Do You Know What Customer Service Tools Are and How They Can Support Your Business?
Every day, we hear about the unfortunate closure of a business. This crisis spares no size, industry, or country. Companies that were not fast enough to adapt to abrupt shifts in market demands and current extreme circumstances have disappeared. As if this were not enough, there is still no definite timeframe in which we can be certain of achieving stability. Businesses remain at the mercy of variables outside their control that constantly force them to change their operating models. However, the companies that have remained operational and captured the market share left behind by shuttered businesses share one element in common: All of them have operations deeply tied to technology.
As we know, digital customer service is no longer exclusive to large enterprises, since its implementation, configuration, and management no longer require a significant financial investment (there are help desks starting at $15 USD per user per month). On the contrary, technology has proven to be a highly effective tool for leveling the playing field and competition between SMBs and corporate giants. For example, a few years ago it was impossible to imagine that a small handmade goods retail business could handle post-sales customer requests (exchanges, shipping, warranties, referral programs) remotely and with minimal resources on its support team.
So, if accessible post-sales service tools already exist for all types of businesses, what are the most common barriers preventing companies from investing in these types of solutions?
The main reason companies do not invest in a customer service system is a lack of awareness regarding the available tools and the full range of features they include.
Below, we outline some of the core configurations of a customer service tool:
- Customer Service Chatbots: Conversational tools programmed to operate independently (without human intervention) to receive, triage, and route customer requests.
- Knowledge Bases: Pages containing information about the most common, day-to-day operations related to the purchase, use, and maintenance of products and services. Their purpose is to encourage self-service by making information readily available to website visitors.
- Omnichannel Support: Enabling multiple communication channels (chat, email, phone, WhatsApp, social media), allowing customers to choose whichever medium is most convenient to submit their request.
- Support Tickets: The systematic unit where customer requests are captured. These tickets are generated with each submitted inquiry and routed to the corresponding departments responsible for resolving them.
- Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Service commitments configured within the software for every customer request. An SLA establishes the resolution times, rules, and standards that the company commits to meeting for each inquiry it handles.
- Reporting and Dashboards: Where performance metrics across all the aforementioned elements are tracked, measured, and reported for monitoring and optimization.
Tools offering these capabilities operate in the cloud, ensuring teams can remain operational from anywhere (home, office, business center, etc.), in addition to offering mobile app versions of the platform to continue working from a phone. As with any process automation, all operations are repeatable, measurable, and trackable, allowing businesses to operate consistently, efficiently, and competitively. A company with robust technology infrastructure not only guarantees business continuity, but also protects its workforce to the greatest extent possible.
Below is an episode of our podcast where we discuss key unemployment data from 2020.
