Professional Customer Care Process Before and After Sales

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

In business, customer care matters enormously. Yet many companies recognize the problem but lack an optimal approach for handling their customer care process. As a result, they miss many customers and reduce the number of buyers who come back after a purchase.

So how do you build a customer care process — and what is a customer care process, really?

Find out in the article below!

What Is the Customer Care Process?

The customer care process is the sequence and method of carrying out customer care tasks in order to achieve the goals you have set. Customer care plays an important role and greatly influences a company's revenue as well as its very survival. That is why you need to build the most effective customer care process possible.

The Standard Customer Care Process

Managing Customer Information

This is the first step in an effective customer care process and plays a pivotal role for several different reasons. First, the business needs complete information about the customers it wants to reach and build relationships with. That information includes: full name, phone number, email, address, needs, purchase history, and more. The more information you have, the easier it is to understand customers and the more effective your CRM strategy will be. Second, even a small error at this step can have a huge impact on the business.

For example, if you enter a potential customer's phone number incorrectly, you will struggle to contact and reach them — and the business may well lose that customer, along with a sizable chunk of revenue.

Managing the Contact List

Contact list management helps the business reach customers quickly and effectively. Typically, a contact list includes full name, address, phone number, email, and Facebook link. For example, when you want to contact a customer to ask how satisfied they are while using the product, you simply pull up the customer list, choose a communication channel — email or phone — and you will receive feedback from the customer right away.

Caring for Customers

At this stage, the business needs to learn customers' needs and wishes, while also advising them in detail about the product, the benefits, and the pricing the company wants to offer. This activity can take many forms, such as sending emails or messages, making phone calls, or organizing customer conferences.

Besides that, customer complaints must be resolved satisfactorily — strive to listen and persuade. Handle things appropriately so both sides feel as comfortable as possible.

Building Long-Term Relationships

Customer care staff need concrete solutions to retain existing customers, deepen their loyalty to the company, and attract potential customers. The business can check in on customers, send birthday greetings, or give congratulatory gifts on holidays and New Year. If this step is done well, customers will certainly stay with the company — and may even recommend the products to their family and friends.

>>>> See more: What Is Customer Service? What Are the Customer Service Standards?

The Customer Care Process in the Sales Field

Pre-Sales Process

Training New Employees and Developing the Skills of Existing Ones

This is the first and most basic step in the pre-sales customer care process, because these are the people who work directly with customers. The business needs to train and coach employees in customer care skills and enable them to attend short courses to build knowledge. That way, staff can improvise and handle unexpected, awkward situations flexibly.

Motivating the Customer Care Team

What would it be like to start a job feeling tired, sluggish, and uninspired? We are certain you would get bored quickly and want to quit before long. Therefore, managers and leadership need incentive policies as well as actions that transmit energy to the customer service department. A relaxed mind and enthusiastic spirit will surely deliver better results.

Training Customer Care Staff to Use CRM Software

Today, most businesses use CRM software — customer relationship management software. So staff need to get familiar with it and use it proficiently, avoiding basic errors during execution.

During-Sales Process

Understanding Customer Needs

Staff need to grasp customers' needs and tastes through direct or indirect conversations. From there, they can form concrete ideas and strategies for the next steps.

Advising Customers

Once staff fully understand the customer's wishes, they advise in detail on the products the company offers, while answering consumers' questions and complaints.

Post-Sales Process

Updating Data in the CRM Software

After receiving feedback from customers, staff need to update the data in the CRM software in order to manage customers and understand them better. Staff can also see when and what customers contacted the company about in the past.

Coordinating with Other Departments in the Company

If customers express satisfaction, the customer care team should inform the other relevant departments so they stay in the loop. Conversely, teams work together and discuss to resolve the issues customers raise.

Respond and Resolve Promptly

After discussing and agreeing on a resolution with the other departments, the customer care team must get back to the customer immediately — avoid making customers wait too long, which breeds frustration.

>>>> See more: 5 Benefits of Customer Care Every Business Should Know

Customer Care Process in the Restaurant Field

Hiring Experienced Staff

A restaurant's staff recruitment process should start from the highest position — the restaurant manager. This person will carry out the subsequent tasks, such as hiring customer care staff, table servers, and so on. Therefore, when recruiting a restaurant manager, the board or the head of the business needs to think carefully and make the right choice.

