7 tips for an efficient and organised after-sales service

The order is delivered, the service is finished... mission accomplished? Not quite! Customer relations don't stop there.

☝️ After-sales service is an important stage in the customer journey. Once the buyer has left the shop or validated their order online, every company still has to ensure customer satisfaction by soundly managing its after-sales service.

It is also a marketing showcase, influencing customers, prospects and competitors. Technological innovation in the after-sales service can offer a competitive advantage.

Whether it's returns, repairs, technical problems or requests for information, after-sales service should be a priority. Properly managed, it can have a positive impact on your sales.

So how can you improve its performance to get the most out of this pillar of customer relations? We tell you all about it! 🔍

See all software Telephony

The importance of after-sales service

What does after-sales service mean?

After-sales service refers to the set of services provided to customers after the sale, depending on the company's activities and core business:

• follow-up after the purchase of a product or service,
• maintenance
• troubleshooting
• returns or exchanges, etc.

After-sales service can also encompass other services, such as :

• delivery and installation of goods or equipment,
• physical or online assistance,
• training, advice,
• all interactions managed remotely in general.

As a result, after-sales service is proving to be a key factor in enhancing a company's image, and is becoming a lever for customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, all the more so in a context of digitalised customer relations. Here's why.

What role does after-sales service play?

Enhancing brand image

The quality of the goods or services sold is obviously paramount. But so is the ability to speak to competent people and have problems resolved by a well-organised service.

97% of consumers consider the quality of customer service to be an important criterion when choosing a brand.

SmartTribune

An after-sales service is one of the last points of contact with your customer. If it generates satisfaction among your customers, it can represent real added value for your company.

Customers who are listened to, whose needs are taken into account and dealt with effectively, are more likely to recommend you, to speak positively about you to others or to leave a favourable review on your website.

Conversely, any dissatisfaction can damage a brand's reputation and its business, and ultimately have a negative impact on its sales. 🙅

A tool for building customer loyalty

A quality after-sales service can be a decisive factor in a customer's decision to buy, especially for high-value goods.

Customers invest in the product, but they also buy the associated service. Darty's after-sales service is a good example of this: the brand has taken advantage of its after-sales management to establish a bond of trust with its customers.

The quality of after-sales service is a fundamental element in nurturing customer relations, which will ultimately lead to customer loyalty. And it's no secret that building customer loyalty costs you less than acquiring new ones.

The quality of what you sell is essential, but it is no longer enough. To ensure healthy growth and a positive reputation, your customers need to have confidence in your after-sales service. In practice, what is the basis of a successful after-sales service?

What is a good after-sales service?

A smooth, efficient customer experience

What exactly are customers looking for when they come into contact with your brand?

✔ S peed and efficiency: customers want to be reassured, and obtain information and solutions quickly, without going through several intermediaries.

✔ A simple and personalised process: customers will feel closer to the brand if efforts are made to understand their expectations, resolve their specific problems, and establish a personal and positive exchange.

✔ The quality of the exchange: the substance and form of exchanges, whatever the channel used, must be meticulous.

Creating value...

For your company, the issue will centre on the profitability of its after-sales service. Although after-sales service is sometimes invoiced, it is generally included in the contract for the sale of the product or service.

In order to succeed in generating a proportion of sales via this service and no longer consider it as an expense item, its actions and objectives will have to be linked to the company's overall policy.

... linked to synergy between departments

The performance of an after-sales service can also depend on good collaboration between the various business departments.

After-sales service staff will benefit from being receptive to feedback from those in direct contact with customers.

In this way, customer service and sales work hand in hand towards a single objective: to improve customer relations and, ultimately, generate more sales.

An example of a high-performance after-sales service thanks to omnidigital

While the telephone is still the preferred channel for customers, diversifying and digitising contact points is a winning strategy.

In order to harmonise and streamline the customer experience, it is in a brand's best interests to adopt an omnichannel strategy so that it can meet customers wherever they are: social networks, chat rooms, the website, etc.

7 tips to boost the efficiency of your after-sales service

1 - Turn your after-sales service into a profit centre

In order to optimise the costs associated with its operation, the issue of after-sales service performance needs to be integrated into the company's development plans. By implementing an organisation-wide strategic project, your after-sales service will be able to deliver positive results with :

• clearly defined financial objectives
• a service offering that goes beyond the "curative" aspect to proactively increase sales (training, remote assistance, etc.),
• management tools and indicators to monitor the development of its activities,
• implementation of a genuine customer satisfaction monitoring process.

Well thought-out management of your after-sales service will enable you to control costs and develop a range of services with a view to improving your company's profitability.

💡 This strategy based on making your after-sales service more profitable can be refined by gathering feedback from your customers. For example, a satisfaction questionnaire sent out just after the service has been used can prove effective in improving after-sales service performance and adapting it to customer expectations.

2 - Automate recurring responses

To make the work of your after-sales teams easier, why not automatically process some of the responses you send out? Some requests come up frequently and have little added value. While they don't necessarily have to be handled by a call centre agent, they can be automated to free up your teams' time for higher added-value issues.

Customers are increasingly connected and tend to want to solve their problems independently (the self-care trend). As they seek to obtain information themselves online, they are looking for digital channels that allow them to access the service at any time.

88% of French people say they are in favour of multiple methods of contact over extended hours.

SmartTribune

3 - Develop your staff's skills

Your customer advisers are the direct interface with your customers. It is therefore essential that they are fully conversant with the products and services you sell, the current offers and your company's processes.

What's more, customer service is key, and your staff will need to demonstrate great interpersonal skills.

So it's a good idea to organise training and skills development.

