How to boost lead generation through awesome customer service

When you think about typical lead generation activities, you probably think about tactics like creating awesome landing pages, or promoting your products and services online through social media or paid advertising.

But did you know that killer customer service can be one of the most powerful -and most often overlooked- ways to boost lead generation? Here’s how.

Highly effective customer service means satisfied clients spread the word for you

93% of consumers trust the recommendations of friends and family when it comes to finding information about brands and services. Word-of-mouth advertising has always been huge, but thanks to social media, it’s also now a lot more public.

If you deliver truly exceptional customer service through any channel, social media or otherwise, there’s a very good chance that customer is going to share it with friends and followers online. And on social media itself, having a positive, public interaction with a client is always good for your brand image – and that means more leads.

Adding live chat functionality to your website turns traffic into leads

Having live chat available on your website is an excellent way to turn traffic into qualified leads. If a potential customer has a question, they can get assistance instantly, wherever they are. If all your competitor offers is a phone number or an email address, that immediately makes you stand out.

It also makes it more likely that the customer still in the research phase of their buying journey will find the information they’re looking for. And even if they aren’t ready to buy yet, your live chat assistants can get their details for your sales team to follow up on later.

This technique can be so successful, in fact, that Fortune Coffee actually managed to double their lead count after they implemented our managed live chat service.

Turn great customer service into glowing reviews and testimonials

Whenever you successfully resolve a challenge for a customer, there’s a golden opportunity to use that encounter to generate more leads and sales. A really happy customer who knows that you’ve gone above and beyond for them is likely to want to return the favour in the form of a testimonial.

Make sure that your customer service team are aware of this, and know how to politely ask the client if they’d be so kind as to drop you a few lines for your website. If you’re a B2B provider, you can sweeten the deal a little further by offering to include a link to your customer’s website in the review, which is good for their SEO and might even get them a few more leads too!

If they prefer, say you’d really appreciate it if they could leave you a positive review on your platform of choice – such as Google My Business, Hello Peter or Yelp. Testimonials are also excellent resources to include on your landing pages, as it lends them more credibility – thereby also generating more leads.

Use customer service channels to get feedback on other products or services your customers might be interested in

While not directly generating leads, this can give you great ideas for which products to promote more, and which will be the easiest to generate leads for in future.

It could be as simple as getting your customer service reps to ask the client, “Is there any service or product you’d like us to offer that you weren’t able to find today?” In the ideal scenario, you already do offer a similar product, and can upsell the customer straight away.

If not, there’s a valuable idea there for how you could expand your offering in future. This is especially true if a number of customers are asking for the same thing. And even if the customer suggests something you really can’t offer, the potential is always there to team up with a partner company who can!

Turn your customer interactions into lead generating content

Saving or recording the common questions your customer support staff receive can be a content goldmine! Make a note of these interactions, and turn them into FAQs, blog posts, or even video tutorials. Remember that for every one customer that takes the time to pick up the phone, get in touch with your live chat team, or drop you an email, there may be dozens of other customers who don’t.

If your support staff are getting the same questions often, there’s a high probability that lots of other people are also searching for those answers online. And by creating content that answers those questions, you’re driving highly targeted traffic to your site – in other words, qualified leads!

In conclusion

• Great customer service is excellent for word-of-mouth and social media lead generation
• Customer support channels like live chat can also double as lead generation tools
• Customer testimonials and online reviews add credibility to your landing pages, helping to generate more leads
• Customer feedback is a great source of data for your content creation strategy