134: Support’s Relationship to Sales with Nicholas Zeisler

Charlotte Ward 0:13
Hello, and welcome to Episode 134 of the customer support leaders podcast. I’m Charlotte Ward. This week we’re talking about supports relationship to sales. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I’d like to welcome back to the podcast today Nicholas Zeisler, Zed, as I like to call you, it’s lovely to have you back here this week to talk about the relationship, particularly between support and sales, or in our case, perhaps the wider customer experience in sales.

Nicholas Zeisler 0:49
Yeah, absolutely. Charlotte, this is a great topic. And I enjoyed listening last week to folks talking about tying in cx and support rather with with product. And I love that. But that’s really pretty obvious, at least if you’re coming from the CX perspective, which is to say it’s not quite as much of a challenge because as you know, as you and I have talked about before, it’s great to consider that as you’re building out your products and your offerings. You want to listen to your customers and how you’re developing and how you’re designing their experiences. sales. However, that’s a trickier thing. You hear lots of sales, people say why should I bother with support? Why should I bother with cx more broadly, but this is a great opportunity for me to once again hop up on the old the old soapbox here and tell you that CX is there. if for no other reason than to get itself integrated with everything across your entire organisations product, like you were talking about sales, like we’re talking about this week, operations, supply chain, finance, everything, the whole purpose of your cx programme should be finding ways to assist and aid all of your operations, all of the organisations throughout your entire company, to better relate to your customers, and to better put forth that brand promise that you work so hard to develop in the first place. So sales? Absolutely, they’re interacting with your customers all the time. They may think they know what they’re doing when it comes to sales, and they probably are. But are they listening to what your customers are asking for? A lot of times in support will say you have to meet your customers where they are. Are your salespeople meeting your customers where there are where they are? Or are they are they just trying to make that sale? Right. So this is an this is a great opportunity for your cx for your voice of customer for your process engineering, to leverage internally something that is so important in that interaction with your customers and sales. I mean, that’s the head of spear right there.

Charlotte Ward 2:46
Yeah, and it has, as you rightly pointed out so much interaction with the customer in the same way that support does these are opposite ends of the journey, aren’t they? in many ways. You talked there about cx touching every part of the business. But do you think that both of those functions having such as I kind of put one to a better word exposure to the customer? So much of a relationship with the customer? Do you think that these are the biggest touch points for your cx programme? Do you think

Nicholas Zeisler 3:18
I do, they’re probably the most obvious touch points. And, uh, you know, a lot of people will say, well, we don’t necessarily need a cx organisation or a cx effort, because we’ve got all these people in front of customers, people that are in sales. So you’ll hear you’ll hear the same sort of thing from marketing a lot of times too, but you know, there is a real difference between selling to and marketing to your customers on the one hand, and advocating on behalf of your customers, which is what cx does, on the other hand, right. And I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to say it’s a conflict of interest. It’s not like, gonna be throwing things across the boardroom at each other. But certainly, it’s different. Because customer experience is, plays a role of taking those customers inputs, and turning it right back into the organisation and saying, here’s how we can do things different. Here’s how we can design our products differently. Here’s how we can sell our products differently. Here’s how we can market our products differently. Meanwhile, marketing and sales are saying, well, we’re just trying to sell and trying to market right and and God love them. I mean, that’s an important part of the journey. But how is it informed? And is it looking inwardly and saying, here’s how we can change how we do it, so that we make that experience better? Or are they saying here’s how we can change it different so that we can, you know, sell more?

Charlotte Ward 4:33
Yeah, that makes sense. And all of those inputs that you talk about a great deal of them will come from sales and support. And the CS programme therefore has something of a unifying effect, I guess, between those two very different inputs and

Nicholas Zeisler 4:47
yeah, those and everything else. I mean, one of the things I love the genie Genie bless always says is that your chief customer officer is human duct tape. It’s about stitching between all those different silos, and that’s the nice thing. When you have a robust Very well integrated cx effort and cx platform and folks who are running as you know, a whole cx shop, if you will, that kind of frees up the people in sales, to do sales, that frees up the people in marketing to do marketing. Because if you’re there stitching everybody together and keeping everybody, you know, focused on the customer, they can do what they do best, which is marketing and sales, which is product development, which is operations, which is supply chain all the way down, you know, look, look through the entire leadership team, they can concentrate on that. And we can share with them what our customers are saying about what they’re doing and how it’s impacting the customer.

Charlotte Ward 5:37
I have a slightly controversial question for you then. Or maybe an outline and outlandish supposition that there are organisations out there that don’t have a cx professional in house and you’re kidding me, I imagined in

Unknown Speaker 5:54
my phone number is a plus one.

Charlotte Ward 6:00
Yeah, I mean, love you forgiving the country code there for not making any assumptions.

Unknown Speaker 6:07
But let’s say

Nicholas Zeisler 6:08
on my accent otherwise,

Charlotte Ward 6:09
and I’m sure someone will. Let’s say that the organisation doesn’t have a formal cx programme, even let alone in a professional or team to run it. How do you begin drawing the the How do you begin unifying in some of the ways that you’re talking about a CS professional programme will do for you across the business, particularly with these two business functions that are so far apart,

Nicholas Zeisler 6:39
I would say that I would begin with your voice of the customer programme. If you don’t have a full on robust, fully staffed, led by a chief customer officer cx organisation, you probably are at least asking your customers questions, whether you’re just sending out an online survey every once in a while when you’re interacting with them. Or maybe you’re going on listening, you know, listening exercises or so forth. Take a look at that be, I don’t get too much into it. But don’t be kind of scientific about it, analyse it, listen to what they’re saying, look for trends, look for what your customers are saying to you that they want different. And then act on that, quite frankly, that is there’s your mobile cx organisation right there, as long as you’re doing those things. That’s what your cx organisation should be doing. What you’ll find, if you do it, that it’ll grow in and of itself, it’ll become bigger, and you realise that you do need to call Nicholas and get,

Charlotte Ward 7:30
we do need to,

Unknown Speaker 7:33
we do need to know,

Nicholas Zeisler 7:34
you’ll fall in love with it. I’m greedy for that for those insights. And then and then that’s when you’ll call, I’ll be here.

Charlotte Ward 7:43
Again, okay, um, knowing that you’re there at the end of the phone is is a joy, and a reassurance. And I’m sure to all of us. I think I really like like, just begin, right, just begin listening at both ends of that. They are talking different languages, though, that you think.

Nicholas Zeisler 8:01
Yeah, yeah, surely between support and and sales? Yeah. We used to say when I was internal, that, you know, when you get to support, it’s broken already. And so you’re recovering at that point, right. But still, that’s a trove of information, what a great, you should be grateful for that. And so that you can act on it and improve what you’re doing. Meanwhile, are you going to keep that in mind? If you’re at the other end? If you’re at the sales in the next time you interact with customers, if you’re aware of what potential pitfalls are, you know you’re a to two ends of that customer journey. Of course, it extends beyond on either end of that too, but but you’re not right next to each other. And so there’s that sharing that can be done there.

Charlotte Ward 8:40
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s when we need to call Nicholas right?

Nicholas Zeisler 8:44
Yes, or anytime along your journey.

Charlotte Ward 8:49
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Nicholas Zeisler 8:50
You bet Charlotte, great to talk to you again.

Charlotte Ward 8:56
If today, go to customersupportleaders.com/134 for the show notes, and I’ll see you next time.