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Phaseware Blog

Getting Through the Financial Meltdown

With all of the media screaming "Gloom n Doom" 24/7 for the past week, it can make it difficult to get on with business. But you must.

My advice? Turn off the TV/radio/World Wide Web/Newsgroups or anything else spouting depressing financial news. And take care of business. Just keep slogging ("just keep swimming, just keep swimming....") and sooner or later we'll all come out the other end of this. We always do. It may not be the way you planned it, it may not turn out the way you wanted or dreamed, but these things are not forever (it just seems like it at the time).

Meanwhile....
Hold tight to your current customers.

Give the absolute best customer service you can muster.

Know that you will still find new customers.

This too shall pass. And we will probably go through it again in the future; we humans don't seem to learn from history very well. Just keep swimming.

CRM Buzz Interview with Hoyt Mann

I was honored with an interview by the Business Software Advisor regarding self service on the web and assisted knowledge base searching. The interview can be found here.

It is my opinion that the future of customer service and support lies in using multiple channels for customer service and yet give the customer as much assistance with their problem as possible. The assisted knowledge base search helps customers find the answers they need without sifting through a large number of articles. It guides them to pertinant articles within the knowledge base itself, in the FAQ, the forums, the notices, and other places using a single universal search and keywords garnered from the customer's issue. This negates frustrations the customer may have with attempting to use the knowledge base for help.

One of our other new features is subscription to forums so customers can keep up on topics they are interested in rather than visit the Self Service Center to determine if anything new has been posted that is relevant to them. It all comes down to creating a pleasant customer experience and being favored by their loyalty in return.

PHASEWARE, INC. RELEASES TRACKER and SELF SERVICE CENTER v. 3.1

McKinney, TX – PhaseWare Tracker and Self Service Center v. 3.1.0.0, the latest upgrade of the most comprehensive Customer Service and Support solution in the industry, is now available.

PhaseWare Tracker and Self Service Center 3.1 offers even more enterprise-level features made affordable for small to medium businesses.

For incident deflection, both the Self Service Center and Automated E-mail response now have the capability to offer suggested solutions related to a customer’s issue. Self Service Center uses the Assisted Knowledge Base Search: for each potential incident entered by a customer, the Self Service Center offers links to possible solutions prior to incident escalation. Successful solutions are tagged and the incident entry is not completed. For each incident submission initiated through e-mail the Event Engine feature automatically responds with potential solutions to the issue. Successful solutions are tagged and the incident is closed. Both features are optional.

Customers stay on top of the latest information of interest using the subscription option for the Self Service Center. Customers are notified via e-mail or RSS feed of new content in any of the Self Service Center applications related to their interests.

Increased operational efficiencies are realized with e-mail and incident journal enhancements, and new customer level file storage. Now e-mail and incident journals are drag and drop enabled for easy file attachment. E-mail recipient selection is quicker than before. Customer level records allow attachment of files and documents such as contracts, service agreements, and other customer specific documentation. These files are optionally available to the customer through the Self Service Center on a per-folder and file basis. Outside contacts can be authorized to attach documents as well.

There are many other productivity enhancements available with this update. To see more visit PhaseWare, Inc..

PhaseWare, Inc. is a North Texas-based customer support software provider offering solutions for a diverse group of clients world-wide. PhaseWare Tracker, Event Engine and Self Service Center solutions provide customer support process automation, tracking, escalation, and resolution of trouble tickets from origin to close, along with a wide variety of self service options.

PhaseWare, Inc. was founded by CEO Randall Nelson and Company President Hoyt Mann.

www.phaseware.com
1-866-616-6629

4 Ways to Add Strategic Value to Your Customer Service Desk

Smart companies have realized their customer support desks have strategic value. The Service Desk can:

1. Operate as a profit center rather than a cost center
   
2. Handle business growth without adding headcount.
   
3. Improve communication internally throughout the organization and externally to customers.
   
4. Leverage existing IT investments while implementing next generation technology.
   

How?

