10 Reasons Why You Need Customer Service Software

Wed, 25 Oct 2017, in Customer Service

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No one looks forward painful software-related changes in the workplace. Certainly not your employees.

When you’re a one-man team with a customer base that’s in the single digits, email may do just fine.

The moment things get more complicated is when your needs change. But what should you aim for? This largely depends on various factors such as your company values, your resources in terms of funds, manpower and lastly your customer’s expectations.

The search for the right customer service software can balloon to a large investment of time and money – and it’s a decision you’ll need to live with for a while.

Most software out there offer some sort of a trial option. Granted, effectively trialing software is difficult and time consuming, simply because you won’t be evaluating your software with a full volume of tickets and staff.

To start, you must define the help desk experience you’re looking to create (and how different members within your organization help create that experience). You can begin by asking yourself the following questions:

What do your customers want?

Take a look at yourself from the customer’s perspective. Do customers talk to you in person, visit your website or come across you on social media? What kind of service are they expecting? Depending on your business type, growth trajectory and support strategy, your customer outcomes can also vary. There’s more than one way to reach the customer satisfaction “mountaintop”, so get all the company’s stakeholders (be it your executive team, support managers, IT teams) to lay out their problems and propose solutions they’d like to see.

Read more: Picking Help Desk Software: Is It Even Worth Your Time?

What can your employees do?

Your employees are the ones doing the talking to your customers, so listen to their concerns extra carefully. Really understand how they’re going through the motions of support. Offer employees the autonomy to serve customers on their own terms. Accommodate individual software and workplace preferences. Pinpoint employee motivators, strengths and weaknesses as this will help them unleash their full potential. Communicate team goals and organize regular team-building activities.

Read more: How to Inspire Employees to Care About Customer Service

Do you have the resources for it?

There’s research, evaluation, implementation and other unexpected costs to consider. Don’t jump in too quickly – set aside some time for debate, explore risks associated with undesired outcomes for customers. Ensure that team members have enough time to test out the product to formulate their own opinions. Address any questions raised by stakeholders, preferably with the software vendor. Remember, sometimes less is more: it’s better to start small and plan for growth as you go.

Read more: How to Turn Your Shortcomings Into Advantages

After you’ve settled down on your customer service strategy, it’s time to decide whether (or not) you need new customer service software. Here are 10 things (backed by stats) you may want to take into account:

1. Improve support, agent and team performance

With the right software, agents are able to offer support more quickly, consistently and with more attention to detail. Most importantly, the right tool should be effortless to use as agents shouldn’t try to fight the tool but focus their energy on helping customers. This delicate balance is different for every business.

2. Centralize and organize your conversations

Another benefit of the right support tool is organization. The right tool makes it easy to offer a better experience to customers. This helps in establishing an essential element in support: your own personal touch. By definition, it can be anything that makes the customer feel valued, appreciated and most importantly – human.

3. Helps management make better decisions

A customer service software tends to give managers a bird’s eye view of what matters. This information helps management make informed decisions when it comes to improving operations. By unearthing the biggest possible opportunities for the company, less time is being wasted second-guessing and more time allocated towards doing.

4. Data reporting, tracking and analytics

Reports aren’t only useful for drawing your attention to support feats or gaps in delivery. They can also be used to with the hearts and minds of your customers. For example, many companies have long published their monthly satisfaction reports as a way to advertise their accomplishments. This boosts team morale, generates buzz and helps in inbound marketing.

5. Categorize and act on customer feedback

Starbucks wasn’t always at the top of their game. When they had a period of stalled growth in 2008, they turned to their customers. Collecting publicly submitted ideas made them look like a company that cared. Truly good ideas were validated and implemented due to crowdsouring – it earned Starbucks much needed love and helped them reinvent themselves.

6. Give customers a voice with a community

When customers first come across your brand, they realize they have a need, and your product could fill it. It’s during this stage that trust-building and bonding is done. A community is an alternative place for customers to familiarize themselves with your products and interact with like-minded individuals. It’s only after the evaluation stage do customers contact you, sign up or purchase.

7. Reduce company paperwork

Behind-the-scenes activity is something no business can avoid, yet needless back-and-forth can slow life down for everyone. The right software can help minimize this by saving reports, centralizing documentation and keeping even the most minute data accounted for. Less time doing paperwork and tracking trends means more time supporting customers.

8. Allow customers to help themselves

It’s not a secret that people are willing to spend more if you cater to their needs. As more customers expect instantaneous responses, they are gravitating towards self-service options. A self-service portal can offer a wealth of information including webinars, how-to videos and interactive content. When you cross-reference material, you make that information easy to find by everyone.

9. Offer omnichannel support

Assisting customers quickly and wherever they are will surely win them over a lot faster. This could be accomplished with a monitoring system and a way to tag incoming messages in your help desk. An omnichannel support system gathers customer requests originating from different places (email, feedback, telephone) and displaying them in one, easy-to-use mailbox.

10. Look for Simplicity

Choosing the right tool to manage customer interactions is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in today’s competitive global business environment, giving your company a distinct competitive advantage. By following a needs-driven, logical decision-making process, your selection team can identify and prioritize real needs, comprehensively and objectively evaluate products and choose the customer service app that will serve your company – and your customers – as you grow.

Download the infographic here: customer-service-reasons-big.png

Tags: customer service