Web-based Software
Friday, February 26th, 2010Web-based software, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, will account for 25% of all new business software by 2011, according to Gartner. Why are decision-makers increasingly turning to SaaS for application deployments?
Find out how to achieve business benefits through SaaS, which include:
• Higher productivity and ROI
• Lower upfront software license and staff costs
• Increased agility to scale software in meeting business change
• And more!
SaaS can make a great impact on your business’ bottom line.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or web-based software is software that is delivered via the web and priced as a monthly, quarterly, or annual subscription. It transfers the burden of implementing, maintaining and keeping the application up to date and running smoothly from the customer to the vendor. It eliminates the costs and complexities of installing and integrating hardware to support the software and hiring additional staff to support the application.
SaaS permits users to more quickly and fully leverage the software functionality. It also enables users to immediately benefit from the software vendor’s latest technological features without the disruptions and costs associated with software updates and upgrades.
All types of businesses and all sizes of organizations can benefit from web-based software. Mid-sized organizations using help desk software or customer management software stand to benefit most from this new innovation.
Today’s economic environment has intensified these companies’ needs. Customers expect more service than they got in the past couple of decades – and research shows that customers’ expectations are rising. Customer loyalty is fleeting. Competition is rising and intensifying due to globalization and eCommerce. Employees are being encouraged to work from home or forced to spend more time on the road meeting with customers and partners face-to-face. Rising costs and tightened credit are forcing organizations to tighten their operating and capital budgets.
If you are wondering if SaaS, or web-based, help desk software or customer management software would work for your company, please contact Cynergy Software at 800-349-0527.
Web-Based CRM Software Features Online CRM
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Cynergy Help Desk software is web-based software that can be utilized for online CRM. It features tools to submit and track sales activities as well as lead generation activities.
CRM Performance Tracking allows sales staff to view the percentage of deals they have closed. Staff members can view or attach files when updating customer requests. Pending sales and forecasted closings are shown on the screen. A knowledge base management system is incorporated for quick solution of problems.
Cynergy Software allows managers to create user accounts, view staff performance and response time, and configure the software and displays to fit their needs. It allows easy access of customer databases and easy creation of templates.
Cynergy Software is the choice of software for many sales and support-center organizations. Many of the features that are optional in other software packages are standard in Cynergy.
Measuring Customer Satisfaction in the Contact Center – Part 2
Thursday, February 18th, 2010Measuring Customer Satisfaction in the Contact Center – Part 2
Using the automated survey tool in your help center software will give you quick and accurate feedback after each interaction with your customers. Technology alone does not assure effective post-call surveys. The makeup and delivery of post-call satisfaction surveys can significantly influence their reliability and usability.
Consider these 5 best practices based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index published annually by the University of Michigan:
- 1. Use a scientific questionnaire design. Asking if the customer found the agent knowledgeable and helpful in the same question will not give meaningful feedback and will confuse the customer who may have found him or her helpful but not knowledgeable about the question. Each question should only address one issue. And each question should be straightforward and clearly stated.
- 2. Define the goal. Know why you are taking the survey and how you will use it before you devise the questions.
- 3. Keep it short and to the point. Your customers’ time is valuable. Respect them. And don’t forget to thank them for taking time to answer questions.
- 4. Measure the right things with the right scale. Don’t give open-ended questions; word questions specifically and give respondents the choices you want to measure. Using a scale that takes advantage of the phone numbers 0-9 is easy for respondents and converts to a 100-point scale for reporting.
- 5. Coordinate your survey with other departments. IT teams need to buy into and have advanced warning for any survey initiative. Various departments can make use of the survey results, so make them available quickly and let others know how to access them.
Your customers have high expectations of your company whether you realize it or not. Surveys need to be constructed in such a way as to give companies ideas for moving forward and improving the customer experience now and in the future. Think of your customer satisfaction survey as a tool to help you take your contact center to the next level, one tier higher than that of the competition!
Measuring Customer Satisfaction in Your Contact Center – Part 1
Monday, February 15th, 2010Measuring Customer Satisfaction in Your Contact Center – Part 1
“Call centers have become obsessed with customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, not all of them know how to measure it.” Greg Levin of the International Customer Management Institute made that assessment nearly three years ago and it just as true today.
How important is customer satisfaction to you? It should be key to gaining a competitive advantage and keeping it. Therefore, you must be able to measure customer satisfaction and identify satisfaction drivers that need attention.
While companies are attempting to cut costs they must still keep their customers happy or risk losing them.
