Customer Service Software is Key to Company’s Most Important Asset
Friday, May 29th, 2009Customer Service Software may be your company’s key to coming out of this recession ready to grow. Customer relationships today are far more complex than those of just a few years ago, or even a few months ago. Customer service software is now expected to encompass traditional local and long-distance telephone service, a variety of wireless communications, high-speed internet access and entertainment.
Customer service software must capture customer data. Customer data, and the quality of that data, is a company’s most important asset. With every interaction, customers are providing critical information. With rising costs, it’s more important than ever to capture this data accurately, completely, in a timely manner and in a consistent format.
Customer service software must capture a large variety of data such as address, age range, demographics and behavioral data. These pieces of information enable companies to plan and evaluate their business, to target specific slices of the population, and to plan for sales and store openings and closings.
Customer service software in the B2B realm captures information about product penetration, productivity, and share of market. Sales territories and the efficiency of sales reps are evaluated on this data.
If customer data is your company’s most important asset, how do you know that the data is correct and up-to-date? According to PriceWaterhouseCooper’s, customer data degrades at a rate of about 2% per month – nearly 30% a year! That makes a well-enforced data maintenance program a “must have” for every company.
Customer service software can help in this process. It can search for false data such as phony e-mail addresses (royrogers@horse.com) or sequential social security numbers. It can keep fields from being filled with wrong sets of information like having a person put their city and state into a field labeled “address 2.” Data profiling is usually built into your customer service software, but most companies do not know how to use it or how often they need to use it.
Your company should have someone or a team that defines guidelines for completeness and for formatting of information. For example, they need to establish how dates and times are expressed. Not as easy, but possibly more important, would be a definition of “household.”
Good back-end data is essential to front-end data quality. This becomes apparent when a new customer has the same name as an existing customer and the customer service software must differentiate between the two.
Customer service software is useful for far more than simple data entry and tracking a customer and his issues. It is the tool for up-selling and cross-selling to him and his household. It is the basis of the company’s decisions about its future. Therefore, it is critical for the data being used by the customer service software to be as accurate and up-to-date as possible.
Who Needs Web Based CRM Software?
Thursday, May 28th, 2009As a corporate leader of a customer service area you should have two goals: (1) Deliver an exceptional customer experience and (2) Build strong customer relationships. CRM software is central to any company’s efforts to deliver exceptional customer experiences and build strong customer relationships.
Current questions about your CRM software may have caused management to think about upgrading to a more current, flexible or powerful system. Just because a system is more expensive or more powerful does not necessarily mean it is better or will meet your needs better.
Each person and department that interfaces with the CRM software must understand what they need it to do for them and feel that their software answers their needs.
- Customer Service Department members want a system that helps them provide faster and better support to customers. They want tools and information that they need to answer questions and resolve problems at the moment the customer calls. They want to be enabled to keep customers satisfied and loyal.
- Customer Service supervisors and managers want tools to measure and manage performance, costs, and resource utilization. They want to keep their department efficient and effective. And they need tools that keep the learning curve low for newly hired agents so they can keep quality and consistency high.
- Customers want to track their trouble ticket online and see who is supposed to be helping them. They want to be able to look for answers and resolutions themselves to solve their own problems. And they may want to cancel that trouble ticket if they successfully find a resolution.
Web based CRM software gives customer service department reps a user interface that is easy to use and comfortable to navigate. Web based CRM is automatically interfaced and integrated with other systems such as Microsoft Outlook, Excel, and SharePoint. This enables the reps to quickly follow the trail of e-mails with the customer or access information housed in a SharePoint library. Web based CRM software houses all the information about a particular customer. Web based CRM software builds, adds to, and searched a service-oriented knowledge base. In that way, today’s issue and solution is “banked” to help tomorrow’s customer as well.
Web based CRM software gives information and tools to the right people with the least number of mouse clicks. Web based CRM software is the easiest way to help customer service managers ensure delivery of exceptional customer service. It gives them the information and tools they want without the clitter of irrelevant features. It enables them to create a user dashboard with hand-picked, user-specific content. And it provides customer service managers with simple monitoring of their department while gaining instant insight into problem areas.
Web based CRM software empowers the customer to create, track and cancel his trouble ticket as needed. Web based CRM houses the knowledge base that the customer and the agent will need to access to answer the question or problem. And web based CRM software is available to the customer 24/7 from any place he has internet access.
