Improve Customer Support and Service

Don’t just get customers, retain them for life

The customer is king. Whether dealing with consumer of business customers, meeting their needs is paramount to building lasting customer relationships that result in referrals and repeat purchases.

Companies must at the very least be able to consistently provide customers with satisfactory service. But companies should always aim to surpass customer expectations to provide stellar service at every customer touch point.

Implementing a proper Business Automation Solution can help you do that, improving your company’s customer retention and growing profit. It gives users insight into the customer, enabling companies to improve customer support and service, taking good care of their customer needs.

1. Know your customer – Build a customer database
Every company has a system for keeping track of their customers and important contacts, whether it is in an Excel document or (gasp!) on paper. However, you will find that all the best companies, the ones that make Top 10 lists and are featured in Forbes Magazine have invested in a good customer database system. They rake in the profits and consistently provide excellent customer service, and they do this by knowing their customer.

Maintaining a customer database is not always easy, especially for those who are used to doing things a certain way. Early adoption is best, to set a precedent for consistently using your customer database in order to achieve maximum results. A customer database needs to be consistently used and regularly updated in order to accurately give you the information you need to really drive profits.

To really get to the root of your customers’ needs, you need to know the following:

• Who they are
• Their preferences, likes and dislikes
• Where they hang out, who influences them
• How to reach them

How to get this information?

• Loyalty Program – The form that your customers fill when signing up for a loyalty program is a goldmine of information. It contains contact information, which tells you how to reach them, and other personal details that tell you who they are.
• Multi-level Marketing (MLM) database – MLM marketers are influencers at heart. Because of this, they know a lot about the market, and are a great source of information.
• Customer Support database – This tells you important things about what your customers buy from your company, and any issues they have with your product.
• Customer Survey, feedback etc. – Sometimes, the best way to find out something is simply to ask. Surveys and feedback forms can tell you what you’re doing right and wrong, and helps you identify your demographic. It can also be a source of qualified leads, as questions about financial state and interests can narrow them down.

2. Talk to your Customers – Track every interaction

In order to take full advantage of everything your customer database has to offer, you need to fully utilize it. This means entering as much information about your customer as possible, and using it to track every interaction.

This helps in knowing more about your customers, informing sales and marketing decisions, as well as any future interactions. This means knowing exactly how to proceed at any stage with a customer, because you already know what works.

The best Business Automation Solutions can track the following:

• Outgoing and Incoming emails
• Calls, Faxes and SMS
• Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Surveys, feedback

How to get this information?

• Make it a policy for employees to keep a record of every interaction, to ensure consistent use of your database.
• Use a central database, such as Second CRM, that can create reports that summarize surveys and other information.

Analyzing your Customers – Separating wheat from chaff

Collecting information about your customers is only the first step. You need to analyze this information, which means sifting through a lot of data to separate actionable data from unhelpful details. It might be time consuming and tedious, but the results you get from this is pure gold. When used correctly, it can help you grow your business and improve your customer relations in a way that will put your company up among the elite.

Review more examples of how we’ve helped specific industries drive their businesses by improving customer support and services and solve their business problems.

These are a few examples of the type of key customer data your information gathering efforts should net you:

• Who are your best customers – These are the customers worth the most to your company.
  • Highest revenue generating
  • Highest profit generating
• Who are your worst customers – This doesn’t just mean the customers who bring in the least profits. It refers to customers who are difficult to manage, who require the most service with the least returns.
• Not moving or inactive customers – These are customers who have made a purchase but have stagnated. They become key targets for marketing efforts to encourage repeat business.