Keeping the customers satisfied

If you have a limited number of customers or your business is swift, straightforward and requires or expects no follow-up sales or contact, then you won't be interested in computer-based customer service or support.

But most business managers have more customers than they can remember in their heads, and they know that it costs far less to retain old customers than continually be finding new ones. Computerising the customer support function doesn't just make a lot of sense - it is essential for a healthy business.

Using IT to keep details of each customer and their business transactions means that your service can be made more efficient and information gathered can be used in many different ways.

Customer relationship management (CRM) technology is fundamentally based on customer service software, with more power to search and manipulate the data so that the data becomes 'intelligent' information, which can be used for marketing purposes. Although this could in theory be done manually with a limited number of customers, the power, ease and capabilities of technology mean that in practice there is no other option.

IT can help log and record calls from customers, and help streamline the response process. For example, Hazel Haas, support manger at accounting software vendor SquareSum, has replaced her company's manual call-tracking system with Heat software from FrontRange Solutions, a company which specialises in CRM software for smaller businesses.

Haas says: "The Heat software is used to handle calls from both internal staff and external customers and supports our accounting software package. Every call and action is logged and tagged, from start to finish of a series of contacts and calls. Whether it is a customer calling to suggest a new feature to one of our internal staff testing an implementation, the Heat software provides reports which ensure that every call is dealt with and every contact with a customer responded to and resolved satisfactorily."

Haas says that using Heat has also enabled her and her team to be more pro-active, which means that ultimately the support team is more efficient and operates more economically. "As we maintain a record of all calls for each customer we can identify a range of things - such as if a customer needs extra training in any particular area. This really adds value to the relationship with the customer as well as providing cross-selling between our services."

The customer support software has also proved useful to SquareSum when sales managers visit customer sites. Haas says that this is often an undersold aspect of computerised customer support. "It's not just the in-office benefits, there are also benefits to sales managers on the road and to partners. Now, prior to arriving at a customer site, the sales manager can log on to the Heat database to see what issues the customer has wanted to discuss lately, and this helps them prepare and introduce themselves." Heat has also helped SquareSum improve its internal procedures, says Haas.

Online customer service risks becoming impersonal, with telephone operatives reading from scripts and support staff using dated automated technology which has an adverse negative effect on customers.

Window of perception
Alan McCarthy, at IT management advisers Pink Elephant, says that the customer support group is often the "window" through which the customer sees the rest of the firm, and if they get a bad experience then that is their perception of the whole organisation. "It is crucial that the customer service staff don't rely too entirely on the IT for scripts and prompts, but they are crucial for smooth and efficient customer support at the same time."

However, IT can never replace good interpersonal skills, and while enterprises should adopt IT for customer support, its role should always be constrained. McCarthy says that IT should be used to support the customer support staff, perhaps offering immediate onscreen background data of a customers' sales history, or details of their product purchases. "Support staff can use IT for personal background details and technical support but they will still need to understand about a service attitude and have the ability to empathise with the customer at their time of problem and need."

Expert systems for technical support have largely gone out of favour, partly because they require huge investment and system capacity. But they are used effectively in industries where there are frequently asked questions (FAQs) and straightforward responses.

"A website should have an area for frequently asked technical questions where customers can go and try to resolve their problems themselves. This has the effect of reducing the number of calls that the support desk staff have to handle, and also raise the level of questions so that their skills are challenged. It takes away most of the boring support work, and more firms should have a support area on their website," says McCarthy.

Firms which have employed IT as part of the service and support find that their customers are generally reassured and happier. Pete Skinner, director of operations at FaceTime Communications, says that the use of IT, either in telephone support or technical support over the web, does not change the customer's expectation of high levels of support and service.

"Firms which sell over the internet in particular have to pay close attention to how the medium supports the customer and doesn't just market and sell their products," he says. "Traditional customer service expectations are the same regardless of how the customers buy."

People remain paramount
Another danger is that IT can come between the customer support team and the customer, to the point where the customer is irritated. "Telephone callers who find themselves in long queues, or in multi-option telephone systems that they can't get out of, will end up more angry than ever. IT is a support tool but should not replace support staff," says Skinner.

While call technology for telephone support is fairly well established for giving telephone support operatives immediate access to a customer's files and scripts and prompts, the use of the web for customer support is still in its infancy.

Terry Lawlor, director of marketing at Support.com, a provider of ecommerce software that automates and personalises customer support over the internet, says IT-based support gives companies the opportunity to save costs and improve efficiency by automating some aspects of support and focusing on personalising the rest.

"Technology can improve the quality of work and therefore the job satisfaction for support staff as well as improving the efficiency of the support function and service," he says. "Technology can remove pressure from internal helpdesks by enabling a faster more efficient response, and it can help by educating the user so that if a similar problem occurs in future the customer may deal with it themselves rather than calling customer support."

With a fully integrated electronic support desk, the support staff can use email to help solve their customers problems, and new technology such as work4sure's Precision Support, which allows the support staff to have direct contact with a customer's IT to establish compatibility. "Dynamic hotlinks with customers' systems is an old mainframe support tool, but is now emerging in the PC world," says Lawlor.

"By installing software to support the customer support team, many problems like call avoidance and problem avoidance, and misunderstandings, can be prevented and resolved thereby improving the image and reputation of the company," says Lawlor.

Unless IT is adopted more widely for customer support, either as telephone call systems or for web-based support, job pressures will rise and job satisfaction will decrease and it will become increasingly difficult to recruit support staff. And existing staff will move to competing firms who do use IT sensibly as part of the customer support, while the cost of training and recruiting replacements is added to a firm's business costs.

Lawlor says: "While no customer support operative wants to work in the 21st century equivalent of a sweat shop, they do want the most modern tools available, and that means IT and e-based systems."

Sophisticated next generation customer support software utilises natural language processing and neural networking (an area of artificial intelligence), and provides expert systems on PCs over the internet. This is where R&D is being invested by many customer support solution vendors. While using interpersonal skills to soothe the irate customer, support staff can key in a natural language query regarding the problem along with the customer's name, and the software will process a solution with the backup of email and attachments. In such a scenario, support staff find their work easier and more enjoyable and customers get a better support service.

The system learns and adapts solutions to suit similar problems, thereby improving continually, and gives feedback to the development teams so that the products benefit. Good customer handling skills are essential and IT should never be allowed to replace the human interface. But used properly, IT can reduce call waiting times, increase the percentage of first call resolutions, reduce training costs for operatives and customers, and increase customer satisfaction.