Customer Interactions: A Goldmine for Your Sales Team

In a recent Gartner survey, 84% of customer support leaders said customer data and analytics were very important for achieving their goals in 2023.

Yet from the wide variety of data businesses collect, customer interactions may be one of the most underutilized resources.

Unlike demographic or personal data, customer behavior and interactions are harder both to collect and analyze. We previously wrote about the different types of customer data and their role in the sales process.

While customer interactions are central for customer support teams, they can also power the success of marketing and sales teams.

Continue reading to learn how to collect and leverage customer interactions for sales success.

Common types of customer interactions

Customer interactions refer to any communication or engagement that takes place between a customer and a business.

They can occur on a variety of channels (in person, online, on the phone) and for many different reasons (requests for support, reviews, etc).

Many interactions take place throughout the customer journey and often they don’t involve direct communication - for example when customers interact with a chatbot on your website or react to a post on social media channels.

Interactions may relate to your marketing activities, sales, or customer service. Here are some examples.

Customer interactions in service and support:

• Sharing feedback or complaints after purchasing a product
• Responding to a survey or questionnaire
• Rating the customer support agent
• etc.

Customer interactions in marketing:

• Signing up for a newsletter
• Commenting on a social media post

• Publishing a product review on a third-party platform
• Attending a webinar
• etc.

Customer interactions in sales:

• Starting a live chat on the company website
• Downloading a whitepaper linked in a sales email
• Requesting details about specific product features or pricing
• Following up after a sales call
• etc.

How different teams can leverage customer interactions

Support and service teams are constantly faced with a flow of questions, requests, and positive or negative feedback from customers.

This ongoing interaction can help support teams detect product issues, improve product functionality, update documentation, and create additional knowledge resources.

Importantly, customer support interactions also serve to improve customer satisfaction and retention when issues are solved quickly and efficiently. In a 2022 report, 78% of customers felt that support reps play a crucial role in customer retention. 

For marketing teams, the quality and frequency of customer interactions directly reflect the success of marketing campaigns, content, and channels.

They also help marketers design better customer experiences and develop new strategies. 

Similar to customer support reps, salespeople often have the opportunity to collect insight firsthand from customers and prospects.

Insights from sales calls are valuable for companies to:

> Drive product development - for example adding new features or developing new product lines;

> Optimize sales and marketing collaboration (for instance by fine-tuning sales decks);

> Identify new sales opportunities through industry insight;

> Increase profitability by coming up with new pricing strategies.

Collecting customer interaction data

Because customer interactions originate from so many different channels, they are usually recorded and stored on different platforms. 

Typically, these platforms include customer relationship management (CRM) software, marketing automation and customer service tools, analytics and reporting dashboards, and other storage systems like email platforms and file management systems.

Scattered information across systems makes it challenging for different teams to grasp the big picture of a customer relationship.

Consolto helps businesses collect, save, and access customer interactions easily, in one place.

Consolto acts as a one-stop solution providing video conferencing, live chat, appointment scheduling, cloud storage, payments, and website analytics.

Here is how to best use Consolto to gain insight and drive more customer interactions through your website.

1. Facilitate customer interaction

Consolto’s live chat functionality is a simple way for customers to reach you on your website, and for your support agents to deliver exceptional service. 

With Consolto you get the benefits of customer support software - including a live chat widget, automated chat responses, file transfer, voice messages, conversation analytics, notifications, and more - right on your website.

Consolto also helps you provide a more personalized, comprehensive customer support experience in the most commonly accessible medium for you and your customers.  

Learn more about our live chat feature here. 

2. Make prospects come to you

In sales, deals are easier made in person than through emails.

Consolto is an intuitive video-conferencing platform that enables salespeople to schedule and conduct demos, pitches, and sales calls from your own website. This reduces the friction and delays caused when using multiple tools to communicate with a customer.

In addition, with Consolto prospects and customers can take charge and initiate calls with you.

When clients can reach out proactively instead of waiting for sales reps to contact them, sales can have more personal interactions with customers, increasing their chances of closing a deal.

Here is how Consolto video calling works. 

3. Gather customer insight in one place

The most valuable information in a sales process often gets exchanged during video or audio calls. However, it quickly becomes inaccessible because it is difficult to search and share.

Consolto’s Rich Communication Center saves everything in a unified dashboard - from chats, files, contact form data, call recordings, payments, customer behavior, and analytics to contact information.

With Consolto, every interaction between customers and your teams as well as all the actions they take to engage with your content or website is saved and accessible in one place. 

This way, you always have customer information at your fingertips.

The role of customer interactions in sales success

While customer interactions add value across many business areas, they can have a significant impact on sales.

Customer behavior is often an indication of interests, needs, or traits that may influence a customer’s buying decision. Salespeople can factor in the interactions customers have with support agents or in marketing campaigns to assess a client’s likelihood to buy.

Here are a couple of examples.

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A customer may engage with marketing emails from time to time, but the emails they do open consistently concern a specific product or product feature.

What marketing may perceive as average engagement with email campaigns, to sales might indicate interest in a certain product.

Or, a customer may reach out to support at the end of every month asking for clarifications related to billing. This may inform sales that the price is too high or that the client may be looking into competing solutions - thus coming up with discounts or alternative benefits. 

Access to such interactions can empower sales teams to increase customer satisfaction, and retention, and ultimately drive more revenue.

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Summing up

Along with other customer data, customer interactions play a significant role in the success of your marketing, sales, and service efforts. 

With Consolto, businesses can now collect, centralize, and act on more customer insight including anything from live communications to files, forms, and website behavior. 

Get started with Consolto today with our free trial.