Did you know:
- 96% of customers who have had a bad experience don’t report it and 91% of those don’t do business with you again
- Dissatisfied customers tell 10 or more others who will never do business with you
- It costs 5 times as much to recruit a new customer as it costs to keep an existing customer
- The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, but the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%
If customer satisfaction is so important, how can you ascertain the level of your customers’ satisfaction. ASK THEM. Yes, ask them directly. And ask them within minutes of their call or e-mail to you. Feedback collected immediately after an interaction event is 40% more accurate than feedback collected 24 hours (or later) after the event.
Current contact center software contains post-call survey tools to capture customer feedback and enable you to gain insight into customer perceptions. These automated surveys have far lower costs and faster turnaround times than any other method.
In my next post, I will give you some best practices for your follow-up surveys.
Help Desk Software Saves the Day!
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
About a month ago I got a call from a client overseas. They were having issues keeping track of a flood of calls that they were getting from remote users. They had been tracking the clients in the past using emails and an Excel spreadsheet. Thus every time they would receive a call or email, they would copy and paste the email from Outlook over to Excel, or write the info from the call into the Excel spreadsheet that they had been using for several years. Problem was, they had to update the spreadsheet on a regular basis, and invariably they would miss tickets by not pasting the correct cells, or some of the help desk ticket calls would disappear when they pasted from one place to the other. After a short overview of Cynergy’s ticketing system, the prospect was able to see how easy it was to log a ticket in Cynergy, and keep track of it on the user dashboard.
Help Desk Software to the Rescue!
And, the client was able to see where tickets could be ordered in any way they wanted as well as escalated from one service level to the other. In addition, the client was able to see their customer’s information on the same screen without changing to their spreadsheet or CRM system. Thus callbacks were much easier and more orderly.
Then yesterday, the same customer called us for some additional training on our project management system. They had been using another Excel spreadsheet for keeping track of projects and their Outlook for scheduling those projects. After a short training session, the client was ecstatic about some of the features they learned about, as well as a much deeper understanding of how the project manager could actually save them valuable time without having to call each other on collaborative issues.
Thus, another satisfied customer! But more importantly, we saved them time, and made their job easier. Now that’s what I call a Win/Win situation!
Does Your CRM System Drive or Facilitate Your Processes?
Thursday, February 11th, 2010Does Your CRM System Drive or Facilitate Your Processes?
An organization’s CRM system can either effectively support or hinder their business agility and capacity to respond to change which affects their overall corporate performance and customer satisfaction. Today’s CRM vendors deliver systems with differing degrees of configuration and customization capabilities.
“Customization” and “configuration” are not necessarily the same things. While most companies use them interchangeably to mean “tailoring to meet your needs,” one needs a tech team while the other usually does not. Configuration refers to changes that can be accomplished without the tech team, but customization normally requires technical programming skills which will cost you more money.
Instead of worrying about finding a CRM system that is close to what you need and having it configured and customized, consider a modular approach.
- - A modular CRM approach allows you to purchase only those parts you need and have them quickly and easily tailored to fit your specific requirements.
- - Modules will integrate with existing software, so implementation will be quick.
- - Even if you cannot afford all the pieces you want immediately, you can add them on in time without any loss of data or accessibility.
- - And by teaching your employees to use a single module, the training will be short and straightforward.
- - Your employees will also then feel comfortable in additional modules as they will work intuitively and employees will need very little additional training.
The real value in this approach is that the CRM system is not driving your processes. You are in control of your processes and your CRM system is facilitating them!
Customer Support Software Changes the Way You Look at ROI
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010Customer Support Software Changes the Way You Look at ROI
Companies must commit to continually measuring and monitoring their return on investment on all projects, but especially thier predictive analytics projects. ROI affects and impacts marketing, IT, and the contact center.
Taking too short a view of ROI can negatively impact a company. Too many companies feel that if they do not recover every dollar spent on predictive analytics – and then some – within 12 months, then predictive analytics is a waste of money.
Predictive data analytics are tied to the long-term, to the ROI Cycle. This cycle begins with customer data which feeds equations to predict customer value. From there the company can understand and predict customer attitudes, expectations, and preferences. Then marketing can avoid activities that devalue the customer relationship and focus on those activities that build customer relationship and value. Contact agents can find the best way to satisfy customers and reach out proactively to cross-sell and up-sell. The customer is more satisfied, so he recommends the company and its products and he spends more on the company’s products.