Life Before Web Based CRM Software
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
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- Bridge leading to Eureka Springs
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- Life Before Web Based CRM Software
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- Building built 1886
[/caption]I took advantage of the Memorial Day weekend and went to Eureka Springs, AR. on our motorcycle. That area of Arkansas has turn after turn (twisties is what the bikers call them) and hill after hill, thus it makes for great riding. While it rained most of the time, and the rain makes for some nervous curves, as you come into a 15-20 mph curve doing 35-40 knowing you are crowding the curve a bit, and a Semi happens to meet you on the curve at the same time, you’re heart picks up the beat just a bit, and you breathe easier once you get through it, but that’s part of the excitement and fun. I never realized that Eureka Springs dated back to the late 1800′s. Much of the original city is still standing.
Life Before Web Based CRM Software
There were two weddings going on while we were there. The historic hotel and its surrounding 15 acres of formal gardens offer numerous Eureka Springs wedding and reception venues: Crystal Ballroom, Conservatory, Boardwalk, Faculty Lounge and Sunset Terrace, Fountain Garden, Wedding Bridge, Back Terrace, and the new East Lawn. With Thorncrown Chapel just a few minutes away, many use it for their ceremony and the Crescent Hotel for their rehearsal dinner, wedding reception.
As I was walking through the historic part of Eureka Springs, I could not help but think about how people back then kept track of their customers and clients before Web Based CRM Software was even thought of. Imagine what it may have been like in the days before the amazing rolodex….you know that someone was thinking ahead of their time and came up with some kind of system to keep track of customers besides a stack of papers, notes, or napkins. Today, we don’t think twice about doing business with someone from Denmark, Saudi Arabia, or Japan. The internet has just made it to easy. So I hope you do as I do. Travel back in time, allow your imagination to wander, and live in the past, if just for a weekend. When you get to the office on Tuesday with over 1,000 worthless emails in your spam box, you may just appreciate the past…..
Help Desk Software Enables Proactivity
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009Is your help desk software able to provide your help desk agents – and your clients – with the tools they need? Do you see your help desk as an effective support center assisting clients in maximizing their use of technology? Does your help desk also serve as a service desk for your company in providing for the IT needs of the enterprise as well as the needs of the client?
A help desk uses trouble or incident tickets to ensure that all client issues are resolved in a timely and orderly manner. The help desk software creates and tracks these tickets and any actions performed to resolve the issues of the tickets.
The help desk software creates and maintains a knowledge base that can be used in resolving issues. Usually this knowledge base is part of the web based CRM system so it is available for clients as well as help desk agents to access.
Help Desk Software allows you to provide excellent technical support which aids clients and agents in solving problems efficiently and effectively. It propels you beyond the reactionary stage of customer relations management – that process of reacting to issues as they occur, without any process in place to handle the same issue on a recurring basis.
The use of Help Desk Software shows that you are being proactive in tracking incidents and attempting to document the management processes. It also shows that you desire to build a knowledge base from which to work. It automates the entire support process and monitors how the system is being used.
The more integration there is among your tools, the more sophisticated or mature your help desk is. This is often a result of a management decision to be customer-centric and provide quality service with constantly improving services and processes. This type of help desk software is usually web based and enables all users – including the client – to access a wide variety of tools beyond the usual Frequently Asked Questions.
Help Desk Software should be chosen to match as closely as possible your company’s needs. How you function today and how you want to function in two to three years should be your guides in choosing features and tools. Often companies choose software based on all the tools and features that are available with little or no thought about which of those would ever be used by their company. Software changes and companies change so quickly in today’s environment that you should not choose anything with the thought of its being appropriate five or ten years from now.