Since the service desk already has contact with the customer, there is the chance to up-sell or cross-sell.

Through automation and self service, more business can be handled by the same number of staff. Moreover, incidents can be tracked from end-to-end.

Through knowledge management, the same information is available to everyone from the service desk to the self service center. Everyone from customers to internal staff will receive the same answer to a particular question.

Existing IT solutions can be integrated with a next generation customer service solution that can scale with the company's growth.

5 Ways to Automate Customer Support Processes

"The service desk is the centerpiece of a successful IT Service Management operation."

So states ITIL - the IT Infrastructure Library. One of the marks of success is efficiently resolving problems. But when the number of problems becomes large enough, some processes are missed, leaving some customers thinking that the service desk isn't serving them very well at all. Tickets are not escalated properly. Resolutions are slow in coming. Calls are not closed in a timely manner. Incidents are poorly recorded and tracked.

Many of the processes that bog down when handled manually can be automated so the system takes care of the busy work, leaving agents to handle calls. Here are 5 ways automation can help your IT Management operation, or any other help desk operation, succeed.

1. Automatically escalate tickets to higher support levels along with an automatic notification of a new issue.

2. Automatically create tickets from e-mails rather than manually transferring information from the e-mail system to the incident management system.

3. Automatically update customers about their open issues. Always communicate in a timely manner with the customer, even if the news is not good or is only "still waiting".

4. Automatically receive alerts about increased activity. Promptly discover backed up phone queues, increased activity on the part of one customer, or if an SLA is about to be missed.

5. Automatically receive or send reports via e-mail on a predetermined basis.

Each of these steps is one (or more) fewer tasks for the agents to cope with. This leaves them to do the important work: helping customers.

To learn more about help desk automation, go to www.phaseware.com for information on the PhaseWare Event Engine, which works with Tracker to take customer service to a whole new level.

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Why I Would Call It Quits Too

DestinationCRM ran an interesting article entitled Calling It Quits about the tremendous increase in contact center agents leaving their positions or having high absenteeism rates. One of the ways given to combat this trend is to empower the agent to actually be able to answer the customer's question rather than simply put them on hold for someone else.

As it happens, I had to call my internet service provider today to report a service outage. The contact center agent I reached obviously had been given a script to follow for this scenario and she was going to follow it no matter what I had to say. She insisted on going through a lot of troubleshooting steps that I had already performed before calling her but she apparently didn't believe I was capable of doing it right. I repeatedly told her it was not an issue with my equipment and that everything was fine a short time before. But because there was no notice on her end about an outage, we were by golly going to troubleshoot my system. Sad to say, I got disgusted and hung up on her. A few minutes later I called back only to hear an automated message about a service outage in my area. Imagine that!

Was this contact center agent empowered? No. Putting a script into an agent's hand to deal with specific scenarios does not empower anyone to do good customer service. Good customer service would have meant listening to me instead of treating me like I was unintelligent. Good customer service would have meant doing a simple test to see if my modem could be pinged. Good customer service would have meant recognizing that I was becoming upset and abandoning the script in favor of a more helpful approach. This agent did none of those things and probably has never been trained how to be an independent thinker; instead she is required to follow a script no matter what.

I don't know how she felt about being hung up on or if she understood what had happened. But if I were her, I would be feeling frustrated at being tied to a single mode of operation without the training to deviate when it was warranted. I would probably become just another statistic in articles like the one above. I have no doubt she will be one soon.

It's Customer Service, Not Rocket Science

I have done a lot of research lately about the customer service experience. The prevailing idea that it all boils down to is:

Providing great customer service is nothing more than treating others as you wish to be treated.

That seems simple enough. No great technical breakthrough, just plain old good manners and the desire to help. But how do you know if this is happening at your company?

In a word (well, two): Mystery Shopper.

