According to Micah Solomon, renown Customer Service and Business Author, “Customer service is the new sales engine”. This may seem obvious to some, but given that these two customer-facing groups are often separated organizationally by time, space, function and performance metrics, I believe it is worthwhile giving this quotation more than a passing glance.

It is important to recognize that both teams are responsible for ensuring that a good relationship is developed and maintained with the customer. Therefore, both sales and service are key factors in ensuring the growth and success of a business, because ultimately, there is no business without satisfied customers.

Sales representatives generally trigger the relationship with customers – proactively identifying and responding to the needs the prospect may not even be aware they had, and building the foundation for the on-going business relationship. The customer service representatives, on the other hand, typically become involved with the customer when there is an obvious need – usually a problem that needs a speedy solution or guiding them to better utilize your product or service to achieve their goals.  As you can see, sales and service are really two sides of the same coin although, more often than not, the relationship between the two teams is anything but close.

The bottom-line is, communication is the glue that holds any relationship together. The problem is that organizational silos do not encourage the sharing of data that is critical to ensuring an exceptional customer experience. The Sales Team carries out their front-end role, making the initial sale, and often important customer information is lost en route to the Customer Service department. For example, the customer really wanted a premium product, but only the basic product was in stock. The Customer Service representative is completely unaware and does not follow up to make the up-grade, resulting in a missed opportunity for additional revenue, and the likelihood of customer dissatisfaction with the product purchased.

Brad Cleveland, president and CEO of Incoming Call Management Institute, is an advocate for sales and customer service integration to ensure the alignment of both teams’ goals, objectives and performance metrics. He believes that,

Customer Service + Sales = Positive Customer Experience

While I agree that it is impossible for either the Sales or the Customer Service Team to provide this experience alone, I believe that, in fact, it takes the entire Organization! The journey to service excellence requires that every single aspect of the Organization is focused single-mindedly on the customer. This is what it takes to be truly Customer Centric. My question is how many of our businesses are structured with this in mind? How many even have Customer Service and Sales teams who consistently use and update an integrated customer database in order to actively manage and respond to customers’ needs? Does your Organization have strategic customer focused goals that translate into aligned performance metrics? Do you have a Customer Journey Map that represents all the key touch points (often pain points!) of your customers?

From my observation, probably very few do! And, even fewer have a well-structured and cohesive strategy that pulls together all the key components which allow an organization to differentiate on its service quality. Which means that, for most of us customers, a positive memorable customer experience is a rare phenomenon.

I think it’s time to change that paradigm. Customers deserve better and businesses stand to gain exponentially. It’s a real win-win.