Service professionals are often an untapped goldmine for increasing an organization’s revenue. Whether working in a call center or servicing a site, they are the frontline, trusted advisors of their customers. While sales professionals are often perceived as having an agenda – service professionals aren’t, giving them greater access to people, places and insights. Service professionals have the opportunity to strengthen business relationships and gain more insights into customers’ needs. With this knowledge, they are better able to leverage their expertise and partner with customers to ensure those needs are met. Service professionals are in the unique position to observe how the company’s products and services work in tandem with others. They can learn which competitors’ parts and products customers are using, and – with enough trust and skill – they can even learn why. Service professionals can observe opportunities to make valueadded recommendations regarding new products, enhanced services and customer training. They can ensure customers have
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the appropriate equipment and service level for their needs. Service professionals have the ability to demonstrate value to the customer, in turn strengthening customer relationships while adding value to the business.
Skillful communication will be your competitive edge.
Meeting Customer Needs While Maintaining Value Every customer has needs. Yes, they need to ensure the product is up and running, but they also have personal needs: to be assured, to be heard, to understand and to be understood. Often, service professionals are engaging with
a customer who is anxious, unsure and under pressure. Service professionals have an enormous opportunity to ease that pressure. These opportunities elevate service professionals’ role and consequently strengthen the relationship. Repair people and technicians are often perceived as interchangeable; trusted advisors are not. It’s also important to note that service professionals have an equal opportunity to damage relationships and cost the business money. With customers frequently under pressure, service professionals face many requests and demands. There is often added pressure placed on service professionals to provide free parts, services or training; do work beyond the stated scope of a job or underbill for services; provide services that are not covered under a warranty or work overtime for free. The overt cost of these concessions may seem obvious. Even if a service professional made only two concessions a year, for a company of 200 reps, that can easily amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. For a company of a thousand reps, the loss enters the millions.
