How do you support your customer service model with tools and technology?

- CRM (customer relationship management) software can help you track and manage customer interactions and data. - Help desk software can help you manage customer support tickets and inquiries. - Chatbots can help answer common customer questions and provide support around the clock. - Call center software can help you manage phone calls and provide better service to customers. - Social media management tools can help you monitor and respond to customer inquiries on social media.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System Help Desk and Ticketing Software Live Chat and Chatbots Knowledge Base Software Social Media Management Tools Customer Feedback and Survey Tools Automation and AI Omnichannel Integration Training and Knowledge Sharing Platforms Quality Assurance and Monitoring Customer Satisfaction Surveys

In short time it will become essential to integrate AI into all customer service. AI will be able to provide suggestions on real time data processing and provide solutions to clients directly (say Chatbots), or feed the agent with the information about the client + suggestion of the solution in a nutshell.

Most companies will go with the cheapest when starting out, although pay cheap, pay twice comes to mind. The budget is key to how much and what you want your chat service to do. Taking into account, that not all programs will have the facilities to engage with someone who is deaf as an example. Someone who can't type but has to use face and lip reading. May need a program on their side to communicate so you could be listening and reading a bot. Your program on the receiving end has to be able to sing and dance, as well as have more than one way of communication. Taking into account the feedback of your customers, what you then may decide is to most probably scrub the budget and get what is required.

The tools such as chatbots or live chat can be very useful because when customer is looking for information or help, they are actually expect to be able to get help in real time. These tools can provide the real time support!

Integrating tools is crucial for efficient customer interactions. Bopping back and forth between different systems or platforms can take away your primary focus, the customer. A well integrated phone plug-in will reduce the time needed to data into the tracking source. A Knowledge Base tool contextualizeed into a CRM will provide quicker access to the KB. These integrations, increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the employee by shortening handle time, reducing repeat callers and providing accurate information. Well integrated tools also increases higher customer satisfaction & better survey results due to the employee staying focused on customer, appreciating their time, and making that all import human connection.

With the integration of the tools, most of the process by human can be automated. These can be some of the routine tasks such as updating customer’s tickets, sending notifications, routing inquiries and so on. Then you can free up the employees to handle more complex tasks and create more values for the customers as well as your company.

Compatible is the keyword to making your systems work altogether, They all do different jobs at checking your users' problems, but if they clash or freeze your monitor, then you're really looking at apologizing to the customer and sounding like you blame everything on your system as a bad CS would do. This is up to the IT Crowd to get this all connected and tested before it goes live on the system, also having an idea of how long the programs run, so this can be introduced to a seamless conversation of troubleshooting.

Let me share my experience: Most useful tools are undervalued if your employees do not utilize them well. You should appoint a subject matter expert for each tool in your company so that he or she can be the one to provide training or expert advice to the rest.

In my experience, setting up video training (e.g. Loom recordings) and written documentation then packaging it up into a wiki post has a major impact. At kickoff, live training is invaluable, but adding long-lasting documentation enables your teams to work effectively and make quick references to processes as-needed.

Any Training is good, and alot of these communicative ways are normally very simple and intuitive to use, but it's always good to try working in a classroom or boardroom to practice as a team or as a group, so you can see what challenges may arise from conversations, e.g. chat windows. What happens if you haven't got a self-made copy-and-paste answer and the chat window you are using won't accept a usual old-fashioned, type-it-in and-answer question? Don't panic is the answer, you let the customer know you are just managing the problem to resolve with a solution and it may just take a few more minutes than expected. Look for the solution asap after this. With training it becomes easier.

Training, and evaluation are continual processes. The resources that your team uses should be in an active status at all times. Use resources, evaluate resource for ultimate usefulness, revision, wash, rinse, repeat.

Put yourself in you Customer's shoes, how would you like to be treated? This is a question often asked in interviews. How do you cope with working computer programs whilst trouble shooting the issues at hand? Firstly Training is most important and this I learned from a classroom base in a large corporation. Listening to others who have engaged in conversations that are not different to your own, but managed better. For me, listening and plugging into someone else's headset, gives an insight into how to manage those difficult conversations, without having to find a manager to back you up.

Organizations should consider regular update of the tools and technology to match the industry trends especially the CRM systems.