There are five main important questions that you should consider before choosing a customer service software for your online business. Let’s briefly walk through them.
The first questions to ask yourself when selecting your customer service solution for your online business is can your customers easily contact you whenever they have a question. This is very important because people that feel well attended to become great customers and on top of that they become great marketing tools promoting your business to the world by posting and tweeting praises online about your business. So make sure the customer service solution you choose allows you to be widely accessible to your customers while still guarding you against message overload (more about that later).
What is a software good for unless it makes your life easier. The questions to ask yourself is, is it efficient, Is it intelligent, does it block junk messages and other annoying messages like auto replies?
If the answer is no, then move on to the next software. The right customer service software should be something that you can’t live without, something that remembers things you can’t remember, assists you when you need help answering a question and most importantly the right customer support system should tell you who your customer is and what page they are on when they ask a question. Knowing this saves you time when answering questions and saving time defiantly makes your life easier.
One thing that you should stay away from is software that is way too technical. If you need a small team of technical geniuses to install it and spend weeks studying the manual to figure out then stay away from it. By the time you get a handle on the software it will most likely be out of date and your left at square one with a bundle of frustration. Remember the KISS methodology “Keep It Simple Stupid”. Look for a software that you can easily integrate yourself with your site.
Is it Secure?
An important factor to consider is if a software securely transmits messages to and from your customer. Email based software is typically riddled with security holes so if you are planning on passing sensitive information through your support system it is recommend to stay away from email.
Scalability is very import to business, you want to know that when your business explodes your software can keep up. Traditional customer service system like phone support, live chat and email/ ticket support software are not scalable. They always require you to increase the size of your customer service team to keep up with an increase in messages. As you know customer service jobs are one of the highest turnover positions within a company and soon you realize that poor scalability means poor profits. Which brings us to the next point.
A great customer service system is cost effective. It does not cost thousands of dollars and require technical consultants to configure. A great customer service system is affordable and flexible. Some customer service software charge per user, by bandwidth, or a fixed rate. Consider this though, most customer service “solutions” out there just provide the technology. But you as a business owner need to look at the big picture, how many employees will you need to hire and train to maintain the system, if the system malfunctions who is responsible to fix it and do you need to hire specialist to install it?
Here’s the great news. With recent advances in technology you don’t need to worry about half the things you use to. There’s a new type of software in town and it is accessible, easy, secure, scalable and cost effective. Software with what’s called “Smart Query Technology” is taking the business world by storm. It is the next generation in customer service. On the surface it looks and functions much like your standard live chat support software, but what makes it different is that it logs and indexes every message your business receives in a question and answer data center. Then it uses that data to 1) automatically answer your frequently asked questions 2) eliminate spam 3) eliminate annoying auto replies and 4) helps you answer unique questions faster. And the best part is… this technology is affordable nowadays. Even small businesses on the web that typically could not provide online customer service can now compete with huge companies that have entire customer service teams to answer their questions. Software with Smart Query Technology is an unfair advantage that levels the playing field between big business and small business. It is like having an 24/7 1st tier customer service team that always answers properly, never quits and never complains and that you only have to train once. With smart query technology your business can scale up as high as the clouds and beyond.