In addition, the manager must be a creative person who can withstand high pressure and an intense workload, while staff should be patient individuals who listen well and stay flexible in any situation.

Training Staff

Once good staff have been hired, the restaurant also needs a short period to train them, helping them get used to the restaurant's environment and business culture.

Offering Special Deals

In practice, these programs usually attract many customers and retain them effectively. For example, many restaurants give coupons to new customers or discounts on their birthday. Managers can create special offer programs that fit the restaurant they run.

Serving Customers

Once customers have been attracted in, staff need to guide them attentively and thoughtfully. Know how to listen, advise in detail on the restaurant's products, and be ready to answer any questions customers raise.

For example, in a fine-dining restaurant A, a new customer still had questions about a dish from the United States — unsure what ingredients it contained and how previous customers rated it. The customer care staff needed to be patient and answer all the customer's questions in detail.

Gathering Customer Feedback

This is the step where customers feel most valued. You need to collect feedback from customers, asking how they feel about the service the restaurant provides, and from there work to develop existing strengths and fix current weaknesses.

>>>> See more: Free Customer Care Software: Benefits and Standout Features

Customer Care Process in the Banking Field

Building a Professional Customer Care Team

Customer care staff are the people who work directly with customers, so they need to display professionalism and flexibility in every situation. With the service industry growing the way it is, more and more banks are appearing with high-quality staff teams. To compete, your bank therefore needs to focus on building its team and treat this as a necessary, urgent activity.

Improving Customers' Knowledge

Some customers proactively look up information about how banks operate, but others are passive, have no time to research, or still have many questions. For example, many well-off families in rural areas still have questions about interest rates or the concept of unsecured loans.

Therefore, banks need policies and activities that raise the public's banking knowledge. By consulting and answering questions in detail, your bank will surely welcome new customers before long.

Caring for Customers and Updating Specific Information

After a customer has agreed to use the bank's services, staff need to plan how to stay in contact with them, recording their feedback on the services the bank provides. At the same time, update them on the bank's changes regarding new policies — for example, new rules on consumer lending or deposit interest rates.

Be Ready to Adapt and Change

At many banks, some policies and activities have failed to attract customers. So change them to fit, and adapt to them quickly, within a short period.

Customer Care Process in Healthcare and Hospitals

Training the Customer Care Team

To have a professional team caring for customers, patients, and clinic visitors, the hospital needs to run training sessions, courses, and talks by long-serving staff members to help the team deepen their knowledge.

Receiving Patients at the Guidance Desk

Guide and explain the examination processes and procedures to patients, prioritizing the elderly and children first, helping them complete the necessary steps and taking them to the examination room.

Helping Patients Who Must Be Admitted

Some individuals must stay for treatment after their examination, so staff need to help patients steady themselves emotionally and guide them through admission procedures.

Organizing Customer Care

At this step, staff need to answer questions and survey customers and patients about how the doctors, nurses, and staff serve them, reporting promptly to superiors. Besides that, the hospital should provide information and educate customers and patients about protecting their health through in-person talks. If possible, plan follow-ups with patients who have used the hospital's services to maintain a good relationship between caregivers and patients.

Using Software to Improve the Customer Care Process

Customer care demands a rigorous, well-organized process, which causes no end of difficulty for businesses just starting to focus on this area. That is why customer care software is the solution to this problem. The entire information system, along with reminders for each individual customer, is automated. Staff caring for customers directly no longer need to jot down information or worry about forgetting or missing a customer.

In particular, choosing software also needs careful consideration, because not every piece of software fits each company's customer care process. For example, some software such as Odoo or SimCRM is open source, so customizing or rebuilding the software to fit your company's process has never been easier.

Better yet, if you use SimCRM you also get a free 30-day trial. This could be a good option to experience whether this software suits you.

You can sign up for the trial by clicking the button below!

Conclusion

Above, SimERP has introduced the professional customer care processes of several standout service industries. We hope your business will grow and succeed ever more in its customer care mission.

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