What Is a Point of Contact?

The core goal of every business is to deliver exceptional client experiences that create trust, retention, and loyalty. But, which roles and departments are responsible for the quality of service and experiences your brand delivers?

Together, all such roles and functions can be referred to as POCs. In this article, the experts from LeadsForce will tell you:

• What is point of contact?
• Why does it matter for your business?
• What types of POC are there?
• What are the benefits of POC?

Apart from this, we will also share with you a clear point of contact example and some handy tips that will help you leverage it to the benefit of your business. Let’s dive in!

What Is a Point of Contact POC?

Though it is one of the most pivotal functions of the sales department, still, many companies get the point of contact meaning wrong.

So, what is a point of contact in the first place?

In a nutshell, the term point of contact POC is used to define an individual or an entire department in charge of communication with customers. They act as the representatives of a company, providing clients with the needed information, handling their problems, and otherwise assisting them.

This function can be performed by many people in different roles. Depending on the role of each particular POC, their duties can vary. Yet, the core point of contact responsibilities include: increasing brand awareness, improving the brand’s visibility on the market, and maintaining positive relationships with existing and potential customers.

Point of Contacts Examples

Now, to help you grasp the concept better, let’s look at some examples of who can be a POC person of contact in a company:

• Customer Service -  The customer service or care representatives are in charge of day-to-day communication between a business and its clients or prospects. When a client wants to get more information, solve a problem, or obtain any other kind of help related to a particular business and its products/services, they reach out to the support team. 
• Salespeople - Typically, salespeople are responsible for building, expanding, and managing a business leads list, which is why they are one of the first POCs that new clients connect with.
• Service Desk - Service desk reps, which can be often met in IT companies, help clients solve problems throughout an entire product lifecycle. Thus, they deal with a huge share of client communications and are among the POCs of a business.
• Project Manager - People in project manager roles can also serve as the POCs of your brand, answering queries and providing assistance related to a specific project.

Why Should You Care?

Now that you know the definition and have a few clear examples to help you understand who POCs can be in your team, you might be as well wondering why you even need a point of contact person in your business.

Further in this article, we are going to look at the specific benefits of this function for your business. However, here is a short answer to why you need POCs in your business - it’s all about client experiences.

According to studies, 56% of consumers stop doing business with companies that don’t provide high-quality care and support for their clients. In contrast to this, 77% of clients will be willing to recommend a particular brand to their friends and loved ones after receiving a positive experience.

So, here you have it - modern consumers want to have a memorable experience with your brand. If you can deliver it, they will stay with you and even recommend your business to people they know.

Now, as was mentioned earlier, POCs are the people responsible for your brand’s communications with prospects and existing customers. Therefore, they are the people who build experiences for your clients and this is the key reason why you should care about this function of your business. 

6 Tips for Effective POCs

The role of POCs in a business is huge and so is the level of their responsibility. After all, the wrong performance of POCs can have a destructive effect on the company’s sales, client retention, loyalty, etc.

But how do POCs ensure that they perform at the top of their abilities?

Here are a few tips that can get them on the right track:

1. Applying Personalization at Scale

Whenever sending an introduction email, delivering support, or interacting with customers in any other way, good POCs must apply the principles of personalization. Personalizing client experiences is a great way to build trust and keep them engaged.

1. Avoiding Being Too Formal

These days, customers don’t appreciate robotlike and impersonal communications. They want to see real people behind a business. Thus, POCs should strive for a more informal and natural style of communication.

1. Leveraging the Right Tools

For maximum productivity, POCs need to have a solid tech stack. It can involve various CRMs, automation tools, the best reverse email lookup tools, and much more. Leveraging the right tools is the key to the success of your company’s POCs.

1. Using Positive Language

Not everything is bright and stress-free in the POC’s work. Sometimes, clients can reach out with a problem or complaint, but this shouldn’t affect the POC’s tone. Retaining a positive attitude and language in any situation is the key to better experiences.

1. Knowing How to End the Conversation Effectively

Another crucial tip for POCs is to always know when and how to close down the conversation effectively. This basically means ending it when the client is satisfied and all their questions or problems are solved.

1. Ensuring Consistency Within a Team

When there is an entire team performing the POC’s function in a business, it is crucial to unify it and ensure that all team members share the same culture, values, and rules. Ideally, there should be a clear handbook that dictates how everyone in the team should interact with customers.

Types of Points of Contact

As you already know, the POC’s function within an organization can be represented by a particular person or department. Namely, we’ve given you four examples of who can perform this role:

• Client service representative;
• Salesperson;
• Service desk representative;
• Project manager.

These are the people that can serve as brand reps and handle communications with customers via various channels. While their roles and duties can differ significantly, their core mission as POCs is to create and maintain positive relationships with prospects and existing customers. They can perform the POC’s duties independently or as a team.

However, there are also other types of points of contact that might be there.

Sometimes, POCs are not people or departments. It can as well be a specific business function, location, service, project, or event. In some cases, it can even be a specific phone line, email address (read more about the valid email address format), or a website set up to handle customers’ questions, requests, or problems of all kinds.

Benefits of POC

Here are the key perks of having a point of contact in your business:

Avoiding Miscommunication

If a client’s issue is miscommunicated or lost out of sight, there are high chances of losing this client. Yet, when a business has a dedicated entity (a team of POCs) that handles communications with clients, such miscommunications can be avoided.

Delivering Timely Solutions

When there is a clearly-determined point of contact between a brand and its customers with instant access to all resources and client information, a business can deliver solutions to customers’ problems faster. As a result, more timely solutions help prevent client churn.

Building Trust

Having dedicated POCs in your business will help you let your customers know that there are always real people that they can rely on in any situation. If these people perform their jobs correctly, helping answer clients’ questions and delivering solutions to their problems effectively, this will help your business build better and more trusted relationships with your customers.

Enhancing Satisfaction

As was already mentioned, high-quality client service is the key to positive experiences. Therefore, it is also the key to satisfaction. With the help of friendly and reliable POCs, companies can boost their clients’ satisfaction and, thus, ensure their retention.

Building Better Brand Image

Lastly, improved trust, higher satisfaction, timely solutions, and no miscommunication together create better experiences for your clients. As a result, clients who received excellent experiences with your brand will be more likely to share them with people they know. Eventually, this will improve your overall brand image and loyalty.

The Bottom Line

As you now know, the role of POCs in business is huge. The people, departments, functions, services, and other things that perform the POC’s duties in a business basically serve as the face of the brand and drive the company’s sales and success.

With the proper functioning of your POCs, your business can deliver the best experiences to your customers and, thus, ensure that they will stay with you for longer.