Category Archives: Tools

CRM, Tools

Why Your Company Needs a CRM System: Benefits for Customer Success

1 Comment

After a long day at work, the last thing that you want to do is spend hours on the phone with your customers. This is where CRM systems can come in handy! But what exactly does CRM stand for? And why should every business have one on their team?

A customer relationship management system (CRM) can help a company manage all of its customers in relation to the different stages they’re at with your organization – whether it be lead generation, prospecting, retention, or upselling/cross-selling products based on previous purchases. A CRM will provide information about each person’s interaction history so that interactions are more personalized and timely responses are given accordingly.

With a CRM system, you’ll be able to manage the customer experience from start to finish and provide better service for them each time they contact you. It’s not just about customer service, though; these systems also allow businesses of all sizes access to valuable reporting and data insights that help strengthen business processes.

A CRM system can help you keep track of customer preferences, deal with any problems that may arise, and provide better service in general. You can use these systems to see how well employees are performing as well! It’s a win-win for everyone involved – your customers get exceptional customer experience and you also have more accurate reporting on the performance of your team.

CRM Systems and Data

A CRM system can also help you with data insights that go beyond customer service. You’ll be able to see how your employees are performing and if they’re meeting the goals for their position or not. If an employee needs more training, then it’ll show in the reports! It’s a great way to keep track of performance across all areas of the business.

The data is also a great way to measure how well your marketing efforts are working. If you see that customers have reduced the number of times they’ve contacted customer service, then this means that either your product has improved or you’re doing better at providing information on social media and through emails. However, when customers don’t contact you, it could also be viewed negatively, as it could mean they’re frustrated and no longer wish to speak to you.

There is also a lot of data that CRMs can provide with reports. For example, from a sales and marketing point of view, you can see how many customers have opened your emails and clicked on links or visited websites recommended in the email. You’ll be able to measure if these efforts are successful and it will give insight into what type of content should be included in future marketing campaigns. Conversely, from a support and operations point of view, you can track response rates and key KPIs like First Call Resolution (FCR) and more using a CRM.

A CRM system also helps to keep track of your employees. You’ll be able to measure how much time is spent on what tasks, which will ultimately help you make decisions about where resources need to go for increased efficiency and productivity. This data can also provide insight into who the best customer service reps are and if there’s a problem with any individual on your team. The CRM can help you understand what areas you need to focus on with your training and where they’re strong or weak.

Using a CRM to Manage Your Team

It’s not always easy for managers or supervisors to be able to track what employees are doing when they’re on the phone, emailing customers, or talking about how things went at an appointment. A CRM system can help by providing reports that show you exactly who did what and whether it was successful (or not). You’ll know if your team members need any additional training or coaching so you can address this as soon as possible before anything goes too far awry.

The CRM is typically the primary tool for customer service reps and managers. You’ll be able to see what they’re working on, how long it’s taking them to respond or close cases, if a client has complained about something in particular, etc. It can also help you with succession planning as well since you’ll have access to performance data over time.

A CRM system can provide insights into where training needs are needed so that employees know exactly what they should focus on when going through various iterations of tasks/modules during training sessions. However, a key area where a CRM shines is strategic planning.

You’ll be able to see trends where the company needs to invest more in certain aspects of their business and also find out about what customers are saying. This is a great tool for creating reports that show how effective your team has been so you can plan accordingly on improving different areas which may not have succeeded as well as others.

Using a CRM to Improve Retention

A CRM system helps with customer retention by providing insights into what it takes for them to get back in touch, how they found out about your company’s product or service, etc. You’ll know if there are any issues or concerns from past cases that need attention, since this will all be cataloged and stored for future reference. This is important in order to maintain a strong customer base and build upon previous successes.

Investing in a CRM

If you’re thinking about using a CRM system, then there are a few things you need to consider. The first is how much time do you have to invest in using the system? If you have a large customer service team, then you’ll need to set aside a lot of time to learn the system and get it up and running. You’ll also need to invest in training your employees on how to use the system and what they should be doing.

Next, you’ll need to decide if you’re going to use software or a cloud-based system. Software-based CRM systems are typically more expensive than cloud-based CRMs. That being said, you’ll also have the ability to personalize the software solution to a greater degree, since you’ll be able to add in features that are specific to your business.

If you’re in the business of selling products and services, then you’ll need a system that helps you manage your business operations – in this instance I’d recommend a solution like HubSpot. They offer functionality that’s a lot closer to more expensive SaaS solutions like SalesForce, but are simpler to use and configure, especially for a smaller team.

However, if you’re in the business of customer service, then you’ll need a system that helps you manage your customer relationships and improve customer service. In this instance, I’d point you in the direction of Freshdesk. While you could use HubSpot for this, Freshdesk is better and more focused.

A CRM is an essential tool for any company, no matter how big or small. It’s also instrumental in helping companies improve customer experience with better service and reporting tools to measure success.

CRM, Tools

SalesForce vs. HubSpot: A Side-by-Side Comparison (2020)

Leave a comment

In the year 2020, no matter what the size of your company or business the selection of the best client management software is not an easy task. I’ve just created this 6-Round head-on-head comparison for SalesForce vs. HubSpot which are two of the best options out there. Let’s see who takes the lead.

Many questions went through my mind while selecting the best CRM system. I asked how exactly I could improve marketing results with customer satisfaction. How can I opt for the best contact management software? In the end I managed to get the most of the best CRM system I selected for myself and I used the same selection criteria I’m using for this comparison.

The selection of the best client management software is no doubt an investment that guarantees the growth of your company and engages more clients. I’ve talked about Why Does the Right CRM Make a Difference in an earlier post and I’ve also talked about The 5 Best CRM Systems in 2020 so I’m not going to go into too much depth about CRMs in general here.

HubSpot vs SalesForce

There are as many differences between these two products as there are similarities.

HubSpot sells software specially designed for content management and search engine optimization under inbound marketing.

Salesforce is one of the cloud computing services that focus on customer relationship management (CRM). It connects the different customers and partners by using cloud technology. HubSpot enables small businesses to grow fastly with the lead generation whereas Salesforce possesses the attributes to streamline sales operations.

CRM is a model that automates and organizes marketing and sales for better customer service. CRM allows your team to maintain a relationship strategy by increasing shared intelligence and functionality. In short, I can say that companies manage their interactions with present and future customers under customer relationship management (CRM).

This detailed SalesForce vs. HubSpot comparison will help you out.  Remember, the comparison is based on the top six features you need to look for. It is not an easy task to compare two of the best client management software, but taking the features one by one can make things a lot easier. It will be a guide for your ideas to make a clear understanding of the right direction for solid reasons.

In this post comparing SalesForce vs. HubSpot we will be looking at the following key areas:

  1. Features
  2. Reporting and Analytics
  3. Marketing and Automation
  4. Cost
  5. Implementation and Support
  6. Scalability

ROUND 1. Features

Salesforce Features

  • It follows the lead process and shares an organized contact list with the team.
  • It assigns various tasks to the team and oversees the schedules.
  • It manages the analytics and sales for future forecasts and completes all contract requirements.

HubSpot Features

  • HubSpot learns about customer needs and creates targeted campaigns to enhance customer service.
  • It also examines new prospects for the support and products under the lead segmentation.
  • HubSpot boosts your revenue by targeting the sales and it is the core module of the system.
  • It also manages the contacts and sends email templates along with books the meetings.

Round 1 Winner?

If your target is the sales and content marketing field then try HubSpot as it better than SalesForce and easier to use.

ROUND 2. Reporting & Analytics

Salesforce Reporting & Analysis

  • Salesforce is always on time in terms of analytics and reporting as a small delay can cause the information to become outdated.
  • It provides the proper analytics dashboards and continuously receives and delivers the reports without any delay.
  • The output of the analytics dashboard is that users can access it and operate it easily with the best features of intuitive controls.

HubSpot Reporting & Analysis

  • The reporting and analytics of HubSpot evaluate the progress and marketing of the sale.
  • It comprised of reports, analytics tools, dashboards. HubSpot analytics tools do not provide a deeper idea of customer behavior and marketing trends.
  • It does not give deeper insight and metrics relating to the performance of the business by combing the CRM software.
  • It does not properly guide relating to the traffic tags or UTM parameters on your traffic data

Round 2 Winner?

HubSpot needs improvement in reporting and analytics. Thus, Salesforce is more beneficial in terms of Reporting and analytics.

ROUND 3. Marketing Automation Platform

Salesforce Automation

  • It is not easy to get accustomed to the software system and personal touch disappears with automation.
  • A high level of cost is included in the installation and for handling the system due to which it doesn’t increase productivity.
  • It is very difficult to every time update the system and deleting the irrelevant entries.
  • It also not easy to compete for the market advantage in terms of revenue and cost.

HubSpot Automation

  • Through HubSpot, you can attract the visitors, build the community, and convert leads as it is a marketing automation software.
  • It has no coding issues and most of the organizations already using it are familiar with it.
  • It enables content management systems to move in the right direction across multiple channels.
  • The team creates add-ons and peripherals at the right time for the system. HubSpot sends an email at the right time to your potential and valuable clients.

Round 3 Winner?

HubSpot offers better and simpler automation as compared to Salesforce with better tools and standards. As it is also easy to use at the user interface and anyone can access it easily even through the mobile app. The key point is that it is simple and easy to setup.

ROUND 4. Cost

Salesforce Cost

  • There is no free plan of Salesforce for the benefit and convenience of customers.
  • Salesforce tends to force and pressurize you to purchase preferably their yearly plans.
  • They use hidden tactics to attract customers and they start paying for Sales Cloud at $150/user/month for their Lightning Enterprise plan.

HubSpot Cost

The major feature of CRM is the fact that it is free in HubSpot and starter plans are as follows

  • Service hub: starts from $50 – $1,200 per month
  • HubSpot CMS: starts from $300 per month
  • Marketing hub: starts from $50 – $3,200 per month
  • Sales hub: starts from  $50 – $1,200 per month

Round 4 Winner?  

If your budget is low then you should go for the HubSpot as it also provides the Free (Forever Plan)

ROUND 5. Implementation & Support

Salesforce Implementation & Support

  • Salesforce is expensive and its setup and configuration are intricate. Only a plan of 14-day free trial offers by the Salesforce and there is no free CRM
  • It asks for the add-ons payment and cluttered interface makes tasks complex.
  • The Salesforce customer support is limited and most of the queries remain unanswered due to the weak support system.
  • The internet connection should be stable as it relies on it. So, for the persistency of business and CRM support connection must be secured.

HubSpot Implementation & Support

  • HubSpot provides the feature of free sign up and you can import all your contacts and can match the existing standards and properties. Hubspot easily integrates with Gmail and other mail clients.
  • HubSpot keeps the same software as your company grows and track the leads. It simplifies the administrative tasks by saving the contact information and emails following the CRM.
  • In HubSpot, CRMs can collect and oversee the data including the sales dashboards. Personal performance can also be evaluated and monitored.

