Using Your Website and CRM to Manage Customer Support
How likely is it that your client’s will leave you? Stop for a moment and ponderthis question. Too often companies get comfortable with their client base and just assume they’ll stay with them forever. The reality is, no matter how strong your relationship is, if you are not providing the value they expect they will go elsewhere.
The down economy from a few years back created a whole new consumer. Today, your clients demand more, want to be educated and want better and faster service. Although they want the strong relationship too, ultimately, it’s the value you provide they are evaluating. Clients also want the convenience of serving and educating themselves before they even begin talking with someone at your company.
Studies from the Corporate Executive Board show your clients and prospects put heavy emphasis on the experience of working with you. At the end of the day, clients want quality insight from you, they want to know you’re listening and they want to know you’re moving swiftly to serve their needs. The up side to today’s client and consumer is that they are open to new service solutions and they will listen. So, where can your company make immediate changes? With your website and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.
Your Website and CRM
Thanks to the Internet and the various social media conduits, today’s client is much more educated on what companies can and cannot provide. An abundance of ideas and insights are instantly accessible with a few clicks on a keyboard and they can’t wait to implement them. So, what to do? Make your website relevant. Make it an outlet where people know they can get up to date, reliable and insightful information and options for quality service. Engaging visitors in this manner and doing it well is a step in the right direction. Once you have the audience you need visiting your website, and it is integrated with your CRM, then you are able to capture pertinent visitor information and begin to tailor an online experience specifically for them. By integrating your CRM platform with your website, clients and prospects are able to self-serve and get to a solution faster than they could with your competition; who may not have yet adopted these practices Clients should be able to, and expect to be able to report their issues through your website. They also expect a prompt, if not immediate, response. Your CRM platform should be designed in such a way to allow for instantaneous responses and triggers that will quickly move your client through the service/support process without a hitch. In addition, you can now start to utilize the information you’ve gained from each customer issue and put it to work for client’s needing assistance in the future. How? You sparse the information you need and enter it into your knowledge base which is a repository of solutions that have already been discovered. Once in the knowledge base, your visitors can search for solutions, your customer service representatives can send specific articles to a customer as a solution or you can post it on your website for general public consumption. Galvin is a partner of Salesforce.com and encourages companies to utilize the Service Cloud; Salesforce’s social customer service application with more capabilities than I have time to mention. By doing so, companies are able to serve their clients through a myriad of channels, gain valuable information regarding their clients and provide quick and valuable service.
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