Customer enablement is an increasingly important concept in the sales landscape, as companies continue to focus more heavily on enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. According to studies, around 73% of business leaders now say there’s a direct link between the level of service they offer, and the performance of their overall company.
Here’s everything you need to know about customer enablement, and why you can’t underestimate the importance of this tactic right now.
What is customer enablement?
Customer enablement is a term used to refer to the strategies, processes, and methods companies use to enhance the overall experience of their target audience. Otherwise known as “customer success enablement”, this methodology is all about building relationships and loyalty in sales, by helping clients to get the most out of their purchase.
For years, SaaS and B2B companies have relied heavily on customer enablement, as many of their products require clients to be provided with education and guidance on how to use a new service. Customer enablement strategies can often include onboarding initiatives, and follow-up communications intended to determine how effective a solution is for a customer.
Customer enablement often works best when businesses take a collaborative approach to aiding and supporting customers. Agents give customers the materials they need to achieve their goals, while buyers provide feedback and testimonials.
Customer Enablement Importance
A customer enablement manager or expert today would usually describe customer enablement as the other side of the coin to sales enablement. Rather than focusing on giving sales reps the assets and strategies they need to close deals, customer enablement focuses on the needs of the customer, so they can get the most from a product or service.
Customer enablement techniques have grown more important in recent years because clients now expect more from the companies they buy from. To remain loyal to a company or brand, a B2B customer or SaaS B2C client needs to see their purchase was worthwhile. Vendors therefore need to provide the education, guidance, and assistance clients need to leverage their products and services.
Focusing on customer success enablement can help business leaders to increase return customers, generate brand advocacy, and convince clients to renew their subscriptions. Used correctly, sales enablement can turn a one-time buyer into a loyal customer.
Customer Enablement Best Practices
Generally, a customer enablement team will use a variety of different strategies and techniques to delight customers, and increase business growth. Leaders in the customer enablement landscape focus on a range of different tactics, including educating their customers, making it easy to get service and support, and building customer communities.
Some of the most significant best practices for customer success enablement include:
- Develop customer communities: Online communities give buyers a place to share their stories, and develop connections with the company. These environments also open the door to better connections between other customers, so you can create a tribe of dedicated advocates for your business. Communities in a customer enablement strategy can take on many forms, from community forums on your website, to social media groups. These collaborative groups can even reduce the strain on your service employees, by allowing clients to help eachother.
- Deliver phenomenal support: Perhaps one of the most important aspects of excellent customer enablement, is a fast, reliable, and efficient support system. Customers need to be able to get answers to their questions and resolutions to their problems as quickly as possible. They also want to ensure they can reach out to your company through they channel they prefer to use, such as social media, online chat, and SMS.
- Educate customers: To truly enable your customers, you need to teach them how to use your products and services correctly. This could mean creating useful content you share online, so your clients can find answers to common solutions. You could send out training resources, documents, and videos to clients over email when they sign up for a service. Some companies in the software industry even build tips and guidance into the programs themselves.
- Leverage customer feedback: To make the most of your sales enablement strategy, you should be creating a collaborative environment, where your customers can give you tips on how to improve your service. Always provide a simple avenue where customers can communicate their experiences and concerns to your team. Remember, don’t just collect feedback, make sure you act on what you learn and make meaningful changes to your services to generate lasting results.
- Deliver the right training: Training will always be an important part of building a successful sales team. Giving your employees customer success training means teaching them how to empower and support your clients throughout their purchasing and post-purchase journey. If your staff members are well-trained, they’ll be more capable of assisting your community.
