Every provider of products and services knows the fact that it is essential to have adequate means for Customer Service that guarantee their satisfaction as well as the efficiency and productivity in said process, reducing costs in the best way and eliminating dimes. and directions of this interaction.
For correct Customer Service, it is necessary to manage a Customer Support Center that is supported by the appropriate technologies to maintain the order and speed of responses that users expect.
Customer Support Centers must have various technological tools that are not necessarily exclusive to large corporations. Today, products and services are available that can help an SME to have a Customer Support Center worthy of the best corporations with a much lower investment.
The first thing that a Customer Support Center must have is an Intelligent Telephone Center that manages multiple telephone lines to which customers can call in case of emergencies and / or specific needs (both for pre-sale and post-sale). We call this telephone exchange intelligent because it must allow the use of telephony to go beyond a simple phone call, such as allowing the user to contact various departments through a voice menu, leaving voice messages that reach their users by email. recipients, send faxes that are automatically digitized and sent in PDF format to their recipients, provide detailed reports of calls made and received,make use of VoIP telephony (through the Internet) with multiple extensions of internal with hardware and / or software telephones (softphones), which reduce the costs of calls thanks to connectivity through the Internet, among other features.
The Smart Phone System must be accompanied by adequate Customer Relationship Management (or CRM for “Customer Relationship Management”) software. This software must allow operators to access it from any geographical area where they are located (it is not necessary that they are all in the same physical location). The CRM allows to know the history of all the interactions handled with each client including their contact information, quotes or offers issued, orders placed, activities carried out, status of the relationship, size of business opportunities, personnel related to it (internal and external), among other functionalities.
The CRM in turn must be complemented with a Support Ticket Management System. This is a tool that allows the client to issue support request forms (technical, administrative or commercial) through the Internet. These forms (tickets) reach the members of the contacted departments who take the ticket, analyze the case, respond to it, interact with the client in writing until the case is closed with complete client satisfaction and in a very efficient and productive way.. This eliminates the possible later dimes and diretes since everything is in writing. At the same time,It prevents the client from forgetting what was explained to him since the answers arrive at his email and at the same time remain in a database to which he will have access at any time when he has a similar case in the future (avoiding thus redoing the same type of query, thus obtaining the responses more quickly and efficiently for both parties).
The Support Ticket Management System must also be complemented with a Knowledge Base that is nothing more than a database to which the customer has free access to consult the most typical aspects related to the products and / or services they use. from said provider. This Knowledge Base must be continuously fed by the operators of the Customer Support Center.insofar as they observe that a support query becomes repetitive and requires clarification from users. Thanks to this, it can be said that the Knowledge Base has a “life of its own” as it grows based on day-to-day interactions with clients themselves. This method is highly efficient for both parties because the client only has to type in a search engine the question or concern that they have and this will present all the written articles that are related to said search, thus improving the response speed and decreasing to the maximum the costs of calls and waste of time.
Another recommended tool within these key elements for a successful Customer Support Center is to use a Live Chat. This is a web application that is placed on the portals of the providers so that their customers can interact live with the operators through a conversation tool (written or even voice chat using VoIP technology). This can be handled in turn by departmental areas.
On the other hand, a Customer Support Center cannot currently be considered successful if it fails to interact with current and / or potential customers through the main social networks. This is why the company must be registered on social networks and must assign one (s) of its operators to manage them. We recommend using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin and for these functions.
It is important to note that if we are talking about a small or medium business (SME) with few clients, the Customer Support Center can be managed entirely by a single person to start, and as the client portfolio grows then more people may be included. Using the right technological tools means that hundreds of clients can be managed with a small team.
Customer satisfaction is essential to achieve customer loyalty. If your company or institution makes use of these tools and its personnel are adequately trained to use them and manage the culture of relationship marketing through CRM, then you will go further and convert your prospects into potential clients, into potential clients. true customers, true customers and loyal customers and finally loyal customers who are promoters of their products and services.
Take care of the reputation of your company or institution, both with current customers and with all those who search the Internet and get comments about it. This is achieved with proper management of Customer Service. If you want to know more about this, do not hesitate to consult the experts.
Success for all…