The Pain of Web Based CRM Software
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009Obtaining a list of issues that a client has will require you to listen carefully to what the client is telling you, and enable you to capture the issue in a key word or phrase that best describes the issue (which is usually pain) or the result (which is the gain) that you are after. Thus the pain, is generally described to you in the client’s words….not your own. And when you outline this in their Scope of Work, it will have much more meaning than if it were your words. And when the client is reviewing competitive scopes of work or quotes, they will be able to relate to your proposal because it is in their words, not some nebulous quote template that you had designed to look good, but lacked content. Make sure that you include these statements in your Web Based CRM Software notes section, so everyone on your team is aware of the Pain Expression. Often times a client will give you a complete history of the pain over the last 5 years and tell you about the cutbacks they have endured over the years in people or services. And so when they describe the pain they went through, we should ask more questions that gives us the real source of the pain. Then listen closely, and try to help the client solve the source. I had a client one time that was using our help desk software and recording over 500 trouble tickets a week. And they were in pain, but could not describe it. After a short session of Q & A, we were able to get to the source of the pain. Their help desk software agents were having to stay late each night to finish filling out tickets that they were not able to do earlier in the day. After they told us of the problem, we helped them develop some “quick ticket” templates that would shorten the length of time that they were entering each trouble ticket into Cynergy Help Desk Software, thus cutting their entry time by 20%. Problem solved, client happy, and Web Based CRM Software came to the rescue, by asking a few pertinent questions….
Memorial Day: Remembering our Veterans – The Originators of Customer Service
Monday, May 25th, 2009Today is officially Memorial Day and I can’t think of a more fitting way to remember our veterans than that of thanking them for leading the way in true customer service. We often think of their service to their country, but what does that really mean? What is ‘their country’? It is the people of their country – their families and friends and those they didn’t know that lived at the time they served and it is all of those peoples’ descendants. In a sense we are the customers they served! Now that is the ultimate in customer service! We salute you, veterans!
This makes me think that they really understood customer service and customer relationships. Going back to World War II, we know that many of those who served left family businesses or community businesses. Those businesses often served people who lived within a few miles – people who personally knew everyone who worked for that business. They saw each other at the grocery store, the hardware store, and the gas station as well as at church and the restaurant. If someone was dissatisfied with service at one business or another, the whole community knew about it. Talk about satisfied customers!
Perhaps that’s why the saying ‘the customer is always right’ became a mantra in the world of small business. It was the only way to satisfy the customer, retain loyal customers, and advance your business.
Our ancestors would be appalled to think that we now have ‘call centers’ for customer service. And they certainly would not understand the standard recording: “Thank you for calling. We’re sorry, but all lines are currently busy. Your call is important to us. Please hold, and our next available representative will be with you shortly.” To them, someone would personally answer each and every call (which were few and far between) and assist the caller right then.
What if those same ancestors had not answered the call to defend our country and our freedoms immediately – leaving homes and families to serve overseas as long as it took to get the job done? What if they had said, “I’m sorry but I’m busy putting together my life plan/going to college/marrying my sweetheart/helping my dad in his business, but I’ll see what I can do to help out as soon as I’m not so busy.” I hate to think where we would be or how different our lives would be.
Their customer service was immediate and effective. They clearly understood the problem and they acted to effectively solve it as quickly as possible. That is the essence of customer service.
They knew the expectations of their customers and they proved reliable in meeting those expectations. Fixing the problems in the US – or living their lives right now – simply weren’t as important as fixing the problems threatening the US – and their futures. I wonder if seeing customer service in this way would help us focus our corporate attention better. I know it would make our companies customer-centric.
If we thought that having any business next week depended on how we solve our customer’s problems today, would we be more attentive? What would we say differently? How much harder would we try to do the right thing right now?
Did our parents and grandparents see the cost of equipping and sending the soldiers to fight for our freedoms as a cost too great to bear? No, they saw it as a necessary investment. Which says something about how we should see the technology investments we make to support our customer service call centers. If we do not give our agents and managers the right equipment to handle the call volume and find answers quickly, they have a right to be dissatisfied. The right technology improves both efficiency and effectiveness.
The examples our parents and grandparents set for us really deserve our spending the day contemplating. And, yes, they should make us also contemplate how we can re-form our customer service to truly serve our customers which will in turn make our companies stronger for a longer period of time.
Successful Customer Support Software Implementation – Part II
Friday, May 22nd, 2009Why do some companies have a disastrous Customer support software Implementation? As I talked about in my last post, in order to have a smooth and successful software implementation, one has to understand some of the reasons these implementations go awry.
- Assigning the wrong people to the company’s implementation team
- Changing too much or doing it too fast
- Attempting to re-create the old application
- Failing to work with the implementation provider
In that blog post, I discussed the first two of these reasons. In this post, I will discuss the last two. All four are equally important in order to avoid a disaster in implementing new Customer support software.