Round 5 Winner?

HubSpot wins this round, not because SalesForce is not capable, but rather due to its ease of use. SalesForce can do almost anything you want, but to implement those solutions you need a dedicated team working on the solution. HubSpot by contrast can be quickly and easily configured with little to no knowledge and still be a useful solution.

ROUND 6. Scalability

Salesforce Scalability

  • Salesforce has the potential to design and scale the teams along with the thousands and millions of the users
  • Salesforce scalability increases with the increase in the needs of the customer.
  • It supports the merchandising, marketing, and artificial intelligence that maximizes the B2C and B2B user integration.

HotSpot Scalability

  • You can start with the free plans but as companies grow, they might need a more robust solution for their B2B and B2C requirements.
  • Sometimes HubSpot develops workflows as confusing and features are a little bit overwhelming.
  • Extra programming is required for integration in HubSpot and CSS knowledge is though required

Round 6 Winner?

Salesforce is better than the HubSpot as far as scalability is concerned, but what I observed that both needs the improvement

Verdict

It’s a tough competition as both, Salesforce and HubSpot are contributing more and more to the industry. Both have attracted millions of clients from all over the world. Both client management software have an extensive and reliable history. I’ve decided based on minor differences that HubSpot is better than Salesforce, especially for small and medium businesses. This does not mean that Salesforce isn’t a wise choice, it’s just there is a better and cheaper option out there.

CRM, Tools

The 5 Best CRM Systems in 2020

2 Comments

In an earlier post, I talked a bit about the creation and set up of a CRM for a friend working within the medical sector. That post and task got me thinking a lot about why I selected the CRM that I did. I realized that I spent a lot of time searching for the right solution and if a “best CRM systems” post in 2020 had been available to me, I might have saved myself some effort. So I thought I’d share some of that research and thinking with you here.

Over the course of my rather long career in CX, I’ve had the pleasure and pain of working with many different CRMs. Some of them are better than others as I’m sure you’re well aware. So without further ado, here’s my list of the 5 best CRM systems in 2020.

What is a CRM?

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system efficiently collects data about the company-customer interaction and this information comes from a variety of sources including integrated social media handles, official websites, support logs, and testimonials, and reviews from the customers. The central database of the CRM system keeps this information for the company to analyze data for optimal decision making while addressing customers’ concerns.

In this post we’re going to be looking at five different CRM systems and will try to provide an unbiased opinion on them.

SystemProsCons
HubSpotConvenient connectivity to sales, service, and marketing hubs
Integrated tools for tracking pipelines The efficient activity log of interactions from different sources
Free CRM services		Developers are working on introducing in-depth features as the platform is relatively new
Customization issues for only large businesses
ZohoNew business leads, client accounts, and client meetings
Easy lead conversion
Easy tracking of deadlines
Convenient access to read-only data to all team members		Occasional bugs when entering data
The upper limit on modules should be elevated  
AgileAdding contacts (automatically or manually) is easy via on-site form filling
Banners for important updates for users
Easy email reporting and access to CTR open rate		No open HTML section for email builder
There should be more help documents for optimal campaign
StreakFree Gmail add-on
No email clogging
Convenient customization		You have to manually add the email addresses
Searching keywords needs improvement (for box correspondence items)
SalesForceEnsures data integrity
Efficient automation
Simple User Interface
Easy customization
Easy to navigate mobile app		Data mapping and visualization needs improvement
A bit expensive on a shoestring budget

Our list of the top 5 Best CRM systems includes only those platforms that are suitable for most small to medium businesses. 

1. Best Overall: HubSpot (Optimal Scalability)

No matter how small your business is, hopefully, it’ll grow with the right strategy and that is why HubSpot is there for you. With HubSpot, you can start with only a couple of modules or the whole enchilada. The best part is that it’s all free! HubSpot lets you have a scalable CRM system for the long run. Some features are:

Interactive Visual Dashboard

HubSpot offers a highly interactive dashboard to let you see live updates of the sales funnel. It lets you track performance and schedule appointments within minutes.

Automatic Logs

HubSpot efficiently updates log of social media, call, and email interactions with the customer and you can easily sync it with Outlook and Gmail. You can easily tie Gmail accounts into your ticket feeds helping you import customer contact information in one click.

Timeline View

The follow up become fairly easy with the timeline view of HubSpot CRM. You can not only send personalized emails but you can also set schedules and access all actionable insights.

Marketing Hub

The HubSpot Marketing Hub allows you to create templates for email, optimize landing pages, and analyze SEO-based ROI.

Office 365 and G-Suite Compatibility

One of the biggest HubSpot features is its seamless compatibility with third-party platforms including Office 365 and G-Suite.

2. Best Cloud-Based CRM System: Zoho

Zoho is something I used when I was looking for a free version of Office but word processing and spreadsheets are definitely not the only things Zoho does. They call Zoho CRM the “Remote-Ready” CRM – from a company with an incredible portfolio from collaborative apps to accounting tools. If you are not comfortable with self-hosting you need to consider Zoho – the self-hosted CRM system.

Multichannel Online CRM

Zoho extracts customer date from live chat, social media, calls, emails, and other online sources.

SalesSignals

The Zoho SalesSignals include customer notifications and serve with real-time analytics. It lets you assign the team members individual targets while you can use the central dashboard to monitor the progress of each team member.

Sales Process Automation

You can not only build sales processes but can also automate these processes using Zoho CRM. Besides, for different customers, you can create distinct portals.

Develop and Integrate Custom Solutions

You can use the Zoho libraries and REST API to develop as well as integrate custom solutions.

Zoho Marketplace

The Zoho Marketplace offers scores and extensions you can add to your Zoho CRM dashboard to optimize its functionality.

3. Best for Automation – Agile

Agile takes the lead when it comes to extensive automation. The pricing of this CRM system is competitive – $8.99/month as we write – and specifically targets small businesses.

Extensive Database

Agile lets you store the details of approximately 10k contacts or companies.

2-Way Email Tracking

Agile supports tracking of 2-way integrated emails in addition to custom deal milestones, and lead scoring.

Builder Tools

To facilitate marketing teams, Agile provides builder tools. Marketers can use these tools for email templates, forms, and website landing pages.

Automate Tasks and Monitoring

You can monitor social media and automate tasks for marketing and the procedure is fairly convenient.

Plugin Optimization

Agile lets you use different plugins to optimize the functionality of the CRM system. You can respond to reports by using canned responses.

4. Best User-Friendly CRM: Streak

There is no need to worry if you aren’t comfortable with the modern-day complex CRM systems. Streak is the one you need to consider if you are looking for an easy-to-use CRM system in 2020. Streak is a CRM I’ve really enjoyed using as I’m a huge Gmail fan and user.

While I ended up selecting HubSpot for my personal project and Freshdesk for a recent corporate rollout – it was not due to Streaks’ capabilities, but simply the price.

Built on the Gmail App

You can transform the Gmail interface into the CRM system instantly because all you need is to install the Streak extension.

Easy Collaboration

You can easily share files to collaborate with the team members. Managing deals, task scheduling, and reminders, and supporting queues are easy with Google Calendar.

A Mixture of Efficient Features

Webhook API access, shared pipelines, mail tracking, and mail merge are the valuable features available with Streak CRM. Thanks to Gmail integration, Streak easily uses Google Web Apps. It is also compatible with school and personal Gmail accounts and environments such as Product Development and Sales.

5. Best Binge – SalesForce

If you can pay a bit higher to the benefit of your business in the long run then SalesForce CRM is definitely an option to consider. There is, after all, a good reason for it being the biggest CRM in the world.

Professional Editing

The editing features on SalesForce are exceptional, for instance, campaign management, lead scoring (rules-based), and automation of the B2B market. SalesForce offers customizable sales process, contact management, and account management.

Mobile App

The SalesForce mobile app lets you track customer interaction anywhere anytime. The dashboard is configurable and you can access reports with real-time insights.

Convenient Collaboration

You can establish convenient collaboration within the company and share recommendations and files easily. SalesForce is also compatible with third-party platforms including Lightning Sync and Google Apps.  

Conclusion

Hopefully, this list is a good start on your CRM journey. While it is possible to migrate from one CRM to another it is often not as easy as you might think (despite what their salespeople will tell you).

At my current company, we recently went through a 4-month nightmare migration which saw our support portal unavailable for days at a time. In that case, it was simply moving one SalesForce instance into another.

So if I can give you one piece of advice it is this.

Do your homework well. Try to get some trial accounts organized so that you can test different CRMs and make sure they integrate into the way you work, not the other way around! When picking the best CRM systems for your organization it’s important to ensure that it suits the way you work.

CRM

Can a Call Center Help in a Pandemic?

3 Comments

Firstly I hope that everyone is staying safe and sane during this very weird and bizarre time in the world! What is currently going on is something no-one expected & how people have generally responded is nothing short of miraculous. There are of course exceptions out there – I’m looking at you toilet paper hoarders – but otherwise, I’d say in most cases people are acting reasonably well. However, how people are behaving does not really explain how a call center comes into the equation does it? Well, stick with me.

Now one group that is going above and beyond during this crisis is probably the medical profession. I think regardless of whether we’re talking about doctors, nurses, admin staff or even cleaners in the hospitals, those individuals have literally been putting their lives on the line to help us. I’m lucky enough to know a doctor and in one small way, I believe that I was able to help also.

The Situation

You see, many people are frightened by what is going on. Normally the doctor would be the perfect person to speak to for advice and information. But when we’re talking about a disease that seems to be this contagious, people are staying away from doctors’ offices. This tends to only increase the level of fear and confusion.

Now my friend wanted to help address this gap. So he came up with a very innovative solution. With potential clients and patients being frightened of meeting a doctor in person, he thought going virtual would be a good solution. However, this was going to be a free service so the overall cost was definitely a factor. Knowing that I was involved in customer management and experience he reached out to me for some guidance and help. So we came up with a strategy.

We basically split it up into three different parts. A website, a call center and a CRM. Coming from a corporate background, this might have been overkill, but I thought we could do it all at a reasonable budget. Luckily I was wrong!

Website

Create and launch a website to inform people of what he was doing. Why he was doing it and how it could be of use to them. The website was not only used as promotion though. It was an entry point with an integrated form that could be filled in. This ensured the doctor had the required information they needed to help. We didn’t really get into SEO and advertisement as that was not the function. He was basically going to promote it through his own local channels and with the current panic, had no concern about traffic.

Call Center Phone Services

Potential patients and interested parties needed a way of getting in touch. Here’s where things got a bit interesting. I found a company called MightyCall that offered a cloud-based IVR solution. This was a US-based company, but one that had operations in Canada so it was ideal. The best part – they had a special offer for Health Care professionals and offered their service for FREE for three months as a response to Covid19.

