As a successful sales manager, you know exactly what your sales team needs to achieve sales success, i.e. to reach sales targets and, at best, to exceed them. You need not only active support from the marketing department, but also a competent and service-oriented service department that takes sales tasks seriously. But what if the service employees are not available? Read how virtualQ customers ensure smooth collaboration between office and field staff.
The collaboration of sales, marketing and service
It’s an old mantra of customer-facing departments that only through good collaboration between sales, marketing and service positive customer experiences and a high level of customer loyalty can be achieved. In practice, unfortunately, these business units often act autonomously and in a competitive relationship. Silo thinking can only be broken down slowly, even through intervention at the highest management level.
Change processes and transformation projects need time, which many companies no longer have if they want to remain competitive. Agile approaches can provide relief for urgent problems, provided they are identified as such. In particular, measures that better align sales and service tasks have a direct impact on revenue figures and should therefore be strongly prioritized.
Strengthen communication between field and office staff
Insurance companies, banks, telecommunications companies and many other industries have a network of external branches and partner companies that access internal services of the parent organization. Not all necessary sales information is freely available to the field sales force and, in the case of special issues, outside their own area of expertise. In these cases, recourse to the Service Department is provided for. However, if the field sales force does not reach the inside sales force right away, they cannot answer the customer inquiry directly, which immediately diminishes a potential sales opportunity.
Today’s customers want information immediately. In order to make the most of every sales opportunity – no matter where and between whom it takes place – the sales department must have a direct line to the internal service department. Fluctuating call volumes and high staff turnover in the service department can make it difficult to ensure constant agreed service levels, however, and thus jeopardize your sales success.
The virtual queue for effective network organization
A concrete solution to the problem described above is the introduction of a virtual queuing system. The integration of virtualQ into ACD systems enables the prediction and better distribution of incoming calls, as well as informing the caller via app about the expected waiting time and the option of a callback. In the meantime, the sales representative can continue to focus on the customer – with the guarantee that he can deliver the necessary information at a clearly defined time. In many cases, these minutes are actually decisive for sales!
Customer Success story: Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall
For instance, Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall has identified better communication between inside and outside sales as a high business priority. virtualQ’s innovative technology was first tested in a pilot project and subsequently rolled out to all 4,000 sales representatives. The decisive factor for the interest in virtual queue management was a call abandonment rate of 9.6% for sales representatives. This was already reduced to 8% during the pilot phase. 88% of the test users were enthusiastic about the software, which is an extraordinary success for digital enhancements in a working environment that tends to be analog.
