What to move across
- documents: invoices, delivery notes, contracts
- aftercare once payment lands: lead times, statuses, delivery
- collecting second payments and chasing receivables
- routine questions that require no selling
- collecting reviews and handling returns
When it is time
- The rep spends more than a third of their time on customers who already bought.
- New enquiries wait, because the rep is in a thread with an old customer.
- Second payments go uncollected, because there is nobody to collect them.
- Documents run late and the customer gets nervous.
On a legal project we set up the customer care team separately: it assembled documents, looked after customers and automated the routine. Sales came out of the support role entirely, and that is exactly what let the lawyers concentrate on their own job.
What stays with sales
- new enquiries
- stalled threads before payment
- upselling into the base: that is selling, not aftercare
Where to start if you have nobody yet
- Hand documents to automation: invoice and delivery note against the order number.
- Hand payment reminders to the system.
- Write down the typical questions and build templates for them.
- Set aside one window a day for aftercare, so it does not bleed across the whole day.