What is a Point of Contact?
A point of contact is a specific team (or individual within a team) that handles all initial communication with sales prospects and existing customers. They help provide information, answer questions, and escalate concerns or issues to appropriate staff as needed.
Every team or account within a company should have a designated point of contact to help keep communication organized and help ensure customer satisfaction.
Why is Having a Point of Contact Important?
Having a dedicated point of contact helps ensure the following:
- Organization. A dedicated point of contact has all the answers to common questions troubleshooting issues, and knows exactly who to escalate customer concerns to when needed. They maintain customer relationships and communication and keep everything organized.
- Customer satisfaction. Customers are happy when they know exactly who to contact. Better yet, they’re even happier when that specific person knows who they are, and can help with whatever the customer needs. Customers appreciate being remembered and having a good working relationship with their point of contact.
- Less miscommunication. Having one point of contact ensures minimal stakeholders are involved in communicating with customers. Instead of a customer reaching out to multiple people and getting different answers or suggestions for the same issue, a single point of contact can ensure everything needed is delivered efficiently. There’s less phone tag, fewer meetings, and no one gets confused about who they should reach out to for what.
- Building trust with customers. It’s essential that customers trust the companies they’re working with. Having a point of contact ensures there’s someone who can always help resolve issues. This also helps boost customer satisfaction, as well as overall retention rates.
To reinforce and cover the bases above, the point of contact should rely on deal management tools to ensure that decision-makers and key stakeholders at the account remain engaged and are happy. Collaboration spaces, such as a digital sales room, let the point of contact organize and house all documentation, video content, and links related to the account with ease.
Bring stakeholders together in a central collaboration space. Learn More Examples of Points of Contact
Depending on a company’s org structure, there may be different points of contact. Regardless of how the staff is organized, customers should always know who specifically to reach out to as their main point of contact.
Sales Reps
A sales rep is often the first point of contact a potential customer has with a company. This could be a business development representative and/or an account executive. During the sales process, having a dedicated sales rep is key. They can help answer questions, provide product demos, and effectively guide the sales prospect through the sales funnel before handing them off to start their next step.
Account Manager
Once a sales prospect makes a purchase and becomes a customer, they are often assigned to a specific account manager. This would be their designated point of contact for any future inquiries. An account manager should be able to answer questions or concerns about billing, product features, or potential upgrades. If the account manager doesn’t have a specific answer, they will coordinate appropriately with other internal teams.
Account managers are also responsible for building and maintaining relationships with existing customers, so it’s important for them to act as a point of contact to ensure customer satisfaction.
Customer Service Representative
Some companies have dedicated customer service representatives assigned to each customer account. This role is like an account manager and would be responsible for answering general questions related to billing, account upgrades, or renewal dates.
Customer Support Representative
Customer support representatives may be assigned to customer accounts to help specifically with product-related issues. A customer would be instructed to reach out to this point of contact for any technical issues they experience while using or setting up a product.