If you work in B2B today, there’s no escaping talk about the future digital sales experience. And, with the digital advancements we’ve seen in the past few years (see: AI), all that talk is rightfully earned.
But, while we’re already spending lots of time (and let’s face it, money) investing in the digital sales experience, the same cannot be said for the post-sales experience.
According to Zendesk, 62% of customers believe that companies they buy from could be doing a better job of personalizing their experiences. This comes at a time when all eyes are on the digital customer experience: A study by Adobe found that, in 2022, 75% of marketers reported seeing more existing customers using their digital channels compared to the previous year.
And with economic uncertainty continuing to linger, it’s clear that B2B companies can’t relegate their post-sales experience to the sidelines. Instead, you need to make sure that your existing customers are getting a five-star experience that is as thoughtful as the buying experience.
So then, where do you start in unlocking a stellar customer experience? Well, for our team at Drift, the key lies within our own product.
Today, I’m peeling back the curtain on how Drift’s post-sales team uses Drift to deliver a customer experience that not only retains customers but also drives expansions. Let’s go ⚡
1. Offer More Than Support Through Chatbots
Just as buyers expect sales reps to do more than answer questions about pricing or products, your customers don’t only turn to you when there’s an issue to resolve. They also do so when they’re interested in learning about new features, looking for best practices, or considering an upgrade.
So, while an effective customer experience should provide fast, seamless support, it should also empower customers to get the most out of your brand. For us, the best way to do this is to build conversational experiences that are specific to our customers.
One simple (but effective) strategy we use is customizing the messaging on our chatbots. By using personalization tokens in our playbooks, we can acknowledge customers by name and deliver a hook that sets them on a conversation path that’s different from our buyers’ paths.
In doing this, we invite customers to interact with our chatbots beyond simple support conversations. At the same time, these hooks allow us to offer relevant resources upfront — whether it’s plugging a new product launch, inviting them to a customer event, or guiding them to an online training — which means we can keep our customers in the loop without having to send them another email.
But that’s only the beginning. To add more flexibility to our customer conversations, we lean on Conversational AI to accurately respond to any open-text questions, even when our reps aren’t online. And our new Bionic Chatbots make it easier for customers to self-serve their journey by adapting to their intent and serving up the most relevant conversation path for them.
Together, our customized playbooks and AI-powered chatbots ensure that our customers leave our website as pleased as they would have if they’d had a face-to-face conversation.
2. Dive Headfirst into Customer Intent
Similar to the way that sales teams use both inbound and outbound motions, your conversations with customers shouldn’t be limited to when they are on your website. In fact, if you truly want to wow your customers, you need to be proactively engaging them.
And we’re not talking about a five-minute check-in or the occasional thank you email — no, we’re talking about having productive conversations that address your customer’s ever-evolving needs. To do that, you need to know what exactly your customers are thinking.
Our team uses engagement and conversation data from Drift Prospector to uncover customer intent. Within Prospector, we can see things like what pages our customers recently visited, any chat conversations they’ve had, or content they’ve downloaded. With this information on hand, we’re then able to determine how we should be reaching out to them. For example, if we see a customer researching a product that isn’t included in their package, we know it’s time to reach out about a potential upgrade.
While Prospector allows us to follow up with the customers we know are taking action on our website, we know that it’s even better to engage high-intent customers during the moments they’re taking action — that’s why we also use Drift Engage. Leveraging LiftAI’s intent scoring capabilities, Drift Engage allows our chatbots to automatically deliver relevant conversations that match the visitor’s intent. This means that we can better engage customers on the fly, no matter the time of day. Not to mention that these intent scores and interactions are then made accessible through Prospector, so we can continue to further strategize our customer outreach.
By using tools like Prospector and Drift Engage to hone in on customer intent, our team is better able to deliver messaging that is relevant as well as timely. As a result, we can have more productive conversations with our customers, always at the right time.
3. Deliver an Extra Human Touch
With customer interactions, it’s not enough to just say the right thing at the right time. You also have to consider how you’re saying those things.
Remember: Unlike an anonymous website visitor or a cold lead, your customers are people you have a long-standing relationship with. That’s why you want your communications to not only be productive but also authentic.
At Drift, we get the best of both worlds by using videos whenever we can. Drift Video allows us to interact with our customers in a genuine way while also saving us the time it would take to book and attend a real-time meeting. By including these videos in an email or LinkedIn message, we can visually answer a customer’s support question, inform them about a potential upgrade, and overall, work on deepening our relationship with their company as a whole.
One play our team likes to use is the congratulations video — where we congratulate customers for hitting a big milestone. With this video play, we’re able to show customers our gratitude while also opening up the opportunity for a conversation. We often send these videos to active Drift users, as well as their bosses and executives, to show that we appreciate all of them as our customers 👇
Drift Videos not only help us deliver information to our customers concisely and asynchronously, but they also allow customers to chat with us at a time that is most convenient for them. This is because every Drift Video has a built-in chatbot along the right-hand side, which customers can interact with if they have any follow-up questions or even if they want to book a meeting.
Additionally, our reps are notified when a customer is viewing one of their videos, so they can hop into the conversation in real time. As a result, Drift Video becomes another channel that allows us to be there when our customers need us — making for the ultimate human experience.
Final Thought
While it’s true that every business needs new customers in order to grow, that doesn’t mean that your existing customers should be left waiting in the wings.
Instead, you should treat your customers like they are the stars of the show by rolling out the (digital) red carpet for them at all times.
As this blog shows, Drift’s buyer engagement platform empowers you to deliver the experiences that your customers deserve — whether it’s days after the deal has been signed or five years down the line. With these consistently excellent customer interactions, you won’t have to worry about your customers feeling like their experience is an afterthought — and, as a result, you’ll be able to build lasting customer relationships that lead to less churn and more expansions.
