As the holiday shopping season is now upon us, I went to the Desk.com blog to share some insight on what parts of the purchasing process are most critical during the holiday shopping season.
You can read that article here. It's a topic that is near and dear to my heart.
I could go on for days about the purchasing process, sales theory, and the importance of crawling inside your customer's brain to figure out how to keep them engaged.
Have a look at the Desk.com article for my full list of the purchasing process. It is:
-
Need/want Customers feel an unfulfilled need or desire, either innately or through your persuasion.
-
Attention Attention acquired - they’re in your store or on your website.
-
Matching/Searching Customers are only there because they want to buy something. Do you have it?
-
Interest Something you're selling catches their eye.
-
Objections The customer wants you to convince them everything is going to be ok.
-
Engagement/Desire Customer is sold in their hearts and minds. Congratulations!
-
Action How does the customer actually buy it? The checkout process.
-
Fulfillment How does the customer actually get it? The order fulfillment process.
-
Evaluation Customer compares actual product to the hype. Is it actually what they thought it would be?
-
Satisfaction Customer got what they bought and it is what they thought.
-
Repeat customer Customer comes back to you to buy something again in the future.
-
Referral Customer feels confident recommending you to their friends because you meet or exceed expectations.
In my Desk article, I chose three easy areas to focus on first, but there are plenty more. In fact, as any good salesperson knows, no conversation about the purchasing process is complete without addressing objections and actions.
Objections
Record all the sales objections by product and build a database of responses. We suggest agents tag their chats and Desk.com tickets with "objection" so a team member can review them, collate common objections and compile good answers.
During the holiday rush this is particularly important. Just because an issue can't be resolved in chat, doesn't mean it should go unresolved. Also objections are opportunities to improve or correct something that customers don't find agreeable. That could lead to better long term sales past the month of December.
Action
Always be closing. Keep talking to the customer all the way through checkout. Remind them to add it to their cart. Tell them where to click to check out. Invite them to ask about shipping options. In chat, it's easy to allow a customer to browse while you stay in contact with them.
In contrast, do your best not to deflect customers to phone and email. That's like someone trying on jeans in your store but having them step outside to ask a question about those jeans. If you rely only on email and phone, you're making customers leave your website and interrupt their shopping just to get an answer from you. Talk to customers while they are still browsing and buying from your website.
Did I miss something?
No doubt. There's a lot to talk about. Which phase of the purchasing process do you think has the biggest impact on sales? Which phase does live chat play the most critical role?
