Author: Ian Betteridge
Date: 06/05/2009
If your customer service is done through a spreadsheet on a server, it might be time to rethink the technology.
Dealing with customer service issues is one of the toughest tasks for any company that sells a product or service to consumers. And, unfortunately, it's also one of the parts of a business which often gets neglected in the business plan until the last possible moment.
But there are "cloud computing" systems around which can help you do customer service to a high standard, even without major expenditure. And because these systems are access through a web browser rather than being locally installed, they can easily scale as your business grows.
One example is Zendesk, a US company which has created a service of the same name which is dedicated to customer service. Zendesk allows your customers to submit "tickets" with their problems, and gives them and you a portal for tracking issues. It's simple to use, can scale up to 25 customer agents (your customer service representatives), and costs from $19 per month.
GetSatisfaction takes a different approach. Rather than providing a service where businesses can answer customer queries, it provides tools to let you build a community of customers and company representatives to answer questions. The idea is that, as well as your representatives sorting out problems, you can "crowd source" some of the support to other customers who can share their experience of solving problems.
If you want something which integrates directly with your sales team, you might want to consider Salesforce CRM . Although Salesforce is most commonly thought of as a sales support and customer management package, it includes the ability to handle customer support queries too. And the advantage of using a single integrated tool is that it allows your sales team to quickly find out if there are outstanding issues with a customer which might affect their prospects.
Whichever option you choose, there are plenty of benefits to moving your customer service systems into the cloud. And no matter what size your company, it's something you should be considering.