This made things super easy in terms of decision making. I’m happy to say that the setup was exceptionally simple and the features were more than I could have asked for. I was able to quickly configure an ACD/IVR for my friend with defined operating hours and voicemail services. In this time of social distancing, having the system point to individual cell phone numbers was super simple and easy. In addition setting it up as round-robin ensured that no one, single call taker got overwhelmed.

For anyone looking for a simple solution, I cannot recommend MightyCall enough. It is a great solution for a call center and can be easily expanded as requirements change.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Now, this was something my friend didn’t really understand that well until I showed him. By integrating the form into a simple CRM – I used Hubspot because it offered a free option – I was able to get all of the information into a single location.

However, the CRM had other benefits. In addition to providing a single source of truth, it gave us the capability of assigning work based on skill and availability. Added to this was the fact that repeat calls/emails could now be tracked and a record maintained of previous interactions. It all started to make sense really quickly.

As I continued to play with Hubspot I became even more impressed with its ease of use and capabilities. As someone that uses SalesForce on a daily basis, I’m used to complex systems. Similarly, with the time I’d spent on Freshdesk over the years, I was familiar with simple ticketing systems (well, Freshdesk is simple to use but deceptively powerful).

Hubspot however, seemed to be a perfect, happy medium. It provided a fully functional CRM, but one that didn’t require hours, days and weeks of study. In fact, I probably had it up and running for the purposes we needed inside of an hour. If you’re looking for a great CRM at a great price (you can’t go wrong with free!), I’d really urge you to look at Hubspot.

Now we didn’t go the full-service desk route with integrated Chat and Chatbots. That’s potentially a step we’ll take in the future as this offering grows. However, it’s really nice to see how technology can help in a really measurable way. For me, it’s even more important as I can say that I potentially helped save lives. Like the MasterCard add, that’s something that is truly priceless.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library, Tools

How AI will Transform IT Service Management

Leave a comment

Remember ‘Jarvis’ from Iron Man or ‘Irona,’ the Robot Maid from Richie Rich? Well, if you do, then you already had a glimpse of the shrewd adroitness of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Artificial Intelligence or, what we call machine intelligence is all set to create an unprecedented phenomenon shortly. The rate of its progression has been swift, dramatic and very real, and as Elon Musk said: “It is capable of vastly more than anyone knows and the rate of improvement is exponential.” Artificial Intelligence in the realm of IT, has a vast potential in developing and transforming the IT Service Management (ITSM).

How ITSM works

ITSM, in itself, is a broad spectrum connecting the dots between IT services and the end-users. It encompasses all the activities performed by an organization to design, create, implement, deliver, and manage IT services provided to its customers. ITSM employs several frameworks to meet its ends, ITIL being the most popular and preferred. ITIL CSI has come to be mainly in use for improving business. To understand ITIL, let’s look at its definition by Wikipedia.

“ITIL an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of the business.

ITIL describes processes, procedures, tasks, and checklists which are not organization-specific nor technology-specific, but can be applied by an organization for establishing integration with the organization’s strategy, delivering value, and maintaining a minimum level of competency.”

See, easy to define but hard to understand. Not everyone is a Tony Stark after all. So, we have tried putting this into an explanation for the many Steve Rogers, who only understand ‘English.’

Let’s, for example, take a restaurant. If the food and ambiance provided by the restaurant are equivalent to IT services offered by a company and employees catering to the customers are similar to ITSM, ITIL is the approach adopted by the restaurant in situations provoking customer dissatisfaction. To learn more about IT trends click here

Reactive vs. Proactive

The very first book written on ITIL was the service desk, a modified version of the help desk that was created to resolve issues and support its end users. The take was on Incident Management. The initial idea of a help desk or service desk was responding to a call from a customer detailing out the issue, the mere goal being user back up and getting the program somehow running. Moreover, it called for a reactive response, which means that one had to wait until the issues showed up.

As certain issues started appearing over and over again, a proactive response was called for. A dynamic reaction contemplated identifying the problem area and fixing it even before it occurred. Prevention is better than cure after all!

Thus emerged ITIL Problem Management on the screen. With automation and advancements like pattern recognition in technology, problems could be traced and fixed way before they have planned. So, we had technology that could foresee what is coming and report it to the human analyst for preventing it. What we intend on discussing in this article is what if it never had to be reported? What if technology could make it vanish?

Predictive analytics

Have you ever wondered how Amazon, Google, or Facebook know you better than your closest friend? From recalling the person, you stalked last year to remembering your sizes. They come up with word suggestions and content recommendations even before you have typed or searched for the information. 

This Predictive Analytics, in the last few years, has been seen detonating under the name of ‘Big Data.’ Artificial Intelligence had already made its mark in the e-commerce and automobile sectors, much before IT embraced it. Can you imagine its scope in IT?

How AI will transform service management

Not long ago, did we even dream of automated cars, yet today we have them in reality. Artificial Intelligence escalated real quick optimizing itself and empowering others, along with its partners- Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Their efficiency is immeasurable. AI in ITSM will renovate the system in whole. Let’s look at some of the possible fields for its growth.

  • Incident management. A report by Pink Elephant states that 96% of the IT incidents are caused by changes made by IT, which means incidents are inevitable. That calls for rapid human action after every alteration. Lean defines incidents and incident management as ‘waste,’ dissipating time, energy, and resources. Wouldn’t it be great they were resolved automatically? Deploying AI in such locus can save IT employees from such routine tasks, not to mention its efficacy.
  • Problem management. The key to problem management is pattern recognition. Most of the AI systems, depend on sophisticated pattern learning to identify specific issues. With such advanced pattern recognition in ITSM, problems can be fixed by machines themselves way before they even surface.
  • Machine Learning. True Machine Learning, according to George Spalding, the Executive VP at Pink Elephant, is ‘still in its infancy.’ Even True Machine Learning neural network creators aren’t sure how it works, adds Spalding. ML bears the potential to optimize ITSM in unimaginable ways. The future of ITSM is brighter than the sun with its real advent.
  • Intelligent Chatbox for ITSM. “By 2020, the average person will have conversations with bots more frequently than their spouse”, according to Gartner. With Siri and Google Assistant in your hand, you already have a general idea about its capabilities. AI implementation in ITSM chatbots will have more natural automated support provided with a conversational user interface, while natural Language Processing (NLP) assists it to converse in several languages. Machine Learning will enable such bots to deliver real-time answers.
  • Increasing Productivity. A comparatively large number of companies, over the last few years, have adopted ITIL for enhancing their business. ITIL powered by AI will offer self-help as a smart option for its end-users, reducing Incident Management a.k.a. Ticketing, increasing customer satisfaction, accelerating business performance, and adding to the company’s productivity.

The advent of Artificial Intelligence is just about to cause global and phenomenal changes but has also put an end to limitations with the sprouting of vast and imminent possibilities. Not far from where we stand today, we can imagine a future shaped by machines.

Customer Experience, Tools

The Growing Usage of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Service

2 Comments

The rapid advancement of AI technology has led to benefits in numerous business sectors. We have previously talked about their growing popularity in contact centers, but an even more increasingly popular usage for AI is in customer service. It is no wonder that – within three years – 55% of retailers are planning to employ artificial intelligence to improve customer service, according to the 2018 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey.

To find out why, it is essential to examine how AI works in the field of customer service and the advantages it brings to the table.

What Artificial Intelligence Can Do

Scientists are striving to make consumer-to-producer (C2P) communication AI-based and indistinguishable to manual communication. This is far from perfect, but through using complex learning algorithms and studying consumer behavior, AI technology is advancing to an extent that it can replicate most manual interaction.

Firstly, AI aids in strategic decision-making by tracking trends in consumer behavior through the analysis of readily-available transaction and browsing data. The conduction of this analysis allows digital retailers to refine their product recommendations and personalize their purchase suggestion for each user.

This does not come off as a surprise as we have formerly discussed how using consumer data can significantly improve customer experience. Most, if not all, large-scale digital retailers employ this feature of AI to attract more demand. For instance, Amazon uses AI to detect a pattern in customers’ browsing and transaction history on the website to make purchase suggestions.

 Secondly, an ever-increasing number of digital service providers are using AI augmented messages. This usage may occasionally be difficult as customers often feel frustrated when they are dealing with a pure bot in live chat support. However, this technology has experienced rapid development within these few years to an extent that – as LivePerson claims- “Half of all customer service interactions are currently highly suitable for bots.”

LivePerson is one company which is currently working with IBM Watson to transform customer care through the usage of AI augmented messaging. The same augmentation can be adapted to customer care phone calls. As a matter of fact, IBM claims that “customers make more than 270 billion phone calls to customer support lines each year.” Such a high load cannot be adequately handled by manual customer support workers and AI helps relieve the pressure.

The advancement of voice recognition software and the development of faster self-learning AI will improve the sustainability of using technology to improve customer care. In addition, bots and humans can work hand-in-hand to provide the most sufficient service in customer support. This is possible in both: phone calls and live text support – as seen below.

Thirdly, AI comes in very handy in streamlining responses to email inquiries. This brings forth numerous advantages. Most importantly, using artificial intelligence can reduce the average handling time (AHT) as it is able to classify the inquiries into different categories so they can be deal with faster and easier. Based on that, the AI can either automatically respond to the inquiry if it classified as a FAQ or it can forward it for human assistance.

The reduced AHT lead to increased customer satisfaction while the automation of responses leads to reduced consumption of human resources. As such, the usage of AI technology in handling emails provides a win-win situation and leaves no side at loss.

The Long-term Benefits of AI

AI provides services which are useful for all types of business, so we can see their usage continuing to grow in the future. This trend is reinforced by the self-learning nature of AI. Self-learning, or deep learning, refers to the phenomena where machines can learn by experience and acquire skills without human involvement. This allows them to improve over time and adapt more effortlessly to the market and consumer behavior.

Every single day, 2.6 quintillion bytes of data are generated. That number seems incomprehensible to human beings, but AI actively use the data for their improvement through deep learning. This can be directly observed in AI which is fixated on improving customer experience. Most notably, Netflix uses deep-learning AI to analyze patterns in what users watch and personalize movie recommendations accordingly.

We have spoken earlier about the numerous benefits of Continual Service Improvement (CSI), and the deep-learning aspect of AI provides just that. The implementation of AI in the customer service sector of one’s business will allow it to continually improve in accordance with the ITIL model since the bots will be adopting more over time. Thus, the employment of AI has as many long-term advantages as it has short-term advantages, making it perfect for almost every business model.

The Growing Prevalence of AI

In light of all those benefits, one question arises: Will AI ever completely replace humans in the field of customer service? To date, the answer remains a mystery. However, most people do not think so. It is true that AI is able to outperform humans in numerous areas, but one must consider that they are dependent on the first-hand human experience at the end of the day.

