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 They might be missing a phone number or links to social channels, or they may be totally outdated or tricky to navigate—all of which makes for a bad customer experience.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.

A new sales rep isn’t going to magically outsell the top performers the first day on the job. Before a new rep can begin to hit and exceed quotas, they need time and a well-defined plan. One of the most popular plans for success in a new environment is the 30-60-90 day plan. In this guide, we’ll show you how to create a useful three-month plan for managers, sales reps, and new territories.