The era when organizations made a clear distinction between separate departments and their different responsibilities is coming to an end. Today's forward-thinking organizations are working to break down silos and encourage departments to leverage the expertise of each other in a bid to improve their bottom lines.

Progressive business leaders are especially interested in bringing their service and sales departments together to improve the customer experience and also increase sales. But it's not only the company that benefits when different parts of the organization work in concert with each other: Customers are gaining from a multitasking team which is able to give them added value during their interactions with the company.

According to Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and marketing officer at Corporate Visions, service people are in the best position to understand when the customer's status quo is no longer serving his needs. Riesterer notes that because of the nature of their job, service teams are privy to ongoing issues that customers are going through, making them ideally situated to identify when a particular customer's needs are no longer being served by the product or service he purchased from the company and is ready for an upgrade or a wholly new product. "The service person is often the first to hear about the leaks and squeaks," Riesterer says.