Want to improve revenue results across the board? Start by re-engaging everyone in your company that touches the customer.
Organizations that enjoy a higher rate of repeat business—often at premium prices and without all of that rebid angst—focus the entire value/delivery chain on the customer. Salespeople, implementers, post-production customer service professionals, even billing and contract staff.
From the early stages of prospect identification, through sales delivery and customer renewal, your compensation investment should improve the interconnection between sales, marketing and all of the other support services that work together to provide a unified, customer-centric experience. Yet, most don’t. Instead, organizations often reward employees based solely on the goals and metrics of their individual departments, with little consideration for how their actions affect the broader customer journey. That approach can unintentionally create silos where departments optimize for their own success rather than the success of the customer. In reality, every interaction matters. Marketing shapes first impressions, sales establishes expectations, implementation delivers on promises, customer service builds long-term relationships, and finance often provides the final touchpoint in the customer experience. When these teams are connected through common objectives and reinforced with recognition that encourages collaboration, they become far more effective at delivering the seamless experience customers expect. The result is stronger relationships, increased customer loyalty, and a greater likelihood that satisfied customers will continue doing business with your organization.
Compensation plans tend to be focused on departmental activities and outcomes and they don’t come anywhere near aligning those integrated teams around common objectives. For companies looking to elevate the customer experience—along with the revenue streams that follow—that’s a missed opportunity.
Aligning cash programs across different departments could be difficult, of course. Something akin to a Rubik’s cube exercise. Non-cash rewards represent the better answer here. They are more versatile and more promotable across the ranks. Using a highly configurable SaaS technology like Maestro, companies can mix and match goals, outcomes and offerings with ease. They can use various reward initiatives to guide the desired behaviors by department and between departments more efficiently. They can encourage the isolated as well as the integrated actions and outcomes that shape a service-oriented culture.