As a business leader, you understand the importance of providing exceptional customer service. Customer service is more than just providing answers; it can influence how customers and prospective customers view your brand.
In today’s digital world, it’s critical to streamline your sales, marketing, and service processes to help your customers have positive experiences. This is where customer relationship management (CRM) software can be an invaluable tool. In this article, we’ll cover beneficial customer service CRM features along with tips on how to use CRM for better customer service.
How Technology Can Help
CRM platforms can help create efficiencies in your customer service workflows by providing better visibility and real-time interactions across various touchpoints. With a CRM system in place, you can track customer engagement throughout the entire journey, which can provide insight into customer needs and preferences. Technology can help you improve both the quality and efficiency of your customer service by:
- Providing customer service agents useful information about what a customer may already know
- Creating valuable touchpoints throughout the customer journey
- Storing and allowing quick access to FAQs, user manuals, how-to guides, and self-service portals
If your current customer service processes aren’t as efficient as you’d like or there are bottlenecks within your case management workflows, it may be time to invest in a CRM platform like Salesforce Service or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service. These tools can help you solve pressing customer service challenges, including bottlenecks, pain points, and inconsistent customer experiences.
CRM is not just about tracking the customer journey; there are advanced customer service features you can take advantage of, including:
- Contact management
- Ticket and case management
- Campaign management
- AI-powered customer communications
- Automated surveys and polls
- Reports and dashboards
In addition, there are many CRM features that can help you standardize your customer service processes. When standardizing customer service processes, consider each step your customers or employees may need to take to find an answer. From start to finish, how can customer service issues be resolved quickly and effectively?
Once the steps are documented, you can begin to automate steps and workflows in the CRM platform. Both Salesforce Service and Dynamics 365 Customer Service provide automation triggers along with case assignment rules that can be configured based on company size, case type, or other factors. Also, CRM automation triggers can notify agents about case assignments and updates, as well as email surveys to customers after their cases close.
Benefits of Using CRM for Customer Service
By leveraging CRM technology, you can track customer service case management over time. Reviewing the data and metrics over time can help you identify ways to speed up the case resolution process with knowledge base articles and better understand what works well for your customers. This information can give your customer service team transparency into individual case statuses as well as insights on ways to provide first-rate service from start to finish. Here are some potential benefits of using CRM for customer service:
- Key customer and case details are recorded in a centralized location
- Knowledge base articles, FAQs, and more can be easily accessed
- Can have clear visibility into case management and resolution from start to close
- The entire customer service team can have transparency into case statuses
- Process automation
- Improved brand consistency
- Customer service data can be tracked over time to assess areas that can be improved
- CRM tools can help you stay connected with customers so you can continually gauge customer sentiment
In summary, if your team is still relying on spreadsheets and email to store important information about your customers, it may be time to make a change. Using disparate systems and processes may lead to duplicated efforts, a lack of visibility into case management, inconsistent brand experiences, and dissatisfied customers. We hope these tips on how to use CRM for better customer service can help your organization become a five-star business for customers and employees alike.
Related reading: Six Customer Service Metrics to Track with CRM
How FORVIS Can Help
The Business Technology Solutions team at FORVIS has certified experience with CRM systems. We are a Salesforce Partner and Microsoft Dynamics Gold Partner and 2022-23 recipient of the Microsoft Inner Circle award. From technology assessments to digital transformation, we’re here to assist you with your business technology needs and goals. Use the Contact Us form below to get in touch.