It struck me recently how much more difficult it is to handle customer relations than it used to be. This is mainly because there are so many more ways that customers want to use to contact a business. Let me give you some examples. If I purchase a new gizmo and it quits working, then I  go to the company’s web site and look for a “fix” or attempt to order the replacement for the defective part. If that does not work, then I look for the “contact us” page which I hope will give a way to e-mail a technician for help or talk to a technician on a live chat. However, I have a friend who immediately picks up the phone and calls the company’s 800 number, expecting to get instant help she understands. Another friend prefers to just pack up his gizmo and take it back to the store where he expects to have the store replace it with a brand-new one. These are just some of the different customer relations scenarios or customer service channels.

No matter what business you are in, you are expected to provide several channels by which your customers can contact you and find solutions to their problems and answers to their questions. That’s great until you start adding up the cost of maintaining all those channels. Then there is the training of people who work those various channels. And the management of the channels themselves. And that’s if you only have one product to support.

However, your ability to provide multiple channels of desk help software and deliver a consistent, positive customer experience across all the channels will set your company apart and give you the competitive edge. What you have to understand in the process is what the customers want and what each customer is capable of understanding and doing himself. Each customer interaction – face-to-face, online, online chat, phone, or e-mail – is an opportunity to add customer value, improve customer service, or, ultimately to sell more goods or services.  Using a CRM customer call desk to this will give you great rewards in the future.

• Customers want convenience, consistency, and reliability.
• Customers want to interact with the company once and have the problem solved.
• Customers want the service technician to know the same information they already found on the web site or typed into the service request form.
• Customers expect to receive answers that make sense and work.

The key to better customer service becomes integration of the channels. All employees or contracted people who work to help your customer must have access to the same information and must have the same or similar training. They must all know the online sources of information and help. They must be able to access any previous communication the customer has had with the company. They must all have a step-by-step plan for solving problems that follows the same set of steps, so that a technician does not say to the customer, “oh, that guy didn’t know what he was talking about.” Both training and the company’s knowledge-base of frequently asked questions (FAQ) and their answers must be constantly evolving to be up-to-date and at each person’s fingertips.

When customers encounter freindly, knowledgeable people who have the ability to access the same information the customer can access, customers are more likely to trust their advice. Customers who use online or e-mail services have high expectations of those services that either end with the problem being solved or with actual contact with a person who can solve the problem quickly. When these are provided, customers recommend a company or service to their friends and are more likely to become repeat customers.