While the onus of generating revenue historically fell on sales teams, customer success teams also play a pivotal role in this process. Sales teams are tasked with initiating conversations and building relationships with potential customers to close the deal while customer success and experience teams work to ensure new and existing customers see the value in their product and see opportunities to grow and scale. Together, these teams can build customer relationships that keep customers growing with the organisation.
It should come as no surprise that providing excellent customer experience has been proven to generate (and save) a lot of revenue, in fact, improving the customer experience can increase sales revenue by 2-7% and profitability by 1-2%. Still, despite this fact, customer teams are often overlooked during revenue planning.
How can organisations empower their customer success teams to become an effective arm in revenue generation?
Employee training and learning and development (L&D) programs are some of the most effective ways to provide customer success teams with the skills needed to become effective at revenue generation. By equipping customer success teams with the skills to provide a quality customer experience, businesses can benefit from employees who can recognise upsell opportunities and know how to work with existing customers in a positive way – all contributing to steady retention and revenue growth.
What Skills Can Best Support Customer Teams
While the benefits of learning and development are clear, it can be difficult for organisations to narrow down which skills to provide additional training on. Customer teams deal with several challenges ranging from customer complaints and product returns to upselling. As such, team members require a wide range of skills from time management to adaptability.
Empathy
One of the biggest skills needed on customer teams is the ability to empathise with customers and to acknowledge and respect their feelings. By creating a positive customer experience through empathy, customers are more likely to build trust and continue to work with the organisation. Employers can foster empathy skills in customer teams by using customer personas in online training simulations or branching scenarios, routes through learning content that depend on the actions taken by a learner, or by providing employees with real-world examples and personal anecdotes that foster emotional connection.
Time Management
Timely response is a necessity in customer interactions, and how quickly teams offer outcomes can make or break an interaction. Providing timed online training simulations can help teams hone their skills while learning how to work under pressure and still deliver a quality customer experience.
Negotiation
Customer success teams can excel in sales opportunities when equipped with negotiation skills. These skills can be critical in times when employees need to diffuse the situation or appease the customer. Branching scenarios are a wonderful way to impart negotiation skills and allow employees to learn from their mistakes.
Adaptability
Adapting to different challenges and situations is a daily hurdle in customer teams. Employers can use scenario based and real-world simulations that test teams’ ability to apply their skills in different contexts. For example, utilising communication skills to actively listen to a customer’s needs to recommend the right product, rather than simply going through the motions, while completing a return.
Identifying What Learning Style is Right for You
Once priority opportunities to upskill employees are identified, employers should strive to adopt the types of training that work best for both their employees as well as the business. To do so, employers should conduct surveys and analyse which existing learning methods get the most engagement.
For customer teams specifically, just-in-time training is an effective and trusted solution. It is a time-sensitive form of training designed to quickly teach employees what they need to know about a specific topic and is an efficient way to deploy training specific to an individual’s needs. This method is especially effective in a fast-paced environment like customer service because it allows employees to train on their own time and avoid potential burnout caused by extensive training courses.
Additional ways to increase learner engagement and ensure customer teams are prioritising learning are through gamification. This method helps to motivate employees to complete more courses to earn points and badges.While sales teams often take the spotlight for closing deals, customer success teams play an equally vital role in nurturing relationships, ensuring customer satisfaction, and driving revenue through retention and growth. Customer success teams are growth engines that are often undervalued. By harnessing the power of customer success teams and providing the necessary support and training, businesses can create effective tools, drive revenue growth, and deliver exceptional customer experiences that foster loyalty and sustainable business success.