Predictive analytics give some substantial “indirect benefits” which translate to ROI:
- Productivity
- Ongoing and incremental gains
- Retention
- Employee satisfaction
The amount and clarity of data generated by predictive analytics can increase the quality of sales leads and, therefore, make sales teams more productive. Customer preferences for communications can make marketing efforts more effective. It also makes the people using them more productive.
Contact center agents have the most current information to up-sell and cross-sell additional products. Retention is more efficient than customer acquisition — and it is a major benefit of predictive analytics.
When predictive analytics give all employees access to the most actionable information, efficiency increases and productivity increases. Employees are empowered, effective, and happier.
Customer Support Software Changed the Way We Manage Risk
Thursday, February 4th, 2010Customer Support Software Changed the Way We Manage Risk
Customer support software with predictive analytics serves both the customer’s and the company’s needs by building long-term, trusting relationships. Much of the financial mess we have witnessed in the past two years would have been avoided if the lending companies had used predictive analytics to qualify buyers and limit how much they could purchase.
Predictive analytics allow companies to treat each customer as an individual. Not only does the customer feel more cared for, but he feels his interests are being considered. He feels that the company is not trying to “get him in over his head,” but considering his ability to re-pay, his comfort zone, and his desires and needs.
On the other hand, predictive analytics allow companies to mitigate their risks. No company wants to loan a client money that can never be paid back. Qualifying customers and understanding their capabilities helps the company know the best offers to extend to each customer.
A company that is using predictive analytics to identify the causes of complaints and then prioritize actions to resolve those complaints is able to positively impact retention of valued customers. Such a company can understand how to meet their customer’s unique needs, build deeper engagement, and reduce attrition.
The greatest value of customer support software with predictive analytics is that data sources can be linked to build a picture of an individual customer’s attitudes and behaviors. Then the company can provide each customer exactly what he needs.
Using predictive analytics requires and enables a company to establish clear, well-defined goals and act upon them. Companies must commit to those goals and use stringent measures to monitor their progress toward those goals. This often requires operational and organizational changes in order to embed the insights gleaned from the predictive analytics across the entire enterprise. Specific goals are more easily tracked and measured than general goals such as “increase ROI.”
Part 1: Getting Customers Back
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
We all know that the cost of acquiring new customers can be very expensive. Depending of course on the product you are selling, the cost of getting a new customer can be as high as $1,200 or more. I have a client that sells medical equipment, and he told me the cost of landing a new prospect and converting them into a client is a minimum of $1,200 per, and that figure is low compared to some of the other equipment that they manufacture and sell. Conversely, the cost of losing that client due to poor customer support runs into the tens of thousands over the course of a year or more, thus they spend a great deal of time and money to insure that the event does not happen. But, sometimes it does, no matter how hard we try. And if you lose the customer, and don’t learn from it and make improvements, shame on you as a manager/owner. I have always said, it’s not so bad that an employee makes mistakes, as long as they learn from them. But if they continue to make the same mistake over and over, something needs to change.
One way to “learn” from losing a client is what we call the “Lost Client Survey”. And this generally involves a phone call to the lost client to find out where you went wrong. Unfortunately, most people don’t want to go through this much pain for what they may not perceive as gain. Since you have already lost the client, you figure, why rub salt in the wound, or give them a chance to rub it in. However, as I have discovered when conducting this activity for clients, on more than one occasion, we were able to rescue the client. And because we cared enough to follow up and show the lost customer that we cared, on several occasions, that same client was unhappy with the service they received from the new vendor, and came back to us to give us another chance. Thus a win/win situation evolved. We obtained a lost customer back, and sharpened our customer service as a result, which may have saved others.
The Lost Client Survey should always be conducted over the phone, or even better, in person when possible. If after the third attempt, the client will not respond, then send them a questionnaire form by snail mail and enclose a five dollar coupon for Starbucks or Panera Bread. It is rare that they will throw away the questionnaire and keep the coupon, but if they do, it will have a lasting effect on them nonetheless. If it doesn’t, you are better off not doing business with them anyway. And the coupon sends them a strong message, you care about their business.
Begin the survey with an apology for whatever you have done to lose their business. Interview your people to attempt to understand the issue, but do not describe it to the customer. Allow them to tell you. I know it’s hard to believe, but your folks don’t always shoot you straight anyway. And do not pawn this practice off on the person that dealt with them. They are the worst person you want doing this. If you were the reason they left, and you are the boss, eat your crow and apologize and conduct the survey. Write the survey questions out, write the answers, and file it away or post it for other people in your organization to see. If your people can see that you are serious about customer service, they will be too.
In part 2 of this series, we’ll develop some suggestions for survey structures that may be helpful to you.