Attempting to Re-Create the Old Application
Most people do not like change. This goes for people at all levels in a company from executives through middle management right on down to the Help Desk agents. Unfortunately, if these people are involved with the implementation team, they have a tendency to insist on seeing the same screens, clicking on the same buttons, and generating the same reports they always have; they cannot see that any of those can be improved or that a change in the process will improve delivery of services. This insistence will cause costs to spiral without providing any business benefit.
All levels must understand and buy into the fact that new software will mean improved functionality. The focus must be on the functions that are needed and will be needed in the future. By better understanding the reasons underlying the processes, the implementation team can determine the business need that the process is fulfilling. If the process is necessary, it should not go away. However, the way in which it is done may be improved by changing the flow of the process. And yes, this may even necessitate organizational changes outside of the Help Desk area to accommodate a new process flow and make for a smoother implementation.
Failing to Work with the Implementation Provider
If the implementation team does not feel they have time or money to go through all the steps recommended by the implementation provider, they may want to cut something. For example, if the team feels they can document the processes, they may not want to pay to have the vendor or provider do that step. However, failure for the provider to have the processes documented will lead to miscommunication about whether those processes are truly present or how they work in the new software. If the testing phase is not long enough or inclusive enough, the go-live may be a disaster.
Training is a place many companies feel they can skimp. But this is one of the most important areas not to skimp. This ensures that the people who use the software actually buy into it enthusiastically and feel comfortable using it on a day-to-day basis. Remember this software will be their lives for the foreseeable future. And they are the company’s lifeline to the bottom line – the customer!
Implementation providers (whether they are implementation consultants or the software vendor) will have an implementation method with specific steps to ensure success. These steps have been developed over a period of time and through experience with many different companies. They work well with this particular provider and this software. Failure to follow their steps and recommendations will inevitably lead to a less-than-perfect implementation.
Remember the implementation providers are experienced professionals who are there to help you. The quality of the communications between your company and these implementation providers will determine the success of your Customer support software implementation.
CRM Software Should Benefit the Customer
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009When implementing CRM software, many companies forget what the “C” is for – Customers. Companies are so busy focusing on gains in efficiency and tracking the numbers that they forget that without customers, there is no business. If you don’t take care of customers and grow the customer relationship, there is no reason to make investments in employees, products, office equipment, or technology. Without customers, there is no reason for the product or service. Does your customer define your business? That is the way it should be.
What is the purpose of CRM software? Let’s see. I think that is part of the title: Customer Relationship. But what is the relationship of the customer to your company? Customers make a purchasing decision – often based on the relationship your company had with with friends and colleagues. Ever think about that?
Customers drive the price of your product or service – either up or down, depending on how valuable they perceive it to be. Ultimately it is the customer that decides when, how and how much to interact with the company. It is the customer’s image of the brand that creates the brand.
The third word in CRM is management. Up to now it appears the customer manages the relationship, but the company needs to take some control. The company can and needs to develop strategies to enable the company to work in an ongoing fashion to improve its ability to start, continue, and improve its relationships with its customers.
By putting the Customer first in Customer Relationship Management, the company elevates the customer and his role in the business. By putting the customer first, the company becomes customer-centric and begins to ask questions of their customers and potential customers and listen to the answers. The company gets to know real customers with real needs and not some contrived profile of the ideal customer. From this, the company creates real answers.
The result is amazing. Improved customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty. Revenues grow. Employees become more production and more satisfied. And the costs of lead generation, customer acquisition, marketing, and sales decrease.
Where does CRM software fit into this picture? The right CRM software enables the company to re-evaluate its priorities and re-shape its processes to fit its goals and its customers’ expectations. It empowers employees to better serve the customer. And it captures all those things that the customer says as well as how the company responds.
The Trouble with Tickets
Monday, May 18th, 2009Trouble tickets – don’t all tickets signal trouble in one way or another? Our police have an ad out on the radio these days. One guy is talking about his buddy who was supposed to go to a concert with him, but the buddy wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. The speaker says, “no, he didn’t get into a wreck. But he did get a ticket. Now he has to pay for that ticket instead of the concert ticket. Now I have to go by myself.” That ticket certainly was trouble!
Buying that concert ticket could have caused the fellow trouble too. When I buy such things they always cost a lot of money. How can a measly, hard-as-a-rock seat (or spot on the lawn) cost that much for two hours!? Then there are all the taxes that get slapped onto the the ticket – convenience tax (which is not convenient at all to me), taxes for visiting the place, sales tax, etc. And that does not include the trouble of standing in line for long periods of time or logging onto the web site at just the right time.