That's right. Just like people are hired to sneak around retail stores spying on everything, you need to be a Mystery Shopper at your company.

• Try using the company website. Is it easy to use? What could be improved?
  
  
• Try to purchase something through the same channels available to your customers. Good, bad, or indifferent?
  
  
• Call in to your own customer support line and see how the agent you get treats you. Not only that, go sit in customer service and listen into phone calls for a few hours. Check out the emails customer service receives. Do anything you can think of to find out first hand how it feels to be a customer for your own company.
  

You can't fix what you don't know is broken. Define the problems. Find the solutions. Do this all over again in 3-6 months to see if anything is different.

Here is a solution to get you started:
www.phaseware.com

Four Ways to Ensure a Calm Customer Experience

The single most important factor in the customer experience is the way the customer feels during and after contact with customer service. This means that your agents must be well versed in relating to the customer as well as being experts in the product and how to maintain it. Especially for phone support, it takes a special blend of technical knowledge, communication skills, and patience to excel as a customer service agent. While other channels of communication have their own challenges, none of them are as immediate and as personal as speaking to a customer on the phone.

During a phone contact, everything but facial expressions will become the vehicle in forming an impression of your company. The tone of voice, the choice of words, the warmth or lack of it, all of this plays into the brief relationship the customer will have with your company through your service center. Here are four ways your agents can help smooth the contact:

#1 Quickly determine the mood of the customer in order to relate in a way that will not inflame what may already be a stressful encounter. Be sympathetic. Do not try to be funny.

#2 Be an expert in the customer's problem. At no time should customers feel that the company is not completely competent. If you truly do not know the answer, then by all means, tell the customer that a transfer is being made, but do not make the her repeat herself to even one other contact within the company. Learn to live log while speaking with the customer or otherwise quickly enter the information into the system for review by the next contact before transferring the customer.

#3 Translate the information the customer needs into language he can understand. Do your best to match your responses to the knowledge level of the customer. It can be tricky. Technically astute customers don't want things "dumbed down" but less technically inclined customers don't want to feel stupid because they don't understand at the higher level. It's a fine line that takes practice to walk.

#4 No matter how the customer sounds, respond in a professional manner. Do not allow your voice to show agitation during the contact. Breathe deeply, count silently to 10, or physically respond but make certain your voice remains calm. Certainly you do not have to allow abuse but a diplomatic end to the contact is preferable to the alternative.

These are all things that require practice and training. Make sure your agents have everything they need to make customer contacts successful. Make customers confident that your company knows what it is doing.

Visit www.phaseware.com for information on customer support solutions.

Research by the Aberdeen Group found that 75% of 150 companies surveyed have added a self-service option into their contact centers.This was last year. At the time a third were considering adding or expanding the option within 2 years.

As you can see, self service is the must have solution in customer service and support circles. But it won't do any good if it isn't done right. Well done self service retains customers and increases loyalty. Poorly done self service will lose a customer just as quickly as shoddy telephone support. And it has been said that when a customer is happy he will tell a few people about the experience. If a customer is made unhappy, he tells everyone he possibly can. And these days that could be a vast number if the unhappiness makes it into cyberspace. Not only is it disseminated more quickly, it will live forever.

It behooves you to offer well done self service.

Make the portal easy to navigate. Make the information easily searchable and accessible. Give the customer the tools needed to do the job or resolve the problem. Give the customer convenience and try to give the customer what he doesn't even know he needs. Build a community of customers.

Have a useful self service center and the world will beat a path to your door.

For an example of a self service center go to the PhaseWare Self Service demo.

To find out more about PhaseWare Customer Service and Support products go to www.phaseware.com

Self Service can be the Best Service

Your customers are becoming more web oriented every day. For some of them it is their preferred method of communication. They don't want to have to call and talk to someone just to get a new version of a user's manual. They are fully capable of downloading the latest software version and installing it themselves, thank you very much. They want to contact others with the same product and share experiences. They want to be able to search for answers themselves.

