Why You Need Better Customer Service Management Software�

What is the importance of having good customer service management? To any business worth its name, the answer should be obvious. After all, customers are the fuel that keeps the profit-machine of the organisation up and running. And just as low-quality fuel can end up damaging an engine, so too can unsatisfied customers bring the entire sales system of your company to a screeching halt. Let’s consider why.

At first glance, it may seem as though the products or services being offered by an organisation are what will have the most direct impact on that organisation’s success. However, even the best products are unable to actually purchase themselves. If the organisation is unable to communicate the value of its products or services to potential clients, then even the best offerings become little more than unrealised potential.

As such, the company-client relationship is possibly the single most important factor at play in determining business success. A company must establish a healthy relationship with the customer so that he will not only be content with the product, but will also be interested enough to be willing to share his experiences with his friends, family, and colleagues. Because of this, the best performing organisations are beginning to step back and reevaluate the importance of strengthening the customer relationship. In fact, nearly 60% of high-performing teams are increasing the size of their service teams in the next 12–18 months. But in addition to simply hiring more bodies and pointing them in the direction of the problem, a more efficient method has been developed, in the form of customer service management.

Margaret Rouse has posted on TechTarget.com that "Customer relationship (service) management, or CRM, is a term that refers to practices, strategies, and technologies that companies use to manage and analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention, and driving sales growth." In essence, customer service management is any tool or technique used to gather customer data, and to provide a better user client experience. This means that customer service management can take many different forms, but that it all has one very simple goal: to make the customer happy. But how does it do that?

Although there are many different ways that customer service management can improve company-client relationship, we’ve identified five specific features that have the most dramatic impact:

1. It provides more accurate customer data. In order for a company to assess itself, it must first gather data applicable to the issue at hand. Without data, self-analysis becomes mere guesswork. By providing accurate, actionable information regarding customer preferences, purchase history, and other details, customer service management lays a groundwork on which targeted campaigns can be implemented. Thanks to this kind of near-prescient understanding of clients, 55% of high-performing service teams say they’re able to predict customer service needs more than 80% of the time.

55% of high-performing service teams say they’re able to predict customer service needs more than 80% of the time

 

2. It assists in the organisation of customer data. Although many organisations focus on acquiring actionable data, there are many who fail because they don’t take the necessary steps in order to properly organise it for future reference. Quality customer service management systems not only collect data, but they ensure that the data is easily accessible when needed, and that no information is ever allowed to simply ‘fall through the cracks.’
3. It improves the inter-company communication. When there are multiple individuals, teams, or even departments all working towards the sale customer-satisfaction goals, there is a tendency for each group to keep their own files and information on their own systems. Unfortunately, this may lead to compatibility issues, as well as organisational problems, resulting in wasted effort, lost time, and displeased customers. Customer service management provides a single, unified platform from which every person involved can draw the data they need.
4. It promotes better customer support and, consequently, quicker problem resolution. Having a common platform usable by everyone involved in the customer-satisfaction process provides further benefits, in that it helps to eliminate unproductive "bouncing around" between customer service representatives—an experience that has a tendency to quickly alienate otherwise valuable customers. In other words, things can get resolved quicker and more efficiently, which is something that every customer can appreciate.
5. It decreases the need for time-consuming tasks. Remember, time is money, and the more time required on a project, the more money will be spent on seeing it to its completion. Through the above-mentioned features, customer service management increases customer-service efficiency by a substantial margin, and as a result, has a dramatic impact on the overall bottom line.

Although there are a number of ways to train your employees to take full advantage of customer service management systems, perhaps the best thing that you can do to ensure full compliance from your workforce is to share the benefits.

Make sure that your people know what they stand to gain by committing to a customer service management solution, and let them know just how positively it will affect not only the organisation in general, but also how much it will assist the individuals employees in particular. Because, after all, your customers are important, but so are your employees, and with an effective customer service management in place, you’ll be able to make life a bit easier for all of them.