Smart technology such as deep-learning AI LivePerson independently improve but it still lacks many of the qualities which humans uniquely possess, most remarkably human empathy. From the phrasing of sentences to the tone of voice, human empathy plays a crucial role when assisting customers as it paves the road for healthier communication and improved satisfaction. Bots may be able to deal with a situation adequately, but true customer comfort lies in being understood. Such a feeling cannot be replicated by AI, which reinforces the need for a human-bot synergy in customer assistance.

Nonetheless, scientists are working on enriching bots in this sector by adding different voices and styles of writing. This can be observed in the improvement of chatbots. Using deep-learning, chatbots are becoming more emotionally in tune to the extent that they are even able to help humans overcome fears.

It is only a matter of time until we see these features used in customer service, further increasing its popularity. Hence, it is never the wrong choice to look into ways of implementing AI technology to improve customer experience.

Tools

The Impact of Customer Experience and Omnichannel

1 Comment

Customer experience is the most vital aspect that needs to be positive in order to be successful in the market. When we discuss customer experience, the term Omni-channel has emerged to be one of the most prominent and irreplaceable buzzwords. However, people are confused in understanding the literal meaning of this terminology.

According to HubSpot’s explanation,

Omni-channel experience is a multi-channel approach to marketing, selling, and serving customers in a way that creates an integrated and cohesive customer experience no matter how or where a customer reaches out.”

The terms integrated and cohesive should be considered as the most critical part of the whole explanation. Another important aspect that should be kept under consideration is that the experience of every customer should be positive regardless of what medium the customer is choosing to develop a link with you.

You might be satisfied with the fact that “your customer is able to buy your product or is getting facilitated from your services through different channels and your marketing team is capable to carry out communication through multiple ways. This means that you have specialized the Omni-channel approach”. Well in such case you should reconsider.

OMNI-CHANNEL VERSUS MULTI-CHANNEL

The concepts of Omni and multi-channel are two different theories and approaches.

The practice of multi-channel is linked with reaching customers in multiple ways. It can be a direct person to person or indirect which involves web as a medium which allows them to reach their customer on various social media platforms or on their phone.

This approach is constructed to unite sales and marketing processes. Despite everything, your major focus should be keeping your customer facilitated through making yourself available on multiple mediums without worrying about the alignment.

However, Omnichannel considers the concept of multi-channel one step advanced. The digital and physical channels are combined to develop a single, cohesive and all-in-one brand. The differences between two distinctive channels become avoidable and they disappear. Examine it as a customer-centric as compare to the other format.

The customer might initiate a conversation with the brand representative through the facility of live chat on their website or any social media platform page. However, if the conversation proceeds to the advanced level, it automatically gets transferred to direct emails and telephonic conversations, maintaining the main purpose of the conversation between the customer and the representative.

Apart from that the feedbacks and the experiences of the customers are kept confidential and safe initially within the company and they are posted on different social media platforms. The representatives who are in contact with the people on different social media platforms are also aware if their customer is visiting a local store or another outlet. The customer record is kept accessible in the Omni-channel system.

The customer is not asked to repeat his statement again during the brand conversation.

This format can also be termed as an experiential marketing campaign. In such system, you are capable of building the whole conversation based on the experience itself.

The vital importance of Omni-Channel Experiences

It was predicted by Gartner in 2014 that by the year 2016, 89% of the organizations will expect to give a tough competition to each other on the basis of their customer experience. However, this prediction was made three years ago. CX is now emerging as a different factor.

When we talk about customer experience without understanding the concept of Omni and multi-channel theory, business leaders are preparing themselves for disappointments.

Considering the fact that Omnichannel must be considered as the main goal of a business entire digital strategy. Apart from everything modern digitalization and digital transformation are the most important element.

Developing a Brand Hub

Keeping an Omnichannel is not possible until the company brand has uniformity. Apart from text messages, voice calls and overall experiences must be considered as a part of a similar conversation.

81 percent of organizations as of now have an online help network in which clients can approach different clients for specialized assistance and investigating.

The online people group that offer versatile and work area encounters, shopping, interpersonal interaction, learning, and even diversion, for example, recreations are turning into the go-to mark goal. Think about that 77 percent of organizations trust that an online network fundamentally improves the brand presentation, mindfulness, and believability.

What Now?

Since you comprehend the distinction between Omni and multichannel encounters, and why they matter, it’s imperative to spread the message inside your association.

You essentially can’t bear to put off embracing these client driven methodologies. Figure out how to fuse them into your present procedures and systems, or else you’ll discover your association is unfit to contend.

Include Your Outsource Team as Well In-House Training

Usually, companies are outsourcing some of the departments. Such as; customer care and quality assurance department. It’s fine if it’s giving you result to make quality efficient customer care service.

You just to make sure that everyone is following the standards and meeting the KPIs.

Give the value to everyone’s hard work and give them rewards for outstanding performance. It doesn’t matter that they working in-house or not. It’s important to align your company departments on the same vision. It will allow you to work together and make improvement from bottom to top.

Project Management, Tools

Top 3 Project Management Software Options for the Small Business

1 Comment

Small business owners, freelancers, and entrepreneurs are probably one of the most overlooked group when it comes to marketing, software management and more. In fact, not many companies aim their customer service or work efficiency products and software towards them because the consensus is that this sector of the private industry cannot pay much. Neither do they have a lot of requirements like big businesses either so there’s no multi-million-dollar business contract to be signed.

Just because this sector cannot throw millions of dollars for software development does not mean that they should not enjoy the benefits of doing business in the twenty-first century. Below you will find a list of of the top software packages that I think you can use if you are in the SMB sector.

Wrike

First on our list is Wrike. This is because it’s a very robust project management software which helps you keep track of your projects from start to finish, allowing you to manage multiple projects at the same time. It will make multi-tasking much simpler for you and your team.

This software is designed with small teams in mind and is made up of very good features which will aid you in your journey to create the best project solutions. This software is built in a manner that will allow you to grow your business. It includes a very flexible feature on managing multiple teams, so you can assign more people to different projects. This is actually very helpful as it will help you divide work between your workers so that you can distribute the workload in a way which will benefit your business and cause your staff to hone their best skills.

The software also allows you to keep track of individual contribution to a project so that you can keep track of all your employees, which will make it easier for you to decide on things like bonuses and help you identify each staff’s strengths and weaknesses.

The only downside of this software is that you can only have up to five employees on the software and you will find that the user interface is not very interesting, making it more difficult for those who are not very tech-savvy to operate.

MeisterTask

Next up on our list is MeisterTask. This is a cloud-based project management software. Freelancers will find this more useful than small business owners because it helps to keep track of individual tasks and keeps you updated with your progress. It does not offer individual progress but it’s fine because you can keep track of how your team is performing.

In addition to that, the features of this software include giving the administrator full control of the direction and tasks of the project so if your staff is untrained or newly appointed, it might be useful to use this software to help them understand how to do work. The software also allows you and your team to communicate in real time via a feature called MindMeister.

MeisterTask also allows you to classify tasks according to your staff. This means that each staff on your team will only be seeing their part of the project and not the task assigned to others. This may come in handy if your team works in the systems security service or simply if the task requires discretion. Furthermore, MeisterTask will easily connect to third-party apps like Zendesk and Slack.

The downside of this software is the limited functions when it comes to team tasks and listing. As we mentioned earlier, it will be quite difficult for you to keep track of each individual and may be problematic if you’re trying to keep track of each individual’s performance.

Paymo

Last, but not the least, is Paymo. Like MeisterTask, Paymo is a cloud-based project management solution but, unlike MeisterTask, it specifically caters to small business owners. Of course, freelancers can also use this software, but it does not leave businesses out. This is why out of the three we’ve mentioned so far. We personally recommend Paymo because it’s the best one around.

Paymo offers not only just project management features but also allows the users to create, divide and assign projects to their teams. It also allows team members to engage in discussions related to the project(s) they’re working on and helps them stay updated with the progress of the project.

What makes Paymo stand out though, is its key feature: The Visual Kanban Board which allows all the users working on a project to see the progress of every task and track the estimated time it will take for their project to finish. Furthermore, you can customize time and work reports for things like auditing, billing and reporting purposes.

It also includes an accounting function which allows you to keep track of expenses, invoices and estimate profits. In fact, users can even manage and customize each project’s accounting and budgeting requirements. Unlike the two mentioned above, Paymo has a per-user-per-month subscription plan so you don’t have to pay for a whole year in advance and can add members each month as your business flourishes.

Conclusion

As you can see, each of these packages has a specific audience in mind and it’s not just focused on big businesses. Wrike is aimed mostly at small business owners and entrepreneurs while MeisterTask is better for freelancers than anyone else. However, as we mentioned, Paymo is our favourite software because it’s great for all three.

CRM, Customer Experience, Customer Management, Helpdesk, Tools

How Help Desk Software Increases Your Customer Support ROI

1 Comment

If you want to invest in customer support software such as Freshdesk, you may be wondering if the cost of the software will pay off. It can be tricky to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of your new tools.

One of the things you need to consider is if it will bring in revenue. Most help desks are cost centers, but if the software reduces the cost of doing business it is still a benefit. This is one of the most important questions that you must get answers before you start using the software. The software can be effective in measuring the impact of your actions on the business metrics. It is possible to make customer support into a revenue generator and not just a cost center.

Nowadays, things are changing, and more customer support teams are focusing on driving growth in businesses and proving their worth to the business. Using the right software can make your customer care more effective in generating revenue. Freshdesk, for example, can help you streamline your customer conversations, automate your repetitive work and collaborate with other teams to solve problems faster. Software for help desks should save money and bring money into the business in order to create a return on investment.

How to Measure Your Investment in Software

If you are at the stage of putting processes into place to support your business’ customer of if you want to fix some gaps in your system, the right help desk package will ensure that you get back to all clients in a timely manner.

This is an important baseline to meet. If you miss one email just once, you can cause your customers to stop doing business with you. 86% of customers quit doing business with companies because of poor customer service. 51% of customers quit doing business with a company for one poor customer experience. All the lost customers lead to lost revenue. Read on to understand different ways of investing in help desk software, save revenue in your business, and increase your customer service team’s ROI.

Move to a Streamlined Queue

Help desks were originally made around the idea of tickets. This can still be seen at the butcher. You take a ticket number and get services in the order that you came in. Nowadays; your businesses shouldn’t treat customers like tickets anymore.

It is important to adopt a nuanced approach to organizing questions from customers. You can become adept at managing messages from customers by using modern help desks. You can achieve this by prioritizing customers who seem to be more upset or customers who have a high opportunity of converting to paid customers. Businesses should invest in help desks that offer better management of queue. This will make customer support teams to more effective.

