I’m sure you are thinking something complicated and even sibylline… but no, we must remember that customers are not bought, they are won. And we are all part of this, and therefore it is up to all of us to achieve this goal. By explaining what the support area does, you will see that this is possible, and that it is not complicated to make the customer admire us.
The importance of commercial support
Commercial support is made up of people within the commercial management who provide support. But what support? What do we do? From my experience it can be seen from different points of view.
Support is vital for the front line, i.e. those who work directly with the customer. This set of employees may be travelling, visiting, or in meetings, but thanks to support they can be informed in real time of any data that is needed for customer business meetings. We can be like ‘their agenda’, reviewing orders, invoices and providing answers to the customer without waiting for a second meeting.
Account managers, engineering, project managers and after-sales managers can rely on us whenever they need to. And if something urgent arises, we can also place an order at that moment and thus be faster and shorten the time required for administrative procedures.
For me, another important aspect of support is the liaison between different areas. This includes management control, which checks that the offers are economically viable. The supply department, who check that the offer includes everything required to get the order right; and the managers, who check the orders and tell us that the work orders are correct for installation and implementation.
The importance of good communication
Communication between the people who make up these areas avoids stoppages and forgetfulness in one of them, due to holidays, sick leave or system errors. The people who review the process have the possibility of anticipating these possible stoppages and reducing these times when they already occur.
In addition, in the north of Spain I have some colleagues dedicated to Faro, who, for example, have achieved the best numbers in terms of customer migrations. This has translated into fewer customer outages and incommunications.
Billing in a company from different approaches
Billing is a complicated area in every company and customers always have their own particularities that we have to comply with to the maximum. This department is there to make sure that everything runs smoothly, to cancel and redo invoices, regularisations, and much more necessary work that up to now has been carried out by the sales department alone.
From the salesperson’s point of view
The salesperson has to attend to the customer, present new solutions and needs and forget as much as possible about what he has launched. His work is based on sales targets.
From the engineering point of view
Pre-sales engineering has a great job with our portfolio: it visits the customer and studies their needs. It is a delicate job, there are many options and they have to find the best one for the customer.
After launching a product, there are forms, orders to various legal departments, technical consultations, but where do we help from the commercial support?
We liaise between the engineering department and the processing department to solve these technical queries. But in the case of passing on data, forms, etc., support can do it directly and help the engineer to dedicate himself to new studies.
From the after-sales point of view
The commercial support department is making headway in this area and is increasingly trying to be more prepared, especially at the technical level, to review directly with them what has been missing from the order, instead of consulting with the commercial and engineering area. In the end, they are already working on the next sale, and going back to the previous step is very inefficient for them. For the support area, who are following up on everything, it is easier to remember and review those orders and then launch what is missing, correct errors, and attend to everything possible independently of the commercial area.
I’m sure there are people who could tell you how far we have come with specific cases where we have saved many problems with customers. In my territory, in the north, we are convinced that we are necessary and efficient. Although there is always time to improve and be better.
Our director Manuel Ángel has made a strong commitment and I hope that in the future we will continue to achieve our objective of making Telefónica an admired company. This objective has been achieved by all of us.
From the point of view of commercial support
What about support, what do we think? We think that when you manage to launch the order, and they confirm that the installation has been done, or it doesn’t come back to you, it means that the work has been done well. You don’t need anyone to confirm it, when they come back to you it means that your work is important for this big chain.
