independently, relying on faceless emails into the customer with no inside knowledge of the account. Assumptions would be made about why the payment was late which would inevitably color the tone of the emails, likely leading to them being ignored. The customer facing staff would be unable to assist and would be attempting to service their customer oblivious to the fact that this was going on, giving the customer a disjointed and unprofessional service.
Further, this transparency into account transaction information means Sales teams have more information in hand when engaging in the sales cycle with customers. They can use this to start discussions about future bookings so the cycle is further enhanced. Sales teams are empowered to make better decisions and invariably find that they can do their job more effectively.
Happy customers, happy workforce, happy Management Team, need I go on…Watch the video and hear from the customers themselves.