Self-service Should be Part of Your Customer Service

Businesses should have the ability to offer content in the form of FAQs and knowledge base articles to help customers be able to help themselves. Businesses should understand that self-service is another form of customer service. Self-service carries the highest ROI for different reasons.

Customers like being able to help themselves. 70% of customers like to see an option on your website where they can help themselves. If you don’t offer this service, your customers will be frustrated and will need to contact you. On the other hand, 73% of customers prefer researching for answers on their own instead of talking to a human over social media and live chat. 81% of customers also try to help themselves before contacting human support.

Investing in software that allows self-service keeps the customers happy. Customers will keep coming back when they find it easy and convenient to do business with you. Apart from customers helping themselves, self-service also benefit you as a business owner or manager. Self-service is a cost-effective way of helping customers to resolve issues versus other business help channels. When you get self-service right, it is a cost-effective way of making your customers happy.

Personalize Each Transaction

You can build your customer loyalty by investing in your customers. You can focus on building good relationships with your customers beyond transactions. We should form holistic relationships with customers instead of treating the problems of our customers as a series of events that don’t relate to each other.

You should, first of all, know who your customers are before you think beyond the transaction. If all your customer service team can see is the question at hand, they won’t have a nuanced and personalized conversation about their customers’ needs.

Your help desk can provide additional context with different conversations. For instance, they might show you the last four conversations the customer initiated. If you have integrated your help desk with your CRM, you can see when the renewal date is coming up. You will also see how many users they are paying for. When the context revolves around the history of the customers, you can tailor your approach. You can easily see what your customers need and offer it.

Provision of valuable data

The return of investment of customer support is not always tied to sales . Businesses can also use customer support for research on users. This includes knowing what customers think of your product and how they use the product. You can also know what your customers think of your competition. You need help desk reporting that will capture trends for you to get all the information you need from your conversations.

You can use important data from your customers to enhance the efficiency of service delivery and improve the quality of your products to suit your customers’ needs.

Investing in Helpdesk Software – Money Well spent

Calculating the customer experience return on investment is a critical requirement for frontline teams. It is important to know how our actions affect the business. When we connect our customer support goals to the business goals, we move from making our customers happy to the value we create.

A Help desk plays a crucial part in the journey of connecting customer interactions and making money. This can be through increasing the power of your support team, improving the loyalty of your customers or uncovering important data. With all these, a help desks can deliver a huge ROI.

CRM, Customer Experience, Tools

The Top 3 CRM Software Packages You Need to Consider if You Want to be Successful

1 Comment

For the success of a business, managing the customer relationship is essential. For any company, the client is seen as a potential resource. Therefore, it is essential to stand out from the competition while responding to your client in a timely and effective manner. As a company, we must not forget that the criteria for choosing a client are not always financial, even in times of crisis.

Whether it is to acquire a product or a service, the client also requires account recognition, responsiveness, and listening. With customer relationship management system, the company must be able to handle difficult customers and claims, to be responsive and communicative, to be satisfied by meeting their needs.

Here is where the role of CRM comes in! Now if you’re not in the support and operations industry, you might not be familiar with CRMs so perhaps we’ll start with an introduction first.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the set of tools and techniques for capturing, processing, analyzing information on customers and prospects, with the aim of creating loyalty by offering services.

With regard to a computer application, these include software packages that allow you to deal directly with the customer, whether in terms of sales, marketing or service.

Why Use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software?

Customer relationship management software (CRM) is considered to be a modern version of the “client file”. It is a tool that allows the updating and storage of prospects or contact lists as well as associated customers or target companies. It is possible to use an Excel file and a simple database to maintain your customer records, however, modern CRM software goes further. Here are some examples of its features:

Increase the Satisfaction of Your Customers

Be more efficient in business processes (by better managing your after-sales service, being more responsive and intervening at an opportune moment),

Have a closer relationship with the customer by developing a privileged relationship with them (by registering their preferences, birthday for example, etc.),

Develop competitiveness by providing more services and personalized advice.

Increase the Profitability of the Company

Increase sales through targeted actions on defined segments of your customers and prospects (Example: retain your customers through specific offers based on each customer population),

Optimize the profitability of commercial investments, marketing, and customer service thanks to a better calculation of the return on investment,

Have a clear vision of the commercial activity to optimize the processes (report on the sales, the follow-up of the appointments of the salesmen, the advancement of the objectives, etc.),

Save time by automating recurring tasks (automatic results tracking, automatic client recovery).

Improve the Internal Organization

Calendar shared between the collaborators (tasks to do, events),

Centralization and sharing of all customer data (all important customer information is sorted in the same place and easily accessible),

Structuring information and business processes. You have a structured customer file with relevant information that can be used for marketing purposes (Example: paper mailing, e-mailing, phoning, etc.),

Keep the history of your customer data.

Top CRM Solutions Available In the Market

Your relationships with your customers are sometimes complex, but the tools you use to manage them must remain simple. Created with the needs of customers in mind there are many CRM solution software available in the market. Some of them are mentioned below:

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is the only cloud-based support center software that offers you a feature-rich package that’s easy to use and affordable. Freshdesk is a full set of features including social networking capabilities with   Facebook and Twitter support. The list of integrations includes services like Capsule CRM, Google Contacts, Google Analytics, Freshbooks, Harvest, and JIRA.

All this combined with the exceptional support of Freshdesk gives you an unbeatable, reliable and incredibly affordable customer support experience.

1. Advantages:

  • Setting up Freshdesk is easy
  • The support team is available to help you
  • No hidden clauses, no hidden fees
  • Freshdesk is the only support center that allows you to chat with your team directly from the ticket thanks to Team Huddle
  • Customize your workflows to fit your needs

Disadvantages:

  • Limited data transfer
  • Premium Package is expensive

2. Zendesk

Zendesk is one of the best customer service software packages in the market. With its ticketing system, live chat, telephone support and intelligent knowledge base in one solution, providing effective customer service have never been easier.

Advantages:

  • Reduces the total number of views that agents must view
  • Allows you to see the total number of open tickets at a glance
  • Very easy to configure

Disadvantages:

  • Agents need special training to respond to tickets on a brand
  • Difficult interface

3. Salesforce

Salesforce is your sales order center that takes the form of a Customer Relationship Platform (CRM). The solutions work together to help you manage your sales, marketing, and customer service from one central location. It is intuitive, personalized and designed to support your growth.

With Salesforce CRM, treat each of your customers as if they were the only one. By managing your customers’ information and their interactions with your business on a single platform that is accessible anywhere, anytime, you can understand their needs, solve their problems, and identify areas for which they need help.

Advantages:

  • More than 150,000 companies are on the road to success with Salesforce
  • Ensure the satisfaction of all your customers
  • Manage your business from a mobile device

Disadvantages:

  • Salesforce is the most expensive option in our list! You will need to pay consultants to customize the CRM for you, the interface and the applications
  • As Salesforce does everything, it has many – too many – views and its reporting and dashboards are clunky.

Final Verdict – Freshdesk Wins!

Out of the three discussed CRM solutions; Freshdesk is my and useful option available. Freshdesk is SaaS-based customer support software used by more than 100,000 companies worldwide. It is a comprehensive helpdesk that provides excellent customer support thanks to its many features and integrations.

Freshdesk is positioned primarily as a hub that centralizes all customer requests whether they come from the ticketing platform, incoming phone calls, chats, emails or social networks. This hub allows you to be present at each place where your customers are and it also allows assigning the tickets automatically or manually to the agents who will take care of them.

Freshdesk’s Strengths against Salesforce and Zendesk

In view of the exceptional functional coverage of Freshdesk and its ergonomics, the creator offers an ultra-competitive rate.

The tool is also very well connected to social networks. Freshdesk allows you to master all incoming and outgoing channels without leaving the tool.

Finally, Freshdesk offers you the opportunity to purchase one or more phone numbers and manage calls from this online software.

Conclusion

The use of good customer relationship management technique within a company gives you the opportunity to boost the marketing strategy by targeting and segmenting your contacts. These efforts will enable the company to evolve by conducting targeted marketing campaigns, with the sole purpose of raising the awareness of customers according to fairly precise criteria.

Business Planning, Education and Training, Project Management, Tools

DIDs and SIP Trunking for Dummies

Leave a comment
With regard to real-time communications, there are two aspects that businesses focus on. They would like a system that not only saves them money in the long run but is more efficient than the system they already have in place. This way, they can seamlessly upgrade their system while at the very same time keep their more sophisticated users happy.
 
Earlier, a PBX telephone system and later PRI (Primary Rate Interface) Line, integrated with TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) interface. This allowed 25 to 30 individual voice lines for a single connection and was the most used business telco system in place. It was easy to use and manageable at the time.
 
Various employees connected to the same system could call one another using the employee specified extension or use a programmed digit – “7” for instance – if they wanted to get an outside line. The way these lines were connected to one another is how branches of a tree are connected to the trunk of that tree, hence the term “trunking”. Even though the system worked for decades, it was not cost-effective and it had problems. Thus, as soon as companies saw a way out, they took it and what we call SIP trunking emerged.

How Does SIP Trunking Work?

As mentioned, the PBX and later the PRI system worked well for a long time, but as soon as SIP trunks utilizing VoIP (Voice over IP) was introduced businesses realized that additional alternatives existed. SIP trunks, coupled with VoIP, were faster since it used a data connection to connect users to a network, often the same data connection that the business used to access the internet for other reasons also.
With the development of technology in use, SIP trunks with VoIP services could easily-manage voice signals through a data connection. This helped businesses realize significant cost savings as they were able to make a call and video connection as well as hosting cloud services and managing an e-commerce business all through the same network.

ITSP

SIP trunking used a carrier called the ITSP i.e. Telephony Service Provider that offered the VoIP Services. It relied on internet services and protocols as opposed to circuit-switch voice protocols in use for the purpose. This enabled businesses to merge their voice connections and data usage under a single data connection, allowing them to save serious amounts of money annually. Additionally, it also provides a private system with public access, serving the purpose fulfilled by the traditional circuit-switched voice i.e. transport and termination of SIP trunk calls.
 
 

SBC

The key purpose of using SIP trunking services is to provide a seamless transition between different VoIP gateways. Here, VoIP is the device handling the calls and video conferences, while SIP is the protocol that enables smooth handling of both calls and video conferences. The one element here that keeps this system running smoothly is the SBC i.e. the Session Border Control. It is the device that protects a private network by managing traffic and preventing spammers and blacklisted users, such as telemarketers from gaining access to the network. This keeps the system running smoothly.

What Role do DIDs Play In the Process?

DID or Direct Inward Dialing is a series of numbers that are primarily used to dial into your PBX i.e. Private Branch Exchange or networks. These numbers are allocated to the customer and then forwarded to your respective PBX through SIP trunking services. 
 
