Hypergrowth corresponds to a significant increase in sales, profits and the number of employees over a period of at least three years. During hypergrowth, companies focus their efforts on acquiring new customers. However, this rapid expansion also raises the question of how to maintain the intrinsic quality of the initial offering and manage the risk of customer dissatisfaction. managing the risk of customer dissatisfaction that may ensue.
So how do you reconcile exponential growth with qualitative customer relations?
Start-ups are not the only ones concerned by this notion of hypercrossing, since some SMEs and even large companies can experience phases of intense growth.
Adapt your organization and corporate culture to the change in scale
Right-sizing teams and creating new business lines
In a phase of hypergrowth, the level of customer demand intensifies - particularly in the after-sales stage of the customer journey, and undersized teams can quickly become overwhelmed by the workload.
If additional recruitment becomes unavoidable, the first step is to determine the number of people needed to manage customer relations.
To best size the customer relations team, it is essential to draw up a flow forecast, based mainly on sales projections and future marketing campaigns. Once the business has stabilized, the interaction history can be fed back into the model.
On the other hand, the need to recruit new profiles also raises the question of the skills required. New professions, hitherto absent from the structure, are sometimes required to professionalize the system and and organize its teams - including :
- Customer Relationship Manager
- Customer relations performance manager
- Quality coach and trainer
- Customer Success Director
- ...
Shift from "product/service orientation" to "customer orientation
For start-ups in particular, hypergrowth is often linked to a superior offering - a strong product or service advantage - in the sector in which they operate. In addition to the strong product/service sensibility that rallied early employees, it is now necessary toboost a "customer-centric" dynamic and to integrate into the teams personalities who are deeply customer-oriented. The diversification of profiles within the organization will have multiple benefits:
- Democratize its value proposition to new, less initiated audiences
- Enhance the skills of the most expert profiles - those who are very familiar with the product/service - by mobilizing them on the most complex customer cases. These profiles could, for example, contribute to an in-house "center of expertise" or the equivalent of a "level 2".
Once critical mass has been reached, work on team specialization
"Sales activity
vs. after-sales activity
Distance selling and care activities do not require the same skills, and few people excel in both. It may therefore be worth creating separate divisions once a certain critical size has been reached. This will enable recruitment processes, remuneration and training to be tailored to the profiles sourced.
Level of subject expertise / level of offer specialization
Professionalize and equip yourself for greater efficiency...
Build a unified 360° customer vision and share it among all customer relations players
For SMEs in particular, customer relations are often based on strong interpersonal relationships. With the growth of the company, these relationships must now be shared by several players, requiring the creation of a common, shared frame of reference.
This 360° customer file may include the following information:
- Customer details
- History of Procurement
- Interaction history
Depending on the desired functional depth, customer information can be historized either via a CRM tool or a customer relationship management tool.
Rethink your contact channel offering
The growth of a company's business must lead it to question its range of contact channels, with two different challenges depending on the initial offering:
- Open new channels better adapted to customer expectations
- Streamline your existing portfolio to limit the organizational complexity of omnichannel customer relationship management
In all cases, you'll need to pay particular attention to managing ratings & reviews platforms and social networks to control brand image and risk "bad buzz". Here's a recent article we published on the importance of listening to customers.
Strengthen your business management
Professionalizing your customer relations activity means monitoring the new indicators you need to set up continuous improvement plans. These indicators must :
- Cover all aspects ofthe customer relations business
- Be defined in line with the company's objectives and relational ambitions
- Be combined if necessary to reflect reality in all its complexity (measured vs. perceived quality, productivity vs. customer satisfaction, etc.).
- Be easy to understand and shared by all stakeholders
The final step will be to formalize existing processes (i.e. to move from an oral to a written culture) and to formalize new, evolving processes.
Control costs to ensure a sustainable business model
Business growth means that customer service departments need to hire and train staff, invest in new tools... all expenses that can impact profitability.
To control the costs of remote customer relations, several levers can be activated:
- Controlling contact volumes by strengthening customer autonomy (= development of self-care solutions).
- Reducing average processing times by reinforcing agent training or automating certain repetitive tasks.
- Optimizing agent occupancy rates through better flow forecasting and cross-skill development
- Controlling customer relationship processing costs through the development ofoutsourcing (nearshore or offshore in particular) or the development of home-based agent programs (or even the use of freelance agents/advisors)
Further information
How can you improve customer service?
Improving customer service has become essential for many companies, given the new uses and needs of their customers. What innovative initiatives are companies implementing
How do you build an effective customer experience strategy?
Asking the question of customer experience strategy means recognizing that taking customer experience into account has gradually spread throughout companies.
Comment concilier croissance et RSE ?
A new episode of our podcast dedicated to the Enterprise of Tomorrow. A few weeks ago, we interviewed Geneviève Férone, a pioneer in France in the field of CSR.
