A few ways how to better capture and retain leads

A few ways how to better capture and retain leads

Anyone in marketing or sales knows this: Leads are the key. It’s in the amount you have, the amount you gather, the quality of them and above all, in their retention. Getting anywhere in this type of business is a question of how to gather, handle and retain leads. This process affects every level of your business from development all the way to feedback management.

So, knowing that, here’s how you can better manage this key element of your business:

1 Have an Integrated Helpdesk Application, Please.

The “divide and conquer” motto was not meant for this. You need a centralized platform.

Whether you deal only in direct sales or are simply looking to better grow a customer base, this is a major improvement. I’ve personally already written on the theme of marrying your helpdesk or customer feedback system to all other parts of your business and I stick by it. Doing this can only help you in the long run.

You can always integrate an application to the platform you use to get work done but I still would recommend you get a unified platform.

The benefits are clear : better management and teamwork, less chances for human error, less meetings, etc. It just makes everything clearer. If you had to pick one of these five points only, pick this one.

2 Captain Obvious Says : Have Email Integrated Feedback

This is a good feature to look for, or envisage getting.

Whenever an agent or a customer answers to or adds to a ticket, it creates an email thread which is sent to the concerned party. This makes things much easier for both agents and customers as they can answer via email and see this process reversed back to the ticket. Not having the customer manually check up on his tickets makes him more likely to feel like he is being helped. Email also helps make tickets feel more like personalized support, rather than complaints and bug reporting.

It seems obvious, and a lot of feedback systems work like that now, but that’s why you really should have it already.

3 Let There Be Automated Ticket Creation

This, just like helpdesk integration, is a must. Automation in ticket creation, attribution and management is ridiculously simple to do with the right platform. And it can go a long, long, way in making your business that much more efficient.

The first step seems a little obvious but: any and all customer tickets should be created automatically from whatever portal they use, into your platform. Your agents need to know the moment it happens and not through someone’s post-it notes. Give them the access and they can manage it by themselves quite well.

That brings us to the next step: Attribution and management. Tickets don’t often stay the same throughout their lifecycle. They become bugs, or features, they become marble tablets that your boss prints out and places on his wall, they evolve. Given this fact, you should be able to have your teams attribute and move tickets from one field to another as they develop.

This is how you transform post-it notes and those cubicle visits from the boss in the movie “the Office”, into a working and efficient system of lead retention.

4 Fly my pretties, Fly! (or Agent Involvement)

You shouldn’t hate your job, no one should. Let your employees have the chance to prove that. Having an integrated mobile app that works with your platform can do a lot for your leads.

I wrote about that too before. It enables your workers to continue helping cases when away from their desks, on the road or even when not in work. They can hold the right to continue working and log in their times. This not only gives employees the right tools to go above and beyond but also grants you virtually 24/7 helpdesk capabilities.

Let your employees decide how to handle the people they help everyday. Increased agent involvement stems from the ability to do it quickly and without effort. An mobile application like the one I’m talking about fits just that.

5 Santa’s little Helpers (or Customer Involvement)

What works for your agents and employees works for your customers. You’ll want increased involvement from them too.

This can happen through a certain number of ways but a good one is the customer portal. This is a tool that grants to your customers the ability to submit tickets (obviously), but also vote on and and propose features.

This of course demands you to decide how transparent you want to be with your business and products. But even a fairly discreet company can get heaps out of involving its customer base.

Think of this as a means to get people to not only invest money in your product but also create a relationship. It’ll be based on having been listened to and having the power to help the company grow according to the needs of those it services.

No more surveys, let the customers help you in return for what you provide them.

The Rundown

So in Conclusion here we have it: a good platform and good features and add-ons. That’s what it boils down to.

An integrated helpdesk and customer support application, automated email feedback and ticketing threads, automation in your ticket creation and attribution, and agent and customer involvement.

If you want to handle your leads better, get the features to build your reputation as a business around that. If you want to amass leads, get a good reputation for handling the ones you have well.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Good leads take time to gather, and they come from good reviews and happy customers. Build your own little army using what we have shown you here!

Did I mention we, at OneDesk, offer a platform that has all the above? Well we do, look here to see how it all works.

photo credit:  “Welcome” / Tony Hisgett / CC BY