5 Points for a Successful Sales-to-Service Handoff Process

Creating a successful sales-to-service handoff process is crucial for any business. In fact, it can be the difference between a company that succeeds and one that fails. With so many companies shifting their focus to customer service, it’s important for every business owner to have a plan in place for handling these transitions, both internally and externally.

FACT – It’s up to 25x cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. 

That’s why a manager’s ability to foster relationships between teams is important in enabling cross-selling, re-selling, and servicing opportunities with your customers.

Here are our top five tips for creating an effective sales-to-service handoff process:

Align sales and service management.

Sales and Customer Service leadership must be on the same page. In fact, some companies believe this so much they’re blending the sales and service management roles into one. This lets management align each team’s functions, optimizing their performance.

When the leaders of different departments are regularly talking, they’re far less likely to set and chase conflicting goals. It might seem simple, but if you’re a leader in the sales or customer success teams at your company, set up a weekly 1:1 to discuss top priorities. Hearing the other perspective will help you make decisions that’ll benefit the entire company.

From the customer’s end, this results in an efficient handoff process. When sales and service management is aligned, both teams know exactly what to do when acquiring new customers. Customers aren’t waiting around for help and sales or service reps can answer questions about any part of the transition process.

Combine sales and customer success goals.

Customer success should consider the sales team’s targets, and sales targets must include the customer service team’s retention goals.

Sales could smooth-talk anyone into buying your product without considering customer fit. And yes, the customer success department could hit their retention goal if they refunded new customers who weren’t a perfect fit. But, neither scenario produces the best outcome for the customer for your business.

Instead, your company should use sales and service to nurture customers who are the best fit for your business.

Did you Know?  

When you integrate HubSpot Sales Hub and Service Hub with your CRM, you unlock new levels of agility and efficiency. With a centralized system that speaks to your sales teams and supports your customers, your company can focus on what matters most: growing better.

Include the sales team in a customer success report card.

Reps are responsible for bringing in new business for the company. It is their unwavering commitment that makes them successful. But, it can also cause them to lose sight of retaining customers as well.

Getting sales more invested in customer retention is relatively simple — just keep them in the loop on the customer success team’s progress and playbook. This also helps them speak knowledgeably about the customer service hand-off once they’ve closed a new customer.

Did you Know?

• Customers with Sales and Service Hub see a 124% greater increase in the number of deals closed than customers with only Sales Hub after 12 months.
• Customers with Sales and Service Hub see their deal close rate increase by 107% after 12 months.

Provide training for both teams to ensure a smooth transition from sale to service.

Customer service training should include both soft skills (such as how to handle angry customers) and technical skills (such as how to use your company’s customer service software). It’s important to give each member of your team a chance to practice with actual customers under real-world conditions so they can gain confidence before they start working independently.

Ensure your customer service team is equipped with the right the tools.

HubSpot might not be the first solution you think about when thinking about customer support, but consider this –

HubSpot’s Service Hub connects all your customer service data and channels on one CRM platform, so you can easily support, retain, and grow your customer base. The result? Better customer service management, and delighted customers at every stage of the journey.

While most customer service software solutions solve for a specific use case, Service Hub is unique in its connection to the HubSpot CRM platform. With features that make it easy to deliver authentic, personalized service, Service Hub empowers you to prioritize the customer experience.

Here are a few more reasons you need to seriously consider HubSpot for your customer support tasks.

• Knowledge Base: Help customers help themselves, and reduce your number of support requests. Convert frequently asked questions into a searchable library of help articles, videos, and documentation.
• Process: HubSpot has pipelines specifically designed for moving customers through a defined process that provides critical reporting data and triggers for process automation.
• Communication: HubSpot being a CRM is designed to track customer activity, emails, and notes between all external stakeholders and internal teams. Reducing the need to ask customers for details previously covered in a previous call or email.
• Reporting: HubSpot has reporting capabilities built in making it possible to share key onboarding performance metrics with key stakeholders proactively or provide them with real-time access.
• Automation: HubSpot’s workflow builder and automation features help remove tedious and repetitive onboarding tasks from your team’s already overflowing plate.
• Data. Your CRM has all your customer contact records in one place and is probably integrated with the rest of your tech stack as a source of truth for all customer data.
• Chatbots: Today, customers expect to connect with companies in real-time via live chat on their websites. But for many businesses, supporting one-to-one conversations on a larger scale can be a challenge. With HubSpot’s free chatbot builder, you can create messenger bots that help you qualify leads and book meetings with prospects, provide answers to common customer support questions, and more — so your team has more time to focus on the conversations that matter most.
• Tickets Pipeline: With tickets, you can keep track of your customer interactions as they progress. The default Support pipeline helps you manage ticket statuses and define your business processes. If you have an account with a Service Hub Starter, Professional, or Enterprise subscription, you can create custom ticket pipelines and statuses to automate actions such as closing a ticket or sending a notification when an issue is resolved.

Ready to take the next step?

We know that getting started with a new CRM and Service Hub can feel daunting, so we’re here to help you every step of the way. At Glare we help our clients set up, use and manage HubSpot for everything from sales to support. We would love to do the same for your business.  Help customers help themselves, reduce your number of support requests and convert frequently asked questions into a searchable library of help articles, videos, and documentation.

If you’re interested in learning more about our services or want to talk about how we can help your company, drop a comment below or reach out directly.