• Business knowledge: to provide quality information and precise answers.
  Technicians and advisers need to know their area of expertise and the brand in order to provide customers with high-quality support.
  
  
• Listening skills: to clearly identify the customer's request, know how to listen and rephrase to ensure that the problem is properly understood and to guide the customer in the best possible way. Active listening: empathy and patience are qualities that customers expect from an advisor.
  
  
• Greeting and mediation techniques: to remain courteous in all circumstances, whether receiving calls, emails or chats.
  Tact and respect for the other person are essential, especially when dealing with complaints and reactions to potentially aggressive behaviour (discontent, impatience, customer frustration).
  Advisers need to know how to adapt their approach and redirect customers towards the appropriate solutions or contacts to deal with their problem.
  
  
• Communication: knowing how to express yourself in a pleasant and reassuring way, with clear elocution. Let's not forget that the ability to communicate well builds confidence and remains one of the keys to after-sales service quality.

4 - Get to know your customers better

Knowing your customers better means being able to meet their expectations more effectively.

And positive emotions play an important role in the feeling of closeness with a brand. By focusing on personalising the customer relationship, you are banking on increasing customer satisfaction.

To get to know the people you're talking to, it's a good idea to use a mobile sales management tool. By recording as much information as possible, it enables you to trace the customer relationship, so that you are better able to personalise exchanges, in a customer-centric approach.

In the same way, the after-sales service itself will enable you to gather elements of customer knowledge.

You can encourage the sharing of feedback between the teams in contact with customers by setting up a system for circulating information and highlighting customer needs through requests sent to the after-sales service.

5 - Encourage internal communication

6 - Measure the performance of your after-sales service

7 - Use the right tools

Finally, the efficiency of your after-sales service is greatly boosted by the use of new-generation tools, enabling you to implement and automate all the good practices described above. The result? Greater efficiency, customer satisfaction and less wasted time.

Here's a small selection of these invaluable software solutions.

👉 So lutions specialising in customer support

• easiware. In addition to its omnichannel management and customer relationship personalisation functions, the tool offers response templates, a help centre and a knowledge base to its users, to facilitate and contextualise exchanges, so that the human element remains at the heart of after-sales service.
  
  
• RingCentral Customer Experience. The software enables customers' expectations to be met effectively, thanks to control over the various communication channels: advisers manage all interactions on a centralised interface. This tool also provides reporting and activity monitoring, to optimise the customer experience across the after-sales service.
  
  
• Salesforce Service Cloud. The strength of this platform lies in its ability to track requests and complaints, even if customers change contact channels along the way. What's more, the integrated cloud knowledge base enables your support teams to pool their customer data and share it with their colleagues.
  
  
• Twilio Flex is the cloud contact centre platform that enables you to build bespoke omnichannel customer experiences. You have the power to offer a personalised and relevant after-sales service to each of your customers, whatever the communication channel used. With Twilio, interactions with your brand will not leave your customers indifferent.

👉 Business telephony solutions

• Dexem. The cloud telephony solution aims to modernise business telephony to improve call management. Thanks to features such as the interactive voice server, you can respond quickly to customer requests and easily direct them to the right person. Bonus: the software integrates easily with many CRM applications on the market to optimise customer follow-up and relations.
  
  
• Kavkom. What's special about this cloud telephony platform? It natively integrates a CRM. Thanks to this software, customers benefit from a professional telephone greeting (IVR to qualify the request, for example), as well as optimal monitoring of their file. Finally, Kavkom offers an unlimited service, with no commitment and invoiced on a pro rata basis.

👉 CRM

• Zendesk. With this CRM, you offer your customers a fluid and natural experience, regardless of the contact points used during their journey. Your agents receive requests from all channels in their unified workspace, and have access to useful and available customer information. The result? The responses they receive are personalised, faster and perfectly contextualised.

👉 After-sales maintenance solutions

• MySABE. This after-sales maintenance software is tailor-made for companies in all sectors. It offers a wide range of functions to meet every need, ensuring that your after-sales service is perfectly managed and profitable. Request, invoicing of interventions, management of customers and their contracts... it guarantees a recurring income while offering a quality and diversity of services.

👉 Chatbots

• BOTNATION.AI. The tool supports your customer service management, dealing directly with simple, recurring issues, and finding the right contact for more complex queries. Its round-the-clock availability and instant responses make for a smoother customer experience and ease the workload for after-sales staff, by filtering requests.

👉 S ervice management software

Why use service management software? Let's say you sell a fridge to a restaurant and your customer calls the after-sales service in a panic because his kitchen is flooded following a breakdown. You then have to create a ticket and send someone to solve the problem.

• Kizeo Forms. This solution optimises communication between the field team and customer service. Using the mobile application, the repairer takes notes from the customer's home (type of breakdown, parts to be ordered, etc.) and transmits them in real time. No need to go back to the office, no paper, and no time wasted transcribing reports.

See all software Telephony

And after-sales service becomes an asset for your sales!

After-sales service, across all sectors, is a service in its own right that should not be neglected. With customers becoming ever more demanding, the quality of customer service remains one of the top criteria for buyers' expectations of brands.

After-sales management must therefore be seen as one of the pillars of the company's strategy, and as a key stage in the customer journey to build customer loyalty.

Rigorous management and efficient organisation are essential if customers' needs are to be met at the best possible cost. Expenditure must be balanced by investments that enable you to turn customer complaints into opportunities.

To achieve this, digitalising interactions and moving to a multi-channel approach offer a number of advantages. By acquiring digital tools, your company can help improve the productivity and well-being at work of after-sales service management staff, while enhancing the customer experience.