The PBX is distinguished on the basis of the last three or four numbers in the series. These digits are known as DNIS i.e. the Dialed Number Identification Services and are responsible for routing the information to the correct telephone extension directly.
Presently, DID services are provided on a PRI circuit. DID services also play a similar role with VoIP communications, using PSTN to reach users directly. It works as a gateway to route and translates calls between the two networks. It is also worth mentioning that with a DID in place, your business can get the much needed local presence which plays a significant role in increasing your profit margin. Not only does it enable number portability but it also provides you with local number availability lacking the toll-free 800 number. This can help you build a local presence without having to change your number.

Why Prefer SIP Trunking Services?

When all has been said and done, as a business owner, your primary concern is probably how the service could best benefit your organization. Thus, here are a few reasons to prefer SIP Trunk Services for your business.

SBC and Networked Policy Management

SBC is the one element of your SIP Trunk Services that keep all the spam at bay while securing your network and keeping it from overloading. Thus, it goes without saying that many SBC based solutions require hands-on policy management as well as configuration, especially if you require a big deployment.
 
This may cost a bit in the initial stages, but if you keep your needs in mind and choose wisely, it will definitely be money well spent for you and your business. Plus, they handle bulk traffic, which makes your entire system run efficiently.

Media Support and scalability

With trends in the world of communication changing on a daily basis, it is a given fact that business will continue to move into better, more efficient forms of media which can improve the pace of business. This includes video conferencing and high-definition audio among the few things.
Thus, equipping your business with state of the art SIP trunk services will ensure that it is always able to keep up with the changing megatrends of the telecom world, keeping your business a step ahead of the competition.
 
Additionally, most SIP Trunk Services are scalable. Meaning, as soon as you have more traffic that needs to be handled, you can easily just upgrade a few components and you are ready for that extra capacity.

Ironclad Security

Most highly ranked SBC and SIP trunking services have a network firewall in place which is backed up by a highly efficient intrusion prevention system. These not only keep spam at bay but also deter data based attacks, enabling it to work with various different systems.

Robust Session Management

As you increase the range of your PRI to SIP services, expanding to VoIP apps, one thing that you will notice immediately is the robust session management of the new system you have in place.

The Bottom Line

At this point, you have a general idea of what of the various aspects of real-time communication dealing with business SIP Trunking services. It is one of those efficient and always evolving systems that can be modified at any time to fit the needs of your expanding business. 
CRM, Freshdesk

Why Does the Right CRM Make a Difference

1 Comment
If you run a business that relies on customer experience to grow, then chances are that you have probably heard about CRMs multiple times in your life. If you haven’t and this is the first time you have heard of it, then you’re in luck! In this post, I’m going to talk all about what a CRM is, its importance as well as explore some of the most popular CRM solutions in the market, and also tell you which one of these you should definitely use to enhance customer experience.

What is a CRM?

For those who don’t know, CRM stands for customer relationship management. As its name suggests, it is one of the most (if not, the most) efficient method for maintaining a strong relationship with your customers. It helps create a strong, healthy, personal relationship with your clients and can even help form brand loyalty. 

This is why a CRM is very important for your business. A CRM allows you to monitor and analyze your interactions with your customers. This helps the team understand more clearly what customers are looking for.


Additionally, by using CRM, as a company, you’re able to understand what your clients want rather than what you think they want. This is actually a really good way of doing business as you’re looking to satisfying your clients completely- this will build customer loyalty in the long run, something which is very important in today’s very competitive market.


In order to understand what the client wants the CRM will use a number of ways to collect data regarding the customer’s preference. This may be in the form of a survey or a series of pop-up questions that come as the customer browses your website. By filling in what they’d like to see, or what they didn’t like, on your website, the CRM system collects this information and provides raw, accurate data for analysis. When the analysis is complete, you’ll be able to tell exactly what your customers want and then provide it to them. It’s a really simple concept with quite a lot of benefits. 

This is why it is absolutely essential that you have the right CRM solution for your company. In order to understand why you need the right CRM solution, you must understand the benefits that come with them.


The Benefit of the Right CRM System

Every company will have a different CRM system to meet its requirements. With the right CRM solution, your company can be quite successful. In particular, the benefits will include:

An Increase in Profit Potential

This is brought about by a strong, healthy relationship with your customers. If your customers are happy with your service, you’ll find that you don’t really need to do much marketing. You can stick with your current clients and then use the money set aside for marketing for other development prospects. 

You’ll be investing more in areas that need improvement instead, and you’ll know that clients will be there for you because, by meeting their needs, you will have developed a trusting relationship with them which will significantly reduce their chances of leaving your services for another’s.

An Increase in Productivity

A CRM solution is, for all intents and purposes, a computerized system. This makes the job easier for your team. Instead of allocating monitoring and analysis jobs to individuals, your team can use the CRM system to do the job. 

This increases workplace productivity as less time will be spent in gathering information since it is now automated, and more time will be spent on understanding your clientele’s needs and moving in the right direction to satisfy their needs.

Enhanced Customer Experience

With a CRM solution, engaging with customers in real time takes place a lot more quickly than it would without one. Additionally, the experience also becomes as personal as possible. This enhances the chance of converting a visitor to your website into a customer by a large margin. 

A CRM solution will provide links to the customer as well as showcase its social media presence to attract the customer. By doing this, and using other methods, a CRM is able to enhance the customer experience and bring in more clients to your company.


Examples of Some CRM Solutions

Of course, now that you know all about the benefits of the CRM solutions, let’s move on to inspect the best-known ones in the market.

Freshdesk

First up on our list is Freshdesk. It is a cloud-based CRM platform with the goal to allow companies, no matter how big or how small they are, to be able to provide superb customer service. It is a CRM solution which integrates traditional support systems like live chat, emails and telephone support with the new social systems like Twitter and Facebook.


Pros:
  • Has a built-in knowledge base
  • Has a self-service portal as well as multi-channel support that includes all major social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
  • Includes a community portal for management and sharing of ideas
  • It’s automatic so ticket routing is managed easily
  • Quick follow-up and initial response


Cons:

  • Reporting module has room for improvement
  • Premium packages (which provides excellent service) is on the costlier side.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a similar CRM solution that also supports multi-channel support and has a quality ticketing system. Furthermore, it also has a great reporting and analytics module and offers a self-service portal, much like Freshdesk.

Pros:

  • A flexible ticket management system
  • Multi-brand support system with linked accounts
  • Unlimited, free ‘light agents’
  • Public and private forums
  • CSS rebranding

Cons:

  • Does not include answers from its knowledge base app
  • Not enough guidelines provided in the forum for users when submitting a ticket.
  • Zendesk has a harder user interface.
  • Tickets’ workflow isn’t natural.

Salesforce

Lastly, we have Salesforce. Like the other two, it is also a cloud-based CRM solution which companies use to help manage their customer service. Salesforce was one of the first CRM solutions to come up on the internet. Truly, before this, companies had to create their own CRM solution. In a way, Salesforce paved the way for the other two CRM solutions on this list.

Pros:

  • It has an easy-to-navigate user interface
  • Multi-channel support and links to all major social media sites like Facebook.
  • Customizable dashboard so you can log in and check your company’s performance from a bird’s eye view.

Cons:

  • It is very complex and this can be problematic if you’re a small business using a CRM solution.
  • It is actually far more expensive than the other two CRM solutions mentioned on this list even though it has a range of different prices- the features offered are limited if you choose the cheaper options.

Ultimate Verdict: Freshdesk is the better choice!

As it might be a bit obvious for you, we personally believe that out of the three, Freshdesk is the best CRM solution. 

While Salesforce delivers good service as well, you’re more inclined to use Freshdesk because of its better pricing policy. This is because Freshdesk’s features make it worth the price you’re paying whereas Salesforce limits feature according to the pricing and that is enough to put a lot of people off. 

Similarly, Zendesk does not have the same number of features and user-friendly interface as Freshdesk does. As a result, Freshdesk is a CRM solution that caters to every type of business- be it big or small.

Conclusion

CRM systems are very important for your company. We hope that this article was able to help you understand why so many companies are turning towards them to help them establish a greater customer experience as well as decide which CRM solution you should use for your business.

Hiring, Launching a Remote Office, Opening a Remote Office, Planning, Remote Office, Service, Staff, Teams, Tools

Setting up and Launching a Remote Office

Leave a comment

In the early days of my career I was responsible for setting up an operation in a different city. It was a great opportunity for me and something that I really wanted to succeed in, however looking back on that person with the experience I now have. Well, lets just say that I was very lucky that I didn’t fall completely flat on my face!

The City

As a native Torontonian (that’s what people in Toronto, Canada call themselves for my International readers!), I’d visited Montreal a couple of times and had always enjoyed spending time there, so when my boss asked me to set up a new office in that city I thought it was a great idea! I mean, how hard could it be?

Well, it was 1998 or 1999, and while I was working for an Internet company, the many conveniences we’ve all come to expect and enjoy had yet to be invented or for that matter even thought of! Websites like Yelp! and Foursquare didn’t exist and while the multiple listing service (MLS) was there, it was really only useful for residential properties and in most cases you needed a realtor to provide the information.

I didn’t know how to promote my company – we were established in Toronto but no one outside of that city had heard of us. I didn’t know where to open the office – downtown would be great but the rents would be a lot higher than out of town, but how much higher? I didn’t know how to get new customers or even hire staff for that office.

The Marketing

Knowing what I didn’t know (which is I’ve found the first step!), I decided that I couldn’t do it all by myself. I’d need help. Local help. So I started interviewing marketing companies that could help me with two of the things on my list – promoting the company I worked for and finding new customers.

Fortunately I was able to find a small bouteque agency that was priced right and seemed to have all of the appropriate credentials. I didn’t interview three different firms though or get competitive quotes (mistake #1?), but they seemed to know their stuff!

Over the course of the next 2-3 months, we were communicating back and forth about radio spots, billboards, print advertising, product pricing and other minutae relevant to launching in a new location. Again they seemed to ask all of the right questions so I thought I was onto a winner.

The Hiring and Staffing 

While the marketing piece was going on, I started looking for office space and staff to work in the office. Based on the model we had in Toronto, we’d need a local manager and customer service/technical support staff that could both resolve issues and perform administrative and billing functions in French and English.
Monster.com had launched and was used quite extensively in Canada around that timeframe so the interviewing process began in earnest.  Fortunately it was very buyount job market so getting some good quality candidates was fairly straightforward. The local MGR however – well that one took a while and although I ended up putting someone in place he wasn’t my first choice (mistake #2).

Now vs. Then

Looking back, I think I did the best that I could with the tools I had available at the time. Money was tight so my budgets were definitely constrained. Everything was moving extremely quickly and change was happening at an ever increasing pace.
Comparing the piecemeal strategy of those years with the way I’ve setup two new locations over the previous 2 years is very much night and day. Part of that of course is my seniority now and my ability to talk to people and leaders that are higher up the food chain. People that can actually negotiate based on the potential upside that they can see. The other part of course is the confidence I’ve gained in doing this a couple of times now and knowing some of the potential pitfalls inherent in having remote staff and operations.

