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Your relationship with potential customers isn't just about closing the deal. It's about building an ongoing dialogue and partnership that lasts long after they sign on the dotted line.
As companies worry more and more about customer churn, receiving ongoing feedback and involvement from customers can make a big difference when renewal comes around.
Customer collaboration platforms help businesses, big and small, work closely with their customers to improve products, services, or experiences.
Also known as customer collaboration software or a customer collaboration tool, these virtual spaces help buyers and sellers to talk, share, interact, and learn.
Trumpet is one such platform. As the #1 digital sales room on G2, it forms the centrepiece of a sales teams tech stack. Through real-time communication, mutual action plans, and sales intelligence, both teams work together towards a common goal.
Explore customer collaboration examples, discover their benefits, and learn how to integrate with existing systems below.
Features of Customer Collaboration Platforms
Designed to boost conversations and interactions between your business and its customers, customer collaboration software uses a clever mix of features to promote engagement. Typically, these include tools for communication, gathering feedback, and fostering teamwork.
Common collaboration features include:
Live chat and last seen
There's nothing more frustrating than having to sift through a long email thread just to find a message from months back. Thanks to live chat and annotations in digital spaces, no message ever goes missing. Plus, buyers can quickly ask future questions and get speedy responses.
Many customer collaboration tools now come with real-time communication features built in. Take Trumpet, for instance, it offers an in-app chat option, alongside email and on-page annotations.
Mutual Action Plans
Picture a GPS guiding the journey between businesses and their customers. It lays out the path, highlights the necessary stops, and ensures everyone moves together towards their shared goals, making them a reality. Mutual Action Plans, or MAPs, keep customers engaged with what you're offering, building a connection even before any contract is signed.
With 66% of B2B buyers (as mentioned by McKinsey) favouring traditional or face-to-face sales interactions, MAPs offer a perfect blend of both approaches.
Content Hubs
This is your business's personalised Netflix for customers, packed with all the relevant sales content they need to evaluate your business proposal and value. It's a dynamic scrollable library that keeps customers informed every step of the way, transforming browsing into engagement.
Seventy-eight per cent of B2B buyers want salespeople to act as trusted advisors, helping them navigate the industry. Content hubs allow businesses to tailor the information available to the buyer's needs.
Sales Intelligence Signals
Like a sales detective, it uncovers hidden clues and patterns in customer behaviour. These insights are golden nuggets, helping businesses anticipate needs and swoop in at just the right moment. Based on the customer's behaviour, you can provide what they need when they need it.
eSignature and Document Sharing
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Streamlines agreements and collaborations, making it as easy as a click to sign, seal, and deliver important documents. It's the digital handshake that speeds up deals and approvals.
Share proposals and quotes inside the digital sales room with trumpet. You can also sign the document using our integrations with popular eSignature platforms like DocuSign.
Benefits of Using Customer Collaboration Software
Struggle to build lasting relationships with customers? Experience a high rate of customer churn? You're not alone. It's a common problem throughout the B2B sector.
Part of the problem is the sudden transition to online selling. By removing the "human element," brands struggle to personalise the relationship through black-and-white emails.
That's where customer collaboration tools work wonders. But that's not their only benefit. You can also expect:
- Enhanced Communication: Customer collaboration software often features multi-threading capabilities, allowing for streamlined and organised conversations. This ensures that communication with customers is efficient, clear, and trackable.
- Data-Driven Insights: These platforms often come with analytics tools that provide data-driven insights into customer behaviour and preferences. This can help businesses tailor their services and products more effectively to meet customer needs.
- Shortened Sales Cycles: By facilitating faster and more efficient communication and providing relevant data, these tools can significantly shorten sales cycles. This means quicker conversions and more efficient sales processes.
- Reduced Customer Churn: Effective use of customer collaboration software can lead to higher customer satisfaction by addressing their needs more accurately and promptly. This, in turn, can reduce customer churn.
- Improved Customer Engagement: These platforms enable businesses to engage with their customers more actively and personally, fostering a stronger relationship and enhancing customer loyalty.
