The technology market is crowded – like 20 people in the same elevator wearing blue shirts and khakis crowded. Everyone seems to be offering similar products and services, making brand recall and preference very difficult to achieve. With such a crowded dance floor, most companies think that the only way to stand out in a commoditized market is to have a more attractive price, but research says otherwise.
Customer intelligence consulting firm Walker predicts that, by the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key differentiator between brands. Harvard Business Review found that customers who had positive social customer care experiences were 3 times more likely to recommend a brand than others. In 2014, the highest marketing technology investment was customer experience, according to this Gartner report.
Improving customer support processes in your organization is a significant way to enhance experiences for your customers. While there are multiple strategies to achieve great customer support, one straightforward and effective solution is workflow automation.
Here are a few ways workflow automation software can make your customer support smoother and more efficient.
1. Analyze efficiency
Identifying bottlenecks and opportunities for improvements is a great way to create a unique customer experience. After automating a workflow, reports can be configured to graphically show where your process slows down. Additionally, the performance of each customer support executive can also be analyzed to understand what skills they need to be trained for and what their strengths are.
2. Understand customer needs
Reports are not only beneficial in understanding operational efficiency but they can also reveal critical insights about customer expectations and behavior. Based on this understanding, customer support strategy can be tweaked to ensure maximum customer satisfaction. For instance, based on the number of tickets raised on each platform, your technology company can figure out which platform is most used to report customer support issues. Given how popular social networks are today, companies may prefer to assign more representatives to social customer support.
3. Track proactive initiatives
Customer-facing teams often have an understanding of customer preferences that is hard to beat. Customer support executives can initiate product request workflows that can be forwarded to the engineering team. For instance, feedback on the UI of a particular product can help design and development teams refine their offerings to suit customers’ requirements. Customer support teams can represent such suggestions to appropriate teams, creating a valuable link between creators and end-users.
4. Eradicating silos
There is often a lag between customer contact and service fulfillment. Each department might use a different platform that takes time to learn and doesn’t translate well outside of their domain. Workflow management software works between departments, which means you only need someone’s email to add them to your process.
5. Bug bounty programs
Technology-based product companies often incorporate bug bounty programs to help identify vulnerabilities in their products. Since payments in these areas are not regular, but always follow a predictable path, it is an ideal process to automate. You can also include a step to send the information to the development team for appropriate attention.
Customer experiences are going to be the defining service in the coming years. Setting up a well-oiled customer service team that works seamlessly with the other parts of your technology company takes time, and you don’t want to start too late. Workflow automation software, like Kissflow Process, can make a world of difference to how your customer support teams operate. Witness Kissflow’s game-changing potential by signing up for a free 30-day trial.