You see, while the Montreal operation was successful both of my mistakes ended up coming back to bite me. My manager choice – well, without local oversight, he turned out to be a bit of a dictator and was making the office environment toxic for the other staff. He had to go and I had to find someone else. My first mistake though – the marketing company – was probably the bigger one. While the comminucation and interaction had seemed positive and enthusiastic they didn’t actually end up producing anything of real worth. Sadly, they actually ended up going out of business themselves before we’d launched which set us back several months.

What could I have done?

Hindsight is always 20-20 isn’t it? With the tools and information available to us today, most of my requirements could have been dealt with, without even leaving my office. I would have been able to search and get reviews on other companies that had done the same things. I would have been able to pick and choose marketing companies and been able to interview them remotely only after shortlisting them based on reviews and feedback from clients. I would have been able to evaluate property prices and rental costs remotely and conducted interviews remotely. Would I have had to go to Montreal at all? Yes, probably, but for different reasons – more along the lines of ensuring things are moving smoothly vs. setting up.

Things have definitely changed in only a few short years – I’m fortuntate that the mistakes I made early in my career helped me to learn how not to do things and I’ve taken that knowledge and applied it. I wonder what mistakes await the next generation though? I’m sure they are going to be doozies!

Benchmark, CSI, ITIIL, Tools

CSI & Benchmarking

1 Comment

As an IT professional, it is incumbent upon you to continue developing your skills and knowledge as that is the only way to ensure that you are current with what is considered “best practice”.

After all – while you might think of your skills at work as being similar to Wolverine’s, you’ll realize that he didn’t get that way without continuous and ongoing training in the Danger Room to ensure that he was able to meet and surpass any situation!

Now you might wonder about why I’ve gone into this tangent about comic book hero’s and their struggles, but I assure it will all make sense.  In my own personal life I’m currently working on my ITIL Intermediate set of certifications so that I can eventually have an ITIL Expert designation.  

The one that I’m currently on which I’d like to share with you is called CSI (Continual Service Improvement) and while some people might consider that acronym to refer to Crime Scene Investigations and the host of shows that have followed that theme, in reality, it’s not about looking at a problem after it’s happened (the crime) but rather proactive planning and organizing to ensure that the problem never happens in the first place!

CSI is a very large and complicated subject – in all honesty, so far its the one I’ve had the most difficulty with in my ITIL Expert journey – and it has quite a few different elements.  

As an IT Professional, ITIL generally makes a lot of sense to me and in most cases, I’ve implemented or worked on quite a few areas that are covered in the ITIL guides.  

In fact without boasting, many times I find that the ITIL books seem to be quoting something I’ve said!



One part of ITIL that I’ve not really explored or covered in my career, however, is that of benchmarking.  

Simply put – 

Benchmarking is a comparison of a specific element or process in your organization with that of other external companies/parties that have similar processes and products. 


Comparing your support responsiveness for example (Average Speed of Answer) if you’re a manufacturing company versus a bank doesn’t really work.  You need to (as much as possible) compare apples-to-apples.

How to Benchmark – some ideas!

  1. Focus on your key business drivers. These are the processes that underpin the success of your firm and will vary from sector to sector and business to business. If you provide a service, customer care is likely to be a key business driver; if you are a high-volume manufacturer, production-line speed will be a key business driver.
  2. Decide who to benchmark against. Your local Business Link or trade association should be able to suggest benchmarking partners. Pick firms of a similar size and with similar objectives to help work out industry yardsticks, but also compare with firms outside your sector who excel in areas you want to measure – importing their approach could help you leapfrog competitors.
  3. Assess the efficiency of your processes. Look at the mechanics of your business – the production techniques, quality controls, stock management and so on. How effective are they? How well are you using your technology? Are other businesses benefiting from new ways of doing things?
  4. Analyze your allocation of resources. Are you putting resources into the same areas as your benchmarking partners? Do they have more employees or fewer? In which parts of the business? Have they invested more in IT and other equipment? Are they spending more on marketing?
  5. Calculate sales per employee. This will provide a straightforward measure of productivity and efficiency. If your sales are comparatively low, investigate the reasons; you might find the problem is not with your sales staff but your product, or that you are pitching to the wrong market.
  6. Measure your customer service standards. Customer service is a key battleground for businesses with similar products or services. Working out the proportion of sales accounted for by returning customers will give you a picture of your service levels, as will the number of complaints you receive and the time it takes to fulfill an order.
Now is benchmarking always a hallmark of success?  Stay tuned for a subsequent post discussing why you shouldn’t benchmark!
Tools

Using an IVR effectively

1 Comment

First – what is an IVR? 
Some people also call it an ACD but whatever you call it, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) system is used to get your customers to the right people to answer their questions or provide them with the right information.
 
When used effectively it can be great for your customers – they get their calls answered by knowledgeable people in a timely manner and for the companies its great too … by knowing who your customer is calling and about what you can ensure that you have the right people in place at the right time and you are able to pull the appropriate information from the system to ensure that this practice continues.
 
However, when an IVR is not working the right way, you are putting your customers in what is known as “IVR hell” – basically your clients are talking to the machine more than to your staff and are in a loop, just going around in circles getting madder and madder. This is one of the best ways to lose business!
 
How do you fix it you may ask? 
Well sometimes the issue or problem might actually be related to the technology itself but more often than not it’s the fact that you are offering too many options to the customer or when they actually do reach a representative that is supposed to be knowledgeable in the area that they are concerned about to hear the response that they are unable to help without additional information – which is more than frustrating!
 
You need to manage the caller’s expectations and to do this right; you need to ensure that your customers know what information is required BEFORE they speak to your representative – mention it at the start of your IVR and at every hold interval that you need to put in. Make sure that the IVR is actually working – try it yourself … REGULARLY … and try it from a customers point of view not with your inside knowledge of who to speak to … get people from other departments to call in if necessary. If you are able to integrate your IVR into your CRM solution do so – having all of the customers information available including past issues reported is extremely important and useful. Finally and perhaps most IMPORTANT … ensure that your staff on the other end of the line are able to solve the problem! Finally reaching a live body only to be told that they will need to call back does not help your customer’s mood.

forum posts, general, Planning, Tools

What is the hardest thing about running a call center?

Leave a comment


I was recently asked this question in one of the forums that I am active on and its actually a surprisingly difficult question to answer.  Here’s what I said to the Questionaire … if you have a similar question, take a read through the points below but pay special attention to the extra info section.


***********


What is the hardest thing about running a call center?


Well, I guess this answer varies depending on if you’re running a Customer Service Call Center or if you’re running a Help Desk/Support Call Center. However, in either case, probably your first challenge would be determining the appropriate KPI’s that need to be measured.

You need to know what services are important to your customers and ensure that your teams are in the right place with the right knowledge to provide those answers to your customers to minimize any service disruptions or service impacts.

Then you need to be hiring and sourcing the right candidates – local or external – to ensure that your customers are getting the information they need. Once you’ve found the bodies, you’re going to be looking at initial and ongoing training.

Appropriate teams and methodologies need to be in place to ensure that information flow and tools are available to your front line staff so that customers get the appropriate answer as quickly as possible – things like FAQs and Knowledgebases are great, but they need to be kept up to date. You must also ensure that you have a robust and effective system to track customer interactions.

Given you quite a bit of building and running a call center … your question though … the hardest thing … really depends on what step of the process you’re in. If just starting out, then getting the right people is probably going to be your biggest challenge – as a hint, hire for Customer Service skills and experience vs. Technical … its easy to train/teach technical skills but a lot harder to do the same for Customer Service.

If your service is already well established you probably want to look at your KPI’s and metrics as well as training and tools to ensure that your customers are getting the best answer possible. 


***********


Extra Information – 

As you can see, as much as I would have liked to, I was unable to give a complete answer to this question as it is a bit too vague.  I would have liked to have known the following for a starting point to get into more depth.
  • Service Provided
  • Size of Company/Team
  • Size of Customer Base
  • Customer Service Call Center or Technical Call Center
  • Volume of Contacts
  • Current Customer Satisfaction Level & KPI’s in place
  • Current Knowledgebase
  • Current Toolset
  • Insourced or Outsourced Customer Service
    Tools

    Mind Mapping

    Leave a comment

    What is Mind Mapping?  In its simplest form, it is a technique whereby you use a diagram to represent words and ideas.  Linked to this are other tasks or items that are related to the previous item in a hierarchical fashion.  By arranging the elements intuitively according to their relative importance it is easy to quickly branch out from the initial (main) point into lots of previously unexplored and unexpected avenues.  

    Letting your mind “wander” in this fashion is extremely useful from a brainstorming” point of view and the creation and use of mind maps have been shown to be useful in the study, problem-solving and decision-making processes.   Free downloadable Mind Mapping Software includes a program called FreeMind.  As the name implies this is a free application and one that is extremely user-friendly and intuitive.    

    FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind faster than that of MindManager because of one-click “fold / unfold” and “follow link” operations.

        If your company restricts access to downloadable applications, I would suggest you try a program called bubbl.us – available for use and access online, it is not as pretty as FreeMind, however, the fact that you can access it anywhere you can access the Internet is a plus in itself.  Currently, in beta, it is also a free program.  You can access it here.

    Customer Complaints, Service, Staff, Tools, Training

    Exceptional Customer Service

    1 Comment

    One important thing to remember from a Customer Service point of view is that the last person you speak to (or chat with or email) is also the most likely to buy your service or product in the future. This is obviously not a hard and fast rule, but more an estimation of the impact word of mouth plays with any business!