- Real-time Feedback and Support: Customer collaboration software allows for real-time feedback and support, which is crucial for resolving issues quickly and keeping customers satisfied.
- Centralised Information Storage: Such software often provides a centralised platform for storing customer information and interaction history, which is invaluable for providing consistent and personalised customer service.
Exploring Top Customer Collaboration Tools
What's the best customer collaboration platform currently available? Well, there's no strict definition of customer collaboration tools – in fact, many popular tools actually work synergistically. Still, the top tools include:
trumpet
Stands out as a specialised digital sales room (DSR), essential for any customer collaboration strategy. Its integration with customer relationship management (CRM) systems allows for auto-personalisation of the DSR, enhancing the buyer's journey.
The ability to tailor features like proposals, mutual action plans, product demos, and more, coupled with tracking buyer interactions, makes trumpet an excellent tool for monitoring sales and improving customer interactions.
ZenDesk
On the other hand, offers a comprehensive sales platform with features like email integration and sales engagement tools. Its task player streamlines routine sales activities, saving valuable time.
As a CRM, ZenDesk excels in data collection and storage, providing detailed analytics for sales performance and customer interaction tracking.
RingCentral
Shines in facilitating communication across various channels, including video conferencing, messaging, and file sharing. Its integration with multiple CRMs and tools like Salesforce and ZenDesk enhances its versatility, making it ideal for real-time, face-to-face customer interactions.
Slack
Revolutionises customer collaboration with its intuitive messaging platform. It allows for real-time discussions and dedicated channels for specific customers or projects.
The ease of finding past conversations and its range of third-party integrations make Slack a top choice for fast and organised communication. Plus, trumpet integrates with Slack, delivering notifications whenever a pod is opened or shared.
HubSpot
Presents itself as an all-in-one solution, covering CRM, sales, marketing, and customer service tools. Its shared inbox feature, which consolidates all customer communications, and automation tools streamline tasks and ensure a comprehensive approach to customer collaboration.
HubSpot's robust analytics further aid in tracking the effectiveness of these collaborations. HubSpot is one of the top CRM tools that trumpet integrates with, pulling through deals when creating pods.
Integrating with Existing Systems
Customer collaboration platforms don't stand alone. Not only do these integrate with your existing tech stack (see above), but they also work alongside your current sales and marketing strategies.
Integrating with tools like CRMs, eSignature platforms, or marketing automation tools allows a seamless flow of information and effortless collaboration throughout the buyer's journey. For example, integrating trumpet with HubSpot means your CRM automatically filters through any information gathered into your digital sales room.
The ultimate goal of working closely with customers is to build a tech stack that works together seamlessly. When every part of the tech stack communicates well with the rest, businesses can offer a unified and tailored experience to their customers.
Real-World Examples of Successful Use
Customer collaboration platforms aren't just empty promises; they work. We've seen the results first-hand. Besides the skyrocketing engagement and greater open rates compared to email and PDF, trumpet's digital sales rooms also speed up sales cycles by allowing companies to take on the role of trusted helpers.
Take Horizons, for example. They wanted to speed up sales cycles, make it easier for buyers to consume their content, and close more deals. Thanks to trumpet, they did just that.
According to the Europe Sales Lead, Richard Muggeridge '
"We are speeding up our sales cycles and delighting our buyers. It's a no-brainer for BDRs and AEs."
For the first time ever, they received positive feedback on their sales process. It's not hard to see why. B2B buyers want to collaborate and build trust early on, which trumpet facilitates.
Lunio, meanwhile, is focused on eliminating fake clicks and leads from online advertising. With trumpet's digital sales rooms – and our integrations with customer collaboration tools like Salesforce and Loom – they found that mutual action plans drove momentum with clients.
"During every call, I always share the mutual action plan by saying, "I've created this. Does it look reasonable for the time that we're working towards? Is there anything else we need to add?" This way, we can collaborate on defining clear next steps"
Explained Account Executive Sophie Ellis.
Moreover, by monitoring buyer signals, the Lunio team can send better follow-ups. For example, after noticing a customer had logged in twice to view some pricing information, the team sent a quick email asking if they needed any clarification. That's customer collaboration in action.
