If your business revolves around offering a product or service (like most do), the most predictable thing is that every now and then your customers come to you with some issue or question you must solve for them. This situation repeats itself even more frequently, obviously, the larger our customer base is. Let’s assume something, people sooner or later need help with most anything, it’s just a part of natural life. It’s your call whether you register those instances and issues in a way that is both easy and efficient.
For this purpose we now have helpdesk and ticketing systems like Integria IMS. These helpdesk tools are what build a bridge between a customer issue and your customer service department which will try and offer a solution. If you don’t have an entire department of employees working customer service and you’re a sole provider or small business, at least you’ll be getting real time information from customers which will allow you to handle any situation personally. The gist is that these programs are becoming a necessity to manage customer-supplier relationships easy and efficiently.
Most of the software tools that offer a ticketing system have the same purpose: the customer can create a “ticket” and this way contact your company in order to share a question, problem or suggestion on the product or service purchased. This incident will be registered on the ticketing system as a new ticket triggering previously set alerts to go off warning the person responsible that something is going on. The software itself will also have automated responses programmed for different situations. Alerts usually come as email notifications or automated messages that indicate to the person(s) responsible for solving incidents that there’s a pending query.
This way communication with the customer is established in an intent to solve his or her instance in the best way possible. If you’re still registering your incidents on a plain old spreadsheet and you need to spread through a bunch of applications in order to manage your customer pool, you really need an incident management system. Software like Integria IMS allows for natural and fluid communication with customers. He or she will register an incident, and the person responsible for solving incidents will immediately receive alerts. Through these alerts, the person responsible is able to generate an initial response for the customer, or send him or her a custom message addressing, analyzing and ratifying the situation, and give an estimated time for the solution to be found. Communication can be maintained in order to give further details and for both parts to keep track of the path to a solution.
The act of establishing and reaffirming that communication with customers is something as important to a modern day business as having something to sell. Let’s admit it, if we don’t communicate with our customers in a different way from how it’s been done up until now, modern life will probably kill our business. Communicating with a customer or potential customer not only enables consumption from our public, it also creates a faithful customer base and strengthens customer-company relationships. This can only be achieved by treating customers as well as possible, while being efficient professionally. If a customer is happy not only with the product or service that you offer, but also with the support you provide when faced with any issue or doubt the customer may have, there’s more chance that that customer will recommend your business to other people. And, no matter what they say, although word of mouth isn’t going to return a large volume of customers, the ones it does lure in are VERY faithful to your company, to the point of almost being “fans” in a ways, and that is marketing that money can’t buy.
Moreover, the possibility of receiving feedback from customers on the solutions that you propose for them is a big plus that fits in quite well with the social dynamic involved in work over the last few years. If a customer has the chance to reply to a message you sent him or her, whether it’s to say that the proposed solution works, or to give further details on a persisting issue, that person is more likely to picture your service as “better” than your competitors who don’t offer the same chances.
Furthermore, you and your employees get to bang heads a lot less over each issue posed by customers. It’s not easy for anyone to be tending to customer complaints manually, and we’re pretty sure that it’s not psychologically healthy. Spare yourself the headaches, for real. Worry strictly when you have to and take proper advantage of the fact that technology has come to the point at which a program can be your most useful tool in the shed when it comes to managing your relationships and communication with your customers.
A helpdesk or ticketing tool, we dare say, is something that a modern day business can’t do without if it wants to have a successful business model and doesn’t want that to cost its people their health. Plus, it’ll never cease to be something extremely practical. An incident manager will allow you to boost your productivity, and will remain by your company’s side during many years if you’ve chosen the specific software wisely.
We encourage you to try Integria IMS out and that you give us your opinions so we can continue to make business management something easy for you and that also adapts to your custom needs. Any question, criticism, or comment can be left in the comments section. We want your feedback!