The term “prospecting” has its origins in the California Gold Rush. Forty-niners (named for the year these fortune seekers began to arrive in droves) would sift through rocks and dirt, keeping their eyes peeled for the shimmer of precious metals. Over 170 years later, most of the “prospectors” in San Francisco rely more on their laptops than on their pickaxes. But the sales prospecting methods they engage in today are still aimed at uncovering golden opportunities.

Customer service is critical to every business’s long-term success. They can also help you promote your brand. Here is everything you need to know about effective customer service software.

Did you know that better customer service has a direct effect on accelerating the sales process? It can have a huge impact on customer retention as well as increasing upsell and cross-sell opportunities. And statistics show that acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing one. Watch this video to learn more about the connection between customer service and sales plus the two main considerations you should look for in a service management platform partner.

As with any large project or undertaking, metrics are key in order to gauge performance. Are your current processes adequate enough, or is there room for improvement? Metrics are important to track for all aspects of a business, from sales, marketing and financial performance, to overall customer service. When it comes to improving the automation processes of customer service, chatbot evaluation metrics are also critical to track.

We’ve all been the victim of a bad sales script. Whether in a cold call or a company follow-up, it’s painful to sit there while an uninformed sales rep fumbles their way through information you don’t need until you hang up out of mercy. Sales scripts have a bad reputation. But the fact is, a strong sales script can be a game-changer for your company and your sales team.

For many businesses, migrating support operations to new help desk software can be intimidating. That hesitancy can be rooted in fears that the process will be too challenging, expensive, and time-consuming. And when using old help desk platforms, companies often ignore the flaws and limitations. That willingness to “make do” and kick the can down the road is a very human quality. Frankly, there are no good reasons for being stuck with subpar software.

It’s the holiday season, and this year is looking like one to remember. Thanks to supply-chain issues, popular items were out of stock or delayed before the shopping season even began. I bought a fancy scarf online in October, thinking I was going to beat the rush. Within a week, I had a backorder email. Two weeks later, no word—until about a month had passed, and my order was finally canceled.

There’s a lot of debate as to what makes a business “successful.” Is it money? Is it household-name branding? Is it longevity? All may seem like markers of a successful company to the general public. But what makes a business succcessful in the eyes of other businesses? A soaring sales growth rate.

We’re well into the final quarter of 2021, and that means it’s time for the fiscal year to wrap up, year-end statistics to flood in, and 2022 strategizing to begin. Just like last year, though, sales are in a unique place as buyers continue to work remotely, online sales increase, and the pandemic leaves companies on edge. Despite everything, your company’s goal for the coming year is probably the same as always: to grow and increase sales revenue.

In today’s world, a proactive and communicative customer experience is a necessity. Companies can no longer afford to be aloof in the digital space. Live chat software connects businesses with their customers, drives revenue and growth, and provides a universally better experience that drives customer satisfaction. Given the continuous, digital transformation of the business world, the ongoing absence of live chat software only creates a void.

Healthcare is a customer service industry. Kind gestures and positive everyday interactions between staff and patients result in healthcare companies known for good quality of care. The first key to providing great customer service in the healthcare industry is to stop treating patients as customers whose sole purpose is to generate revenue. Great customer service starts with taking a patient-centric perspective – viewing them as people your company is meant to help.

Knowing whether or not your company is making a profit is essential to building a successful business strategy. The real question is: Do you know why your company is or isn’t profitable? This is the essence of the sales mix. Sales mix digs deep into the individual percentages and profits of your products so you can determine what stays, what goes, and what gets an update. Not every product is a best-seller, but that doesn’t mean it can’t hold value for the company.

Backordered for months, the couch Sasha ordered had finally come for delivery. Her doorway was narrow, but she had a plan. Which involved, well, a gymnastics routine of flipping and squeezing the boxed couch. Doorway conquered, she gazed down her mile-long hallway. Deep breath, she thought, and hauled. Sure, she lost two fingernails in the process, but this was a big day. The new couch was here! The one she’d pined for, the one that had taken practically the length of a pregnancy term to arrive.

We’ve all heard the phrase “time is money,” and in the sales world, this axiom resonates loud and true. In every company, sales teams work tirelessly to refine the process of persuading customers to buy faster each year. Time is a valuable parameter to measure, and not only in regards to your sales teams and their productivity.

