In part 4 of our series on How Automotive Companies Can Survive The Future we looked at how to give your customers the best possible experience. Here's part 5, describing the latest sales trend of turning customers into promoters… Join the #SalesSuperleague.
As always you can read our blog, watch our videos on YouTube, or listen to our podcast on iTunes and Soundcloud…
HubSpot have coined the phrase 'Inbound Service Framework' to describe the process a customer goes through, that turns them from a potential customer to a promoter of your brand.
Good customer service is the key to everything else. At first you just need to understand and resolve as many customer questions as you can. Engage with customers at this stage wherever you can, and try to help anyone who needs it. But most importantly make it EASY for people to get help. If you don't get any requests for support it doesn't mean your product or service is perfect, it means your customers are silently suffering.
As your customer service team gets more sophisticated you can start tailoring your processes. The key here is to identify issues, not only resolving them quickly and efficiently but stopping them occurring repeatedly. For example:
As your team evolves, you'll be able to optimise your own processes and identify the most effective support channels.
The aim here is to turn your relationship with your customer into a proactive partnership. Being proactive means:
If you can give your customers, not only a valuable product or service, but also trusted and seamless after sales support, competitors will struggle to replicate the trust your customers have in you.
https://blog.hubspot.com/news-trends/customer-acquisition-studyHappy customers want to support the businesses they love. 90% of consumers are more likely to purchase more, and 93% were more likely to be repeat customers at companies with excellent customer service.
Happy buyers WANT to help you! And that is what the 'Grow' stage is, turning desire into action. There are 4 ways to turn your customers into promoters:
Buyers are more likely to buy from companies their networks trust and your customers can create social proof for your product or service in several ways:
You can have different customers for different types of social proof. You can encourage your customers to provide social proof by reaching out to them. You can also provide incentives for writing online reviews or sharing content.
When your customers interact with you or your content online, they're amplifying your brand. This can be sharing your content on social media, contributing content for a campaign, or interacting with your content. You need to make your content so amazing that they can't help but interact with it. Or an incentive after a certain amount of shares.
Referrals have the most immediate monetary value, and you can offer the referer credit to their account and even monetary rewards. You must make sure you are offering them something of high value; if they are gaining you customers it's a high value service they are providing.
Once you have snagged a customer, you can see what other products or services you sell that they might be interested in. Closing a loophole between sales and support can let you know when the customer might need to add to the product or service they've already bought.
The key to putting together an Inbound Service Framework and making the most of the customers you've already won, is an excellent customer experience. Creating a network where you can depend on your customers to promote and rave about your products and services, can lay the groundwork for sustainable and long-term growth. In a world where acquiring new customers is getting harder and harder, it would be crazy to ignore this opportunity.
Thanks to HubSpot for this research.
Our blog series for Automotive companies on Business Growth, How to use HubSpot, and Website design, our podcasts on iTunes and Soundcloud, and our videos on YouTube.
The Tree Group is a business growth agency and HubSpot Certified Partner that combines sales, marketing, and websites to help Automotive companies with at least 10 staff and a desire to grow by 15% in the next 18 months. Does that sound like you?