Driving Sales through Customer Service: Meeting Proceedings

OVERVIEW
Change is inevitable. The use of continual training paired with a representative’s known skill sets will aide in the acclamation of new employee roles. Through positive attitudes and proper incentives, reps may uncover customer needs to better serve the organization.

At the May 2004 Global Benchmarking Council Meeting members and guests gathered to discuss the leadership and change management required to make the transition to sales through customer service, as well as the stepwise process best-in-class companies use to gain corporate buy-in, momentum and resources for the transformation.

Vice presidents, directors and managers in sales, customer service, and human resources, will benefit most from the case studies of five leading companies and the summarized transcripts from three facilitated roundtable discussions.


COMPANIES AND CASE STUDIES
Case studies include speaker biographies and company background before describing key challenges company leaders faced and how they overcame them, recent benchmarking research and results or the past, present and future of customer service. Speaker anecdotes, quotes, select slides, insights and key take-aways all liven the case studies with personal touches and graphics.

• Sprint shared its success in adopting a Directional Sales approach, encouraging sales representatives to achieve higher goals and skill development strategies in “Driving Sales through Customer Service: A Success Story.”
• Land’s End revealed how it successfully increased cross-selling though bundling. They also shared their “commitment to people” philosophy and emphasized the importance of evaluating customers needs in “Smart Service at Land’s End: Driving Sales through Customer Service.”
• Federated Credit Services shared their methods of improving customer service through creating an open system using focus groups, team based activities and a shift in the tradition top-down management style in “New Performance Metrics to Drive Sales.”
• Wachovia provided a glimpse into its sales-to-service R "evolution," targeting employee retention, incentives and communications in “Integrating Sales into Contact Center customer Service.”
• Dow Corning discussed a broader context for the service-to-sales transformation, emphasizing that companies should shift from being product-centric to customer-centric in order to achieve a higher level of service in “Driving Sales through Customer Service in the B to B Environment.”

In addition to the case studies, this report also includes the summarized transcripts from three separate roundtable discussions that addressed:

• Leadership and Change Management
• Metrics and Incentives
• Process and Technology Innovations

METHODOLOGY
This report was compiled from notes taken during speaker presentations and in-depth roundtable discussions at the May 2004 Global Benchmarking Council meeting, “Driving Sales through Customer Service.” For more information on the Global Benchmarking Council or to register for upcoming meetings, visit www.best-in-class.com/gbc.

Industries Profiled:
Telecommunications; Retail; Medical Device; Financial Services


Companies Profiled:
Sprint; Lands' End; Federated Department Stores; Dow Corning; Wachovia

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