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Phaseware Blog

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

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.

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

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.