Customers are the most valuable asset in any business. It doesn’t matter what products/services you provide, what you focus on or what industry you’re in, without them you won’t go far. Customer satisfaction is key and using CRMs to improve your customer service is one of the ways to make customers happy.
Most people want to do business with organizations that provide excellent customer service. So, how can you up your customer service game? A tried and tested way is by using CRM tools for customer service more effectively. However, CRM implementation can sometimes be hard as it comes with changes on all levels and involves all your employees.
And seeing how change is not always easy, it’s not a surprise that 55% – 75% of all CRM implementation processes fail in one way or another. Yet, great benefits come with surviving this difficult change. So if you have decided you want to use your CRM tools for customer service more efficiently, you should prepare yourself for the challenges that come with it and learn how to execute your plans accordingly.
Below you’re going to find five tips on how you can use your CRM system more effectively so you can improve customer service.
1. Sending Automated Emails
Automation is one of the most significant benefits of any CRM tool for customer service. You can streamline and establish early customer communication by sending out automated responses. Instantly confirming to your clients/customers that you’ve received their requests is another great advantage of having automated emails. However, it’s a lot more functional as well. A canned email response is a great way to include links to price lists, wikis, FAQ pages, request forms, and other relevant documents.
Creating a different canned response for every department’s email address (for example, HR, billing, IT, customer service) can help reduce the number of questions that need to be answered from both the customers and the employees. Most companies often spend a lot of time coming up with technical documents and FAQ guides that nobody uses. However, automated email responses can help direct customers back to already existing resources.
2. Creating Consistent Communication
Email templates can help ensure that all email communication with clients is both professional and consistent. When you’re looking at different CRM systems, make sure you have access to email templates and find out how customizable they are. Even modest CRM systems tend to give you a little breathing space when it comes to customization terms. The more sophisticated solutions out there, though, will allow you to come up with your own templates using drag-and-drop interfaces.
Emails templates can be helpful in direct email marketing and seasonal promotions because you can add relevant images. This is even more helpful for businesses that do not have a graphics team in-house. Imagine being able to send out campaigns to certain clients based on issues and orders and doing all this automatically. Sounds great, right? Furthermore, if you want to flag clients that you may want to contact now and then, a CRM system can assign these calls and place them on daily to-do lists making your work a lot easier.
3. Personalizing Customer Interactions
Arguably the most valuable feature modern-day CRM systems have is the ability to record in-depth customer information. Unfortunately, many companies spend money and time on CRM tools for customer service without subsequently training their customer service reps on how to use this information they have access to effectively. When an employee places a call or answers a client phone call for whom the CRM has information, you can ensure that they’re using that information to inform the conversation they’re having.
Personalizing calls with names is kind of the bare minimum. In call center outsourcing to the Philippines, understanding what type of business your customer is involved in, reviewing previous communications, and reviewing every business process is important in providing the proper resolution to customer concerns. A good CRM system should give you the ability to come up with custom fields so that interactions can be personalized.
4. Generating Quality Reports
Sound CRM systems are filled with different reports that typically summarize key performance indicators and valuable analytics. Some CRMs even give administrators the ability to compare employee-customer interactions, enabling management to know which employees get the most client complaints and which have the shortest and longest response times. The more sophisticated the CRM, the more options available for generating reports.
Some of the best reports to use are the ones that tell you who’s buying what and where. For instance, if you’re selling skincare products and find that both women and men buy in almost equal numbers, won’t that alter your advertising approach? If you make a habit of reviewing customer service reports, you can increase employee accountability as well as let the staff know that all emails and calls matter- for both the customer and the employee.
You can also identify patterns using these reports and come up with training modules to teach the staff that’ll be facing customers what doesn’t work and what does.
5. Creating Internal Usage Guidelines
The data stored inside CRM tools for customer service is what determines how good that particular system is. That’s why you must have common usage guidelines in place. For instance, how to register a sale or include new company information. For example, if Steve, Mark, and Janet record their sales in the system, but Mark fails to do so, then it’s harder for management to get correct reports and train the sales team accordingly.
If employees have no idea how to properly enter information into your CRM, then it makes it difficult to do a lot of things. It’ll be harder to create reports, send marketing emails, track sales pipelines, and generally provide effective and quick customer service.
Wrapping Up
Good implementation of CRM tools for customer service requires cooperation, commitment, and preparation across the whole organization. There many things you’ll need to prepare for, like rolling out consistent and clear plans, getting employees on board, allocating resources, etc. Hopefully, this article has given you a glimpse of what you should be doing with your CRM so that you can improve customer service.
