Inbound marketing software giant, HubSpot, announced the launch of several new features at this year’s Partner Day in May, including heavily anticipated Service Hub. According to HubSpot, this update helps marketers understand customer needs better, improve their overall experience, exceed their expectations, and turn them into brand promoters.
Throughout the years, the inbound marketing company built out their software system to serve the entire customer lifecycle, bit by bit, starting with marketing and sales. Turning their focus to customer service was the next logical step, and HubSpot agency partners rejoice.
Every seasoned marketer knows the importance of good customer service. In fact, 60 percent of consumers stop doing business with a brand due to a poor customer service experience, according to Microsoft’s 2016 State of Global Customer Service Report. Service Hub seeks to improve the customer experience and empower service teams by uniting marketing, sales, and service data in one place.
Christina covers some questions about Service Hub in this episode of Illumine8’s Monday Marketing Q&A.
How does Service Hub work, you ask?
Service Hub leverages your CRM, or customer relationship management software, data obtained in the sales and marketing processes to provide a holistic suite of tools for your customer service team.
The CRM is the base from which all of HubSpot’s other products are built. It houses the record/digital footprint of each customer and ensures it's constant throughout their entire relationship with the company. Service Hub ties into this CRM platform, which means that all data obtained in marketing, sales, and service processes is all connected in a single view of each customer.
So, what’s the big deal?
Before Service Hub, marketing and sales data was siloed in different places in the software. This caused a lot of extra work in order to connect the data and leverage that essential information.
Now, data across areas of the software will be connected, so team members are able to look back on each customer’s history to see context and what happened throughout their journey with the company.
This encourages a more customer-focused customer service experience. We all know there’s nothing more frustrating than calling a company to ask a question and realizing that the person you’re speaking to doesn't have your record with the company in front of them. You’re left to re-explain your journey with the company over the phone, which only leads to confusion and frustration.
Now, with the entire data record being the same throughout the software, your team is able to see the customer’s entire lifecycle and really understand them from that perspective. This will improve the customer service experience overall, leaving your customers happy and possibly even turning them into brand promoters.
From a marketing side, you’ll be able to see customer service data and correlate true customer lifetime value and see where there's room for improvement, which helps the future process.
What opportunities does this present to businesses?
Conversations.
This new universal inbox will document the conversations with customers via chat or messenger. All your channels will be on the same dashboard, making it easier to monitor and manage several channels at once. A native integration with Facebook Business Manager allows customer messages from your business page to go back to the CRM record.
Surveys.
You will be able to automate customer support surveys and start better understanding the common issues they have. This way, you’ll know where to focus your team.
Native NPS scoring.
Your NPS Score is a very important KPI, which will be tracked in Service Hub. This will tell you how you’re doing in meeting your customer’s needs and exceeding their expectations.
The Knowledge Base.
Does your company seem to get the same customer questions over and over? First off, consider this as a great keyword phrase. Secondly, include these questions and their answers into the new knowledge base in Service Hub.
This addition helps you waste less time, solve customer issues, and avoid tickets.
Tickets.
If you’ve ever had an issue with technology, you recognize this term. This feature will help your team track, order, collaborate, and deliver on customers’ needs and expectations to ensure that customer questions and issues are solved. You will be able to automate responses and reminders, which will prevent customer problems from falling through the cracks.
HubSpot is moving from the traditional growth funnel towards a flywheel, which places customers in the center of your business. Service Hub is the next big step in this process.
Do you any more questions about HubSpot or Service Hub that we haven’t answered? Send them to us in a message on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, and we’ll answer them right away.