Helping your customers can help your business
2 min read
Investing in technology to facilitate customer service is perhaps the best business decision that you can ever make.
Your customers are the most important part of your business; if you are not fully supporting them at every stage as they research your products, compare prices, ask for customer service and work with your business then you risk losing a significant percentage of them.
Providing decent customer service is fairly easy for a business that is just starting out, but as consumer interest grows and you find that you are dealing with more and more enquiries it can become difficult to keep up with the demand. Missing orders, forgotten phone calls and billing confusion can become all too commonplace. As your customer service team grows you could end up in a position where it becomes difficult for your team to coordinate with each other, compromising the quality of service for all concerned.
Putting customers first
Investing in technology to facilitate customer service is perhaps the best business decision that you can ever make. By putting customers first you send a message that you care about the reputation of your brand and that you are committed to long-term retention and growth. Brand loyalty is very real for a significant percentage of consumers. Clearly, you cannot expect them to tolerate too many mistakes or limitations. Conversely, helping your customers in every way that you can go a long way towards improving retention in a competitive market, even if things sometimes go wrong. Consumers need to feel informed and appreciated. Some small changes to the way in which you engage with them can go a long way.
How integrated websites help
For the vast majority of businesses, integrated websites are essential in delivering the requisite service levels. Your customers will expect access to a blog, contact form, support form and shopping functionality, all on one easy to use website. They will require a single login and rapid access to accurate and timely information at all times. Integrating your site with your back-office order fulfilment, tracking, billing and CRM systems such as Sage, MS Dynamics or Salesforce reduce the likelihood of mistakes and confusion.
Many small businesses start out using a collection of open source tools for different activities, only to be forced to use a complex, error-prone and time-consuming strategy involving manually copying information from one system to another. There is absolutely no need to do this when there are integration solutions out there for most popular CRM, ERP and other tools. You also have the option of requesting bespoke integration to tie together your own internal systems.
Granite 5 specialises in the integration of customer service, fulfilment and tracking systems with clients’ websites. This ensures that your customers will feel better informed and should experience improved response times too.
Providing the best possible service to your customers is one thing that doesn’t have to cost a great deal of money, but it could really improve your bottom line. Not only will the customer experience improve but you should find marked efficiency improvements and cost reduction by integrating disparate systems into a cohesive solution.
You may not be able to beat your rivals in a price war, but you can beat them in the customer service stakes, regardless as to their size and the resources that they may have available to them.