An investment in a self service center solution will pay for itself many times over by deflecting support calls for routine or minor requests. When a support call can cost so much and a web portal could can perform many of the same functions, wouldn't it be prudent to offer this channel? It is a win-win. Your save money. Your customer saves time. Done well, a self support solution can help retain customers and bring new ones on board. You can grow your business without growing the support budget.

Link to an example of a self service center solution.

PhaseWare is part of the answer to Vince Kellen's "Fourth Age"

Vince Kellen, of the Cutter Consortium, blogged June 7 about a "Fourth Age" in the evolution of organizational structure. The first three evolutions encompassed the changes from owners controlling their organizations themselves to the military type top-down organizational structure to today's structure that is becoming flatter and is less manager-employee oriented; instead it is powered by individual contributors known as "information-based knowledge specialists".

The Third Age organization, as illustrated by Mr. Kellen, is cross-functional in nature. Presumably knowledge sharing comes along with it. Unfortunately it seems we haven't quite embraced this type of structure due to several issues, including the need to share information over distances. But we are getting there and as we become more decentralized, more highly connected through currently available technology we can start to move to that Fourth Age.

One aspect of that fourth age is beginning to appear. A rapidly growing component to many customer support and help desk solutions is the self service center and the web portal for mobile employees. The self service component can contain forums for customers and agents to interact, knowledge bases open to customers and agents to answer questions about common issues and operational techniques, even ways for customers to log their own trouble tickets without going through a phone agent, telling their story, and the details being input by a third party. The portal for mobile employees allows agents who are not locally based or who are in continuous movement to access the customer support system just as though they were in the office.

PhaseWare's Self Service Center and TechWeb components contain all of these functions and are easily integrated into the Tracker and Event Engine system which, in turn, is readily integrated into supporting systems such as e-mail solutions and databases. The collaborative tools of today's information technology, just like social networking, have made possible a truly decentralized business that is efficient and cohesive without losing all human contact. These technologies bring customers and business together in a way never before possible. With careful deployment, the customer can partner with business rather than simply consume a business' output or await resolutions for issues without any knowledge of their status. Remote agents can come together and access the same information as those who are at an office computer. Resources are used more efficiently which increases the ROI of the systems that make this cultural change possible within a company.

With multiple channels of contact, business and customer come closer together with the convenience of technology without wasting time and money. PhaseWare, Inc. is a place to start.

Knowledge is Power: Knowledge Management for Today's Customer Service

I was watching a video of School House Rock with my kids and a line from the lyrics caught my ear: Knowledge is Power.

Conquerers certainly know this; the first thing they do is destroy or capture the knowledge the competition has (or assimilate it as the Borg do). And businesses know it. Business Intelligence is one of the modern watchwords as is Knowledge Management. But what does it mean?

Some businesses have determined that if they save all the information they can find about any part of the business, then they will have business intelligence. Then they discover that they don't have information, they merely have data. It won't become information until it is put in a form that can be used to answer questions. In comes Knowledge Management. KM, as it is oftened shortened, takes that data and sifts it, classifies it, makes it searchable so that it can become information. In turn that information can become intelligence when used as part of a plan to increase business, improve processes, and decrease defects.

Knowledge Management makes information accessible and when used as part of a customer self service application, it makes information empowering. Increasingly, customer service is including methods of helping the customer help themselves. Customers can access Forums, Knowledge Bases, FAQs, and myriad content that will keep their business going without a single phone call. In turn, those phone calls that are never made are no longer blocking those calls that represent new business or a frustrated customer who needs personal care, or that simply bog down the service desk with routine, easily handled matters to the detriment of service agents and customers alike.

Managing Knowledge to strengthen business. Now that's power.

For a demonstration of a self service center web portal, visit http://tracker.phaseware.com/selfservicecenter/

Or go to www.PhaseWare.com to learn more about other customer support and service solutions.