Every company wants to increase productivity in its sales department—that’s a given. What’s not a given, however, is exactly how your company goes about the process. Sales reps spend hours a day recreating work that shouldn’t have to be recreated.

Chat monitoring is ideal for business owners who want to boost the performance of their customer support team and ensure they provide exceptional customer service at all times. And with chat monitoring software, you can support and supervise your agents with ease. But what exactly is chat monitoring, and how can you find the right chat monitoring software for your business? Not to worry – you’ll know soon enough!

Small businesses always have a ton of things going at all times – taking care of their teams and customers, managing multiple projects, and finishing administrative work are only a few to name. Among the hustle and bustle of these daily tasks that spread business owners and employees thin is customer service, the one that you cannot overlook at any cost.

Over the past two years, the Internet has become our conference room, gym, doctor’s office, personal gathering place—basically, our whole life. With consumers spending more time online than ever before, companies have had to rethink their customer service experience. Businesses need to gain a clear understanding of the type of digital interactions customers want instead of relying on intuition.

You’ve probably heard someone say that the customer is always right, especially if you’ve had experience in customer service or retail. But have you ever thought about what the statement implies? Who came up with this philosophical note? Does this hold true 24/7? Let’s reveal some of these answers.

A great customer experience features efficient and personalized interactions at each step of the buyer’s journey. But in order to achieve this, companies need a way to quickly analyze customer data and act on it. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, businesses that leverage customer data see 36-percent faster resolutions and a 79-percent reduction in wait times; they also solve four times the number of customer requests.

Let’s start with the basics: What is a customer touchpoint? To put it simply, a customer touchpoint is any time a consumer interacts with your brand, whether that’s through an employee, a website, an advertisement, or an app. And the experiences consumers have with those touchpoints can shape how they view your company.

It’s easy to talk about being a customer-first organization. It’s comforting to think that everyone in the organization puts the customer first. This attitude should, in theory, lead to happier customers, better business outcomes, and the type of place anyone would love to work. But defining and executing a customer-first strategy is not as organic as it might seem.

Customer satisfaction has been dropping in the US since about 2018, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The question is why, especially when so many companies are trying hard to meet customer needs on a variety of fronts. There are some general trends that offer clues—for example, customer expectations keep rising. Customers have become much more critical of everything, whether it’s product quality, delivery, or customer service.

When it comes to relationships between individuals, building trust isn’t a very difficult thing to do. It typically requires only a few points of relatability—movies or books you both enjoy, places you’ve visited, and so on—until a level of camaraderie is established. The task becomes infinitely harder, however, when it comes to sales relationships.

Social media is now a valuable part of many brands’ customer service strategies. While you can use almost every major platform like Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram for connecting with your customers, Twitter has become a personal favorite for customers to report any grievances or share their feedback.

A Contact Us page isn’t just another page on your website. In fact, it is one of your most valuable pages—and should be treated as such. A contact page provides guidance for existing customers and offers an overview of your brand for new visitors. But contact pages aren’t always crafted with care. They might be missing a phone number or links to social channels, or they may be totally outdated or tricky to navigate—all of which makes for a bad customer experience.

A sales letter is an important tool for shaping the way your customers think of you. The more deliberate you are with writing a strong sales letter, the more conversions you’ll get as a result. In this guide, we’ll discuss the key components of a dynamic sales letter, share a sales letter example, and provide useful tips on how to write a sales letter.

A virtual contact center is one in which agents respond to incoming phone calls, emails, social media requests and other customer service tickets remotely, not from a centralized location. This is a change from more traditional, brick-and-mortar call centers in which agents work from the same location. While traditional, brick-and-mortar call centers used to be prevalent, increasingly companies are turning to virtual contact centers.

It’s what every business strives to achieve: attract new customers, provide unparalleled service and goods, and build a relationship that ends up in years of repeat business. Getting there, however, requires more than good intentions—it takes implementing a customer lifecycle management process.

The customer may not always be right, but customer feedback is always valuable. Organizations have understood the value of customer feedback long before the advent of the internet, which of course has made surveying customers far easier. Indeed, if it’s worth mailing survey ballots to customers, surely you should consider doing it over the internet as well.