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Running a business in the most effective manner means not only being efficient with your time but also being mindful of your customers. Customer service may be the number one differentiation between an okay business and a superior one.

That’s why a customer support software is so critical to your business success. What are the main issues revolving around customer service?

• Customer Leads
• Customer Conversion
• Customer Satisfaction
• Customer Problems

The first two take the efforts of inbound marketing and advertising. However, once you have a solid customer base, keeping them satisfied involves managing problems that arise. Of course, every business hopes not to have any problems but they invariably will occur. Having a problem management strategy in place for when they do occur will help keep customers satisfied and ultimately boost your bottom line. You don’t want customers going elsewhere because problems go unresolved.

So, how can businesses curtail customer problems? Having a customer relationship management (CRM) software such as the one Vision Helpdesk offers takes a load off business owners minds. Here are 5 ways CRM software works to reduce problems.

Timely Discovery

You can’t resolve a problem if you don’t know about it. Furthermore, if you find out about a problem a little too late, then the customer is likely going to remain dissatisfied. Fortunately, with CRM software all of your problem requests go to a centralized location. That is the first step in ensuring they get dealt with promptly. Imagine if you had paper requests in several locations of your office — some in the mailbox, some in the file cabinet, and some on the desk; it would be much more time-consuming and confusing to manage these requests.

It also doesn’t matter from what place they are sent. For example, if one person has a problem and sends an email and another person with a different problem notifies through a chat request, the problems are sent to the same central location.

Proper Organization

Once the customer service problems are received, it’s important to organize them in some manner. That includes making tickets for all the requests, separating them based on whatever categories you have created, and then proceeding to the next step. For example, some problems may be minor issues involving a customer struggling with putting equipment together. Other requests may be more problematic such as equipment malfunctioning. CRM helps manage the requests so they are organized to make sense.

Prompt Routing

Now that the problems are converted to tickets and organized properly, routing them to the right department is critical. For example, if you have a minor problem, you don’t want it routed to the head manager. Yet, at the same time, if a long-time huge customer is threatening to quit over a problem, you want it to be sent directly to the most important person. Fortunately, CRM software has the capability to determine where tickets need to be sent based on keywords and criteria you pre-set.

Critical Status Flagging

As mentioned in the last section, if you have a customer that orders a lot of products from you on a regular basis and they are upset because of a problem, you need a way to flag that ticket so it gets special notice. This isn’t an ordinary customer service problem, this is urgent. Without a CRM software, someone in the office would be stuck reading each and every ticket to determine which ones were emergencies. However, you can easily designate what constitutes an urgent matter. Maybe you will want certain customers flagged automatically and sent to a manager. From there, the manager can decide what type of action to take. Another scenario would be setting up specific conditions or keywords. When those pop up in the ticket, they are sent to a designated person. This saves valuable time because you don’t have to hunt down the appropriate person.

Service Level Agreements

This option may work well for both customer conversions and solving customer problems. A service level agreement (SLA) refers to the level of service you promise the customer. For example, you can promise a customer that when they have an issue, you will respond via email within so many minutes or hours and resolve their problem within so many days. However, you really cannot keep this promise if you don’t have a way to make sure requests are indeed followed up as stated. When you have CRM software in place, you can set up parameters about when to respond to certain customers. This is included in the service agreement you make with the customer. So, for example, you can promise to respond to a problem ticket with an initial email response in fifteen minutes. Then when an issue comes in CRM software makes sure the ticket is flagged appropriately for a timely response. Having the ability to offer an SLA is a big bonus for businesses that contract with distributors that purchase their products. Companies placing large orders monthly or even weekly want the assurance that their problems will be resolved readily.

Customer relationship management software such as what Vision Helpdesk offers is necessary for businesses that want to succeed. Not only do you get the edge in customer service but you also may convert more customers by offering a service level agreement. Improve overall customer satisfaction by fast problem resolution. Vision Helpdesk delivers automated software to streamline your business. Contact us today for more information!