    A repeat customer does not happen by accident. It is something that is only developed (& nurtured) through hard graft and constant work. You need to build relationships and this is where Exceptional Customer Service comes into play.
    Communication is key. You have to remember that when a customer first signs up to your service – you should THANK THEM. They didn’t need to bring their service to you as I am sure that regardless of your industry you have competitors. A simple Thank You email will most times suffice. When the scope of the contract is sufficient, ramp it up to a personalized letter or perhaps even a bottle of wine at Christmas time! Now speaking to them when they first sign up is important – granted and mentioned … how about when they are having a problem???
    SPEAK EVEN MORE!!!
    The only communication a customer has is with you and the only insight they have into the status of their issue is what you are telling them. There have been many instances where I have been able to “Save” a customer simply by giving them updates. Please note – I have not solved the problem, that still existed, all I have done is told them what we were doing to get their issue resolved, gave them a timeframe to when I expected (hoped and prayed in some cases!) their issues would be resolved, and when I would next communicate with them. One key thing to remember here is if you give a customer a commitment – make sure that you stick to it… Think about it from your point of view and if you were the one experiencing this issue – wouldn’t you like to know what was going on? You probably have customers of your own that you need to inform also! This is something that always seems to be lacking at the lower levels of a CSR team but should be enforced and driven down. Remember, your staff doesn’t need to give out sensitive information to satisfy your customers. Most customers know that the people they are speaking to are not the ones who have caused the problem and they are just there to help solve it – for those ones that don’t, I will discuss handling IRATE customers in depth in later posts.
    Give your customer as many ways as possible to get in touch with you. Obviously, resource constraints come into play also as you don’t want to offer 24/7 telephone support if you have a staff of 1. But perhaps in addition to email, offer chat as an option. When you get to the size where you can offer telephone support – do it, even if its only on an outbound basis.
    The one thing that you must always remember and keep uppermost in your mind whenever you are dealing with a Customer from a Service/Support standpoint, is that the issue they are experiencing which has caused them to contact you – is affecting them and THEIR BUSINESS. The only reason they are doing business with you is so that you can provide a specific service to them. Once you fail in that regards you have not fulfilled your side of the bargain and there are many surveys that point to the fact that when someone has a bad Customer Service experience, they are likely to tell at least 10 other people about it. Think about it this way … not only could you potentially lose the business and money this one customer is paying you … you have now lost 10 others also! Word of mouth, unfortunately, is a lot more prevalent when spreading the bad news than it is about the good service you provide.
    Now, what do you do if you had an issue (I’m assuming you’ve kept the customer informed throughout the process so that they are not too annoyed with you!) and have only just restored the customer’s service? Well, the first time it happens, you probably don’t need to do anything, aside from a brief apology! Hopefully, you’ve got an SLA in place and you’ve not exceeded the terms set out inside them. However in some cases, you might want to consider upgrading a customer to a better package or service – even if only for a limited time – you’d be surprised how often that works with customers and although the cost to you is not incidental … think about what the cost could potentially be if you had to find another customer!
    Exceptional Customer Service matters because retaining existing customers are significantly easier than finding new ones. Customer Churn and Retention are two phrases you might hear bandied about quite a bit depending on the industry you are in and in some – Telecoms for example – there are huge teams and departments created to address just these issues. Their main and only goals are to keep the existing customers that they have with them instead of losing them to other competitors. In a very simple example think about it like this. If you are the industry leader and have 1 million customers and your nearest competitor has only ½ a million, you might think you were doing great. However if you are only growing at the rate of 10% per year (due to the negative press you’ve been receiving) and are churning at 25% per year to that competitor (who in the same timeframe is growing at 50% per year) … how long do you think you have at the top? Trust me it’s a lot shorter than you think!!
    You want your customers to experience Exceptional Customer Service and instead of that 50% growth going to your competition you want it to flow towards your company. This mantra must be believed, understood and LIVED by your Customer Service Representatives and Support Teams. They need to understand that the reason they are getting a paycheque is that those customers are paying for it!
    It might be trite and tired and a little bit old but the one phrase that is absolutely true is –

    The CUSTOMER is ALWAYS RIGHT!!!!
    Love it, believe it and spread it on!
    Erlang 'C', Scheduling

    Erlang ‘C’ & Scheduling for Call Centres – IV

    1 Comment

    The key things you need to remember if you’re using Excel or any staffing program is to ensure that your minimum coverage matches your expected call volumes and coverage levels based on the Erlang ‘C’ formula and tools mentioned earlier.  It ill behooves you to have too many resources at 2am when you’re only expecting 1 phone call and your SLA is 2hrs!

    1. It might pay dividends for you in this instance to use an outsourced party where your call is answered by the equivalent of an ‘order taker’ so that the customer at least is able to speak to someone and have an incident opened for them and then their issue is actually only addressed when your staff resume regular operations.  Remember the points I’ve already made about SLA, Tiered Customers and Escalation Matrix‘.  This actually brings up another point that’s worth discussing and that is ‘On Call Coverage’ which I will address in further posts.
    2. Scheduling Employees 2000 – a step up from the Excel route is this software package.  Published by Guia International, this application is fairly inexpensive and is extremely easy to use.  It allows you to input details of a single department or team and ensures that you have the appropriate coverage based on time of day.  It has nice printouts and although not fully “web-enabled” it is easy enough to ensure that your staff have an up to date copy of the schedule by publishing your schedule online. With the ability to track time and labor costs by the hour and week as your schedule.  And simple drag/drop scheduling that allows you to schedule in 15min increments accounting for breaks.  You are easily able to see at a glance when your staffing levels do not match up with your required coverage.  Now there are a host of other scheduling applications available online and I will try to review some other packages in the coming weeks/months but this one does come highly recommended by me!
    3. When to Work (W2W) – on the high-end side and with a host of features, W2W is a very robust application.  It is fully web-enabled which means that not only are your staff able to view and access it from anywhere, it simplifies your reporting and control also.  It is very customizable and not only has some very good automated staffing calculators based on Skill Based routing and also allows for staff schedules that are restrictive due to other requirements – ie. someone is not able to work evenings on mon/wed/fri but is available any other day.  You can input these restrictions into the system and then forget about them as the system will then NOT allow you to schedule them for the times they are unavailable.  Notifications are provided to staff whenever a change is made to their shift and you also have the capability of utilizing a company bulletin board – for example, announcing a special schedule due to the staff Christmas Party! – when publishing schedules that impact multiple departments and teams.  One of the best features and most useful of When2Work is the ability to have different schedules by diffferent teams/skills all contained inside the same application.  The ability to drag drop shifts and providing staff the flexibility of trading shifts with similarly skilled employees is also a great feature.  Although significantly more expensive, when you have reached a certain size, having this sort of a tool available to you will prove a definite boon!
    I hope that this has been useful information to you – if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me and I will do my best to answer you or at least point you in the right direction.
    Planning, Skill Based Routing, Tools

    Erlang ‘C’ & Scheduling for Call Centres – III

    1 Comment

    Skill-Based Routing

    Simpler to say than actually execute, SBR is a way of ensuring that your contact reaches the agent best suited to deal with and address their issue.  This assists in first call resolution but is also key when it comes to things like languages and specific technologies.  An easy example is ensuring that a French-speaking customer with a data problem reaches your agent in your call center in Montreal (or France for that matter) vs your agent in an English speaking call center.  

    Skill-based routing allows for significant granularity and focus, but it is only as good as the information you know or are supplied with by the customer.  This can either be from an existing customer database or from your initial ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) system where the customer is responsible for determining what problem they have.

    Scheduling Tools

    There is a multitude of free & paid for scheduling tools available and obviously, you get what you pay for with the ones requiring a monthly/yearly fee offering significantly more tools and services than the free ones.  However, depending on the size of your center and your budget, some of these free tools (reviewed) are extremely effective and useful.  I have provided links to some of the better subscription-based tools also, but have not included a review of them as their websites are fairly descriptive in and of itself.

    • Excel (or other) Spreadsheet – hopefully your budget includes at least one copy of Microsoft Excel, but if not, you can still get access to free spreadsheet applications either through Open Office or even Google Docs or Zoho Docs. Depending on your chosen product/solution, the formula’s and look of the product will be slightly different, however, for simple call/support centers any of these will suffice. Your main measurement would be determined by your total required staffing level. You can also build a schedule based on specified Tiers of customers or skillsets. Don’t get too complicated with Excel as it would pay you to get a specialized tool to do this right. A sample Tiered schedule is provided below.

    The key things to note here are that, there are less Tier2 staff than Tier1 (think about it as a Pyramid shape … the higher up the Pyramid you get, the more skilled your staff are). And also, the GAP … this is where you can expect to receive more calls/emails/contacts than your Staff is able to handle. Expect complaints, bad service and abandon calls as well as … you should expect to start losing Customers! … unless you can get this to be ‘0’
    One other thing to note is that this is a daily schedule … see what I mean about specialized tools?  Don’t worry I’ll be getting to them soon I hope!

    Erlang 'C', Escalation, Planning, Scheduling

    Erlang ‘C’ & Scheduling for Call Centres – II

    Leave a comment

    Escalation Matrix –

    OK, great, we’ve got an SLA, we have the appropriate staff in place to take the call when they make it … now, what happens if they are not able to fix the problem?  Easy!  You get the problem to the right people that can fix it in a timely manner.  This is where the escalation matrix comes into play.

    Assuming that its 2am and you’ve got a Tier 1 customer (remember, your definition of Customers was made before this) that has no telephone service (hard down etc…).  This is impacting them and potentially costing them $$$/hr.  Your engineer has taken the call and started working on the issue.

    Now as this company is paying you lots of money for the service (that IS why they are Tier 1 after all), you need to ensure that you’ve got ALL the right people available and working on their problem as quickly as possible.  A sample 2 Stage Internal Escalation Matrix that I’ve used with great success in the past is presented below.    You will need to have a separate matrix that is provided to Customers which I shall provide you with in a later post.

    Provided below is a table detailing the different groups & times that they need to be notified at based on the problem & its impact.

    Please note – its fairly easy to remove the additional Escalation Group step mentioned below, if your escalation is to only one group! This type of structure only applies to larger companies where the problem and responsible party could be in a variety of different locations. The groups mentioned below also vary based on the type of organization – for example, Ops/NOC is applicable to a telco environment but not necessarily a manufacturing one.

    ESCALATION GROUPS


    Scheduling, Tools

    Erlang ‘C’ & Scheduling for Call Centres

    2 Comments

    Erlang ‘C’ is a Nobel winning formula used in the Call Centre and Operations industries to determine the correct and appropriate level of staffing based on key call metrics.  The scary looking formula for this is below and the even scarier explanation from Wikipedia is here.

    From a Call Centre and Staffing Point of view, the primary elements considered are as follows:

    • Average Talk Time
    • Calls/per specified period (15min is a good benchmark)
    • Specified Service Metrics or SLA (ie. 80/20 <- 80% of calls answered in 20s or less etc…) … correspondingly, you want to consider your abandon %’age here also.  Are you willing to accept that some of your customers will hang up?  If so, how many & consider what impact that will have on your business in the long run!

    With this information in hand and using the formula, you are able to determine how many resources you need in a given period to meet your customer demand.  Using some free online tools (links provided below), you are also able to determine your required resources based on a specified timetable and rotation.  For example, if the formula states you need 8 resources between 8am-9am and you are running a 24/7 call center the actual number of staff you need to employ is ‘X’.

    Some Good Free Erlang ‘C’ Calculators –

    Holiday/Vacation/Sickness –

    With this in mind, you still need to plan for excess capacity relevant to staff absenteeism either planned or unplanned.  So although the formula only called for 8 staff & your overage based on a 24/7 call centre is ‘X’ … you should actually plan to have ‘Y’ resources available to cover these gaps!!