Like any good mechanic, a reseller needs more than one tool in their tool kit in order to serve the differing needs of their clients.
Those needs are driven by the industry in which their clients operate, the way their customers want to contact them and the size of their operation. Never has the consultancy sale been more important and offered the chance to deliver so much value.
The key to the consultation is to understand where the money is. Not the money you as a reseller can make, but the value of good customer communications management to your client, and the cost if it is done badly. Then resellers need to ask whether they’re servicing a sales or service team, do they have a capital sales or revenue relationship with customers, is their market competitive (show me one that isn’t)?
“The tools available go beyond the voice, chat and email queue service, albeit they remain increasingly important,” said Iain Sinnott, Sales and Marketing Director of VanillaIP. “We now have an incredible opportunity to use a human touch through the use of virtual meetings within a sales or support desk workflow.”
“I am not a regular member of the live support team but I do occasionally sign in so I can understand the real-life requirements. The other day I took a chat from a client who had a question on the navigation of the self-service portal Uboss where she had forgotten where to look for the specific product configuration menu. I asked if I could get her to jump in a virtual meeting room and she did so with pleasure, two minutes later, with her sharing her screen the question was answered and the call ended with a smile and a wave.”
More to offer
In a world where almost everyone has got Teams, Webex or Zoom, businesses have the chance not only to offer voice and non-voice routes for clients and prospects but also have the chance to personalize it. The question is if businesses can still afford to have this level of human involvement or will commercial pressures force the introduction of AI bots?
“It goes back to the first step in the process, understanding the money” said Sinnott. “Once that is established, resellers need to then understand the common workflow. Is there a percentage of FAQ traffic that might suggest a BOT is better for the customer and the operations budget?
“The ability to cream off the simple tasks and then focus the human skills on to the interactions where they have the most meaningful effect seems natural, but how do you help establish the knowledge through which such decisions can be made and automation designed?
Iain Sinnott[/caption]
