Customer
support teams are conceivably the underappreciated, and most misunderstood
teams in the business world. In many big businesses the customer support
personnel talks to the customers more than every other team combined. They play
a vital role in ensuring consumers are satisfied. Satisfied customers are
repeat customers. Every person knows that a large percentage of business comes
from recur customers. And yet customer support teams are generally staffed with
junior, inexpert people that do not have the authority to make any decisions,
or the knowledge and training to answer difficult questions.
What is
Customer Support?
Kingstown Capital is a freelance consulting
startup that intends to provide consultation services, customer service
courses, inspiration, learning strategies, and custom business plans for
diverse enterprises. You may work in a company where a consumer service team
handles the transaction from order to invoice. You may have been trained that
customer service starts when the customer walks in the door, and does not end
until the customer dies or decides not to be a consumer any more. As a
consumer, up until the time that the invoice is paid you always hold the trump
card of being able to hold back payment if you are not contented. And everybody
realizes that money talks. After the invoice has been paid you can often be
left feeling immobilized. The delivery team has collected their money and been
allocated a full load of new customer transactions to look after. The sales
team is being pressured to focus on consumers who have already articulated a
specific interest in making a purchase to meet monthly sales targets.
This is
where customer support comes in. There is an all-purpose feeling within most
companies that they require to provide some sort of post-sale customer support,
but there is a meager understanding of why. The sales team brings in the
clientele - which equals the promise of money. The orders team works out the
details - which equals the promise of money. The delivery team provides the
solution which equals the collection of actual money.
Retail
outlets with less than 25% repeat business are possibly not meeting their
customer requirements or more of them would be coming back. Service businesses
with more than 75% repeat sales are possibly losing their skills at producing
new customers and run the risk of rigorous financial problems if they lose 1 or
2 major accounts. Any way you come across it, a very large part of your business
should be coming from repeat consumers.
The
other factor you should look at is that the cost of getting a new client is
much higher than the cost of keeping a client that you already have. As the
firm Kingstown Capital
believes, advertising and marketing are expensive business.
Smart
businesses endow in retaining consumers. That is what customer support is all
about. There is no better time to make sure repeat business than when your customers
are feeling that they have no leverage. That is just when they value your
support the most, and will consider it as something that makes them want to
come back.