Another ticket that gives me trouble is the one I have to pull out of the little machine at the meat counter to tell the guy behind the counter I’m there (like he can’t see that) and that I came right after the guy in front of me (duh!). It’s like none of us can count or notice who was there when we arrived!
Then there are the tickets the airlines issue – oh, wait, they don’t issue tickets any more and that is part of the trouble. Yes, the same ones they don’t issue refunds on . . . the same ones that don’t include your luggage . . . you know the trouble I’m talking about.
True trouble tickets, though, signal that someone is having trouble and needs help. They should be automatically generated with that someone phones or e-mails that they have a problem. And they should log the day and time as well as recording the particulars about the problem. Then they should be routed to someone who can sort out a resolution or assign the problem to a technician. Each time someone looks at the trouble ticket or does something toward the resolution, the trouble ticket should track it.
Trouble tickets’ main purpose is to help solve complaints and problems in a quick and efficient manner. Secondarily, they are used to track methods and people that do a good job or a quick job of resolving problems. Ultimately, they create happy customers. Trouble tickets are good.
Successful Customer Support Software Implementation – Part I
Friday, May 15th, 2009The fear of a failed implementation of customer support software is nearly as bad as the fear of selecting the wrong software. We have read in the newspapers and heard on the news about various disastrous software implementations – companies that purchased expensive software with wonderful promises and then it failed to function correctly or failed to be accessible to the right personnel or took training that was not included in the cost. Because of all the unknowns and problems inherent in purchasing and implementing any new software, many companies struggle with using their old software for far longer than its usefulness.
Are you afraid to implement new customer support software? In order to have a smooth and successful software implementation, one has to understand some of the reasons these implementations go awry.
- Assigning the wrong people to the company’s implementation team
- Changing too much or doing it too fast
- Attempting to re-create the old application
- Failing to work with the implementation provider
In this blog post, I will discuss the first two of these reasons. In my next post, I will discuss the last two. All four are equally important in order to avoid a disaster in implementing new Customer Support Software.
Assigning the wrong people to the company’s implementation team
A company’s executives must understand fully the strategic importance of the customer support software and its implementation. Without that appreciation, a number of things can go wrong. The worst thing that can happen is that the wrong people will be assigned to the implementation team.
This can be junior people without the authority, experience, or understanding needed. Companies hesitate to assign top human resources for a period of time to a “non-critical function,” but it is important to see the customer support software as a critical function which demands the best resources in terms of people and time.
On the opposite end of this problem is the company that does understand the importance of functionality, so they load the team with executives. However, these people are not involved in the day-to-day operations, so cannot answer questions about how processes are actually accomplished within the company. That creates a void when discussing how the software needs to integrate with those processes or execute those processes.
Who should be assigned to the implementation team? Choose middle managers who are key users of the software and have extensive knowledge of both company strategy and detailed processes. Take the necessary steps to help them help the implementation to be successful.
- Empower them to make decisions regarding implementation.
- Give them access to executives that need to buy-in.
- Allow them to have the key in-put for determining how the Customer support software will be used.
- Assign them the responsibility of determining the business’ process flows in regard to the software.
- Create the time they need to work on this important project by backfilling their regular duties.
Changing Too Much or Doing It Too Fast
Companies that have more than one Help Desk – say for different products or for different geographical areas – often try to implement new customer support software at all locations simultaneously. This can be overwhelming and cause a large-scale breakdown.
Another way in which companies try to do too much is by choosing to implement a Customer support software that is drastically different from what they have been using or is not aligned well to the company’s culture and long-term goals. Customer support software is closely tied to the way in which the company does business – both its philosophy and its functionality. It may be good to make changes for the long term, but trying to make large changes all at once may be very frustrating for company personnel – even if they have bought into the purpose.
How can disruption due to large changes or very quick changes be avoided? Very often, Customer support software can be implemented in steps, creating a more gradual process. This may cost a bit more in terms of integration by steps, but the lack of total disruption and the greatly improved morale of the personnel results in a better outcome and satisfied customers. Even training can be done in steps as the various modules are implemented. This helps the personnel to feel better supported and gain confidence in the use of each module before having to learn even more new things.