Would you like to see your customers being excited about your company? Not only that but buying from you over and over again, and bringing in referrals regularly?
Sounds like a dream come true, right? Well, it's actually possible when you understand your buyer’s journey and make a few adjustments to your day to day operations.
The secret to achieving amazing customer satisfaction is constantly measuring and improving. That means listening to your customer’s feedback and responding with actions.
Let’s look at some principles of B2B customer success that will help you achieve amazing customer satisfaction.
Focus on the Customer’s Bottom Line
As opposed to B2C clients who are mainly interested in products to work as advertised, B2B clients need more than that. Your business customers will usually buy a solution from you that will help them save time or money, or something that will impact their revenue.
When your customer support and customer success teams have this in mind, they can focus on the return on investment (ROI) of the customer and help them achieve it. A customer who sees a positive ROI from your products or services will certainly be satisfied and refer other customers to you.
Make sure the benefits are clearly and effectively being demonstrated and communicated. Effective reporting is key to this. It will not only highlight your strengths, but will also identify weaknesses that can quickly be addressed before they become a real issue.
Check out the video below to understand how we report at CloudTask:
Little Things that Make a Huge Difference
A friend of mine owns a travel business in Colombia renting villas. Recently, he’s adopted a more comprehensive customer success plan and now, not only will customers receive a property when they need one, but he’s also included concierge services and travel advice as standard. This doesn’t just provide the customer with a more hands on experience, but it also gives his business the opportunity to showcase their true knowledge of the area. It might feel like a lot of work “given away” but if you could secure a client and better yet, have them be an ambassador for your brand, wouldn’t you go that extra mile?
80% of all new SaaS customers come from current or old customers. With most of our clients being in the SaaS industry, we know the importance of the not so little things that make a difference.
Offer customers an assortment of tools and resources to ensure satisfaction, be it through educational material, video or easy places to contact you and more, and make sure all issues are dealt with the second they arise.
Even the slightest issue that isn’t addressed can have customers not renewing your services and this is where high churn rates come into place.
Use an Omnichannel Approach
Using an omni-channel approach is a great way to show your customers you’re there for them where they are. Be it Facebook, LinkedIn, email, WhatsApp or the phone, using multiple channels allows your customers to communicate with you where they are.
Now it may not be possible for you to use every channel or be 24/7, but analyse your clients and prospects to see what channels they like to use, when and in what way, so you can cover the most important bases. Double down on the channels that work, but try not to get stuck in your ways. Keep testing new channels as the world evolves to see what will make your customer’s lives easier.
Take this example from Apollo, a software tool that makes prospecting easy. CloudTask’s omnichannel approach coupled with our hands-on work and training allowed them to solve over 3,000 support tickets in record time whilst growing their client satisfaction.
Always Look to Improve Response Times
In the most abrupt manner, current market changes have shifted the way we do business. Whether or not these changes are permanent is something we have yet to discover but if there’s one thing certain, it’s that not all clients are sympathetic with expected wait times.
Let’s face it, some organizations have horrible response times. With the current crisis, your prospects paid enough for your product or service to get personalized attention. Chatbots can help with this, but make sure there’s still the option to speak to a human too if needed.
If you let your customers down when they need it most, they’ll lose confidence in you. Improve your wait times, improve SLA times. I know it’s tough but during times of crisis, what is good and bad gets magnified. But don’t take our word for it, check out these words from market expert, Shep Hyken.
At CloudTask we’ve really seen over the years that wait times are one of the biggest factors that drive customer satisfaction and that’s why it’s one of our top focuses. We ensure customers get answers instantly and measure every conversation. GetAccept CRO Carl Carell is one to speak fondly of this experience:
Upsell Only What the Customer Needs
We’ve come across many organizations who want to shove as many products and services down customers’ throats for the sake of “business being a numbers game”. The more you target, the better the chances of selling. Though there is some wisdom in this, in today’s fast-paced world, you’re only as important as how much value you bring to the table.
I once received 3 phone calls in one month from my internet provider asking if I wanted to upgrade my current package...
Persistence is not the key, providing real value is. Follow up from time to time with your prospects asking how their experience has been with their purchase, ask them if they’re encountering any issues and just try and add value.
Every value-adding phone call, message on social media and email will be held in high regard, and every unproductive one is spam. If you make yourself out to hear your customers, know exactly what it is they’ve purchased and what problems they can run into in the future, you will have a solution for them every time.
From this point, you’ll be in a great position to position an upsell if it’s needed.
A Satisfied Customer is an Ambassador for your Brand
Once you’ve done all that and your customers are satisfied with their buyer’s journey (and then some), you do it all over again. Keep improving what you’ve done right and use your customer feedback to polish what you did wrong.
This will then lead to one of the biggest revenue drivers there is - referrals. A satisfied customer is the best kind of marketing and it’s free!
Customer Support & Customer Satisfaction
This section might be a little late but for those that are unaware, customer support and customer satisfaction are very different disciplines, but equally as important in a customer’s journey.
Customer support is being available if and when a customer encounters an issue with the service you’ve provided, it’s key. Customer satisfaction/success on the other hand is knowing your customers end goals and doing what you can to address and exceed them. Customer support might have an expiration date and be transactional, while customer satisfaction is an ongoing practice that continues until your customer stops being your customer.
In retrospect, both practices will keep your customers not only happy, but crucially loyal.
If you’d like to learn more about CloudTask’s Outsourced Customer Support and Outsourced Customer Success services, be sure to contact us today.
