Why customer experience can make or break sales

Customer experience analyst at Paypal explores the importance of streamlined sales processes that allow reps to deliver seamless buying experiences

What are customer engagement strategies?

Customer expectations are rising to new heights, with seamless convenience now a deciding factor in many consumer buying decisions.

To thrive in this landscape, firms need to equip employees to deliver elevated experiences to their customers. The sales team will be critical for bringing customer experience strategies to life. In many cases, this team delivers the first impression and reveals how an organization lives by the customer experience claims it makes.

Adeel Ahmad, customer experience analyst at Paypal, maintains the importance of sales reps contributing to customer experiences that meet customer expectations. He says “it is necessary to equip your sales-force with the essential tools and training for managing customer experience because this could be the difference between making or breaking a sale.”

The reality

The reality is that the sales cycle in most businesses suffers from a large degree of fragmentation. Disconnected sales tools, laborious manual entry process and substandard data integrity combines to produce a distorted customer view that can spark friction in the customer journey.

In an era where convenience is the standard, these fracture points can frustrate a customer to the point of causing churn and forcing them to switch to a competitor.

What are the customer experience management tools?

Too often sales reps are forced to waste time gathering customer information scattered across various systems. Businesses can elect to use sophisticated tools that will greatly simplify the process of delivering a service to customers that delights and leads to conversion. Intelligent technologies can gather accurate, timely data in order to provide real-time recommendations to sales reps to greatly improve the customer experience they provide and their chances of conversion.

Customer experience training

In terms of strategies to support sales reps in their delivery of customer experience, Adeel emphasizes the importance of training: “Larger organizations have CX specialists that work with sales reps on optimizing CX during the process of the sale. They also ensure that the customer’s transition from buyer journey to the user journey is smooth. These specialists maintain relationship continuity throughout the customer lifecycle along with sales reps.”

“Smaller organizations may have both roles fulfilled by the same sales rep. CX transformation leaders know this well and they embed their org deep in the sales workflow to ensure that the sales reps are always enabled to deliver an elevated experience.”

Sophisticated technologies can also arm managers with real-time data about their reps’ progress, so they can administer customized periodic coaching sessions tailored to individuals. This bespoke training places the sales agent in a stronger position to deliver profitable customer experiences.

For more strategies on empowering sales reps to deliver experiences that will convert prospects into customers, read the following resource: Change the sales rep experience, improve the customer experience