What's the best way to align your customer service software with your business goals?

Customer Service is what represents the company. You want to make sure the training software covers all aspects of what it takes to get and retain customers. Lastly, you want them to share the experience with others. Word of mouth can grow or bankrupt a company. It all starts with the customer service experience.

Simply put, start with the customer. It’s called ‘outside in’ thinking… Once you truly understand what motivates your client, it’s immeasurably easier to select or even create the tools required to ensure their success and by proxy, yours. Challenge your current / legacy ways of working and be honest about whether they genuinely align with present customer needs…

Define Clear Objectives: Begin by clearly defining your business goals and objectives. Whether it's improving customer satisfaction, increasing efficiency, or expanding market reach, having a well-defined target is crucial. Choose the Right Software: Select customer service software that matches your objectives. Look for features that support your goals, such as automation for efficiency, analytics for performance measurement, and scalability for growth. Regular Assessment and Adaptation: Continuously assess the software's performance in relation to your business goals. Use feedback, data analytics, and regular reviews to make necessary adjustments, ensuring that the software remains aligned with your evolving objectives.

Assessing your current situation is definitely key. Look at it from all areas including how you communicate the voice of YOUR customer to the rest of your organization. Do these tools allow you to do this effectively without mining through tons of manual data? Also, when first assessing or re-assessing tools, I like to make a list of all the things I need and then all of the things I want in a separate column. I define my needs based on truly critical areas and never compromise those needs. An example of this would be, "How easy is the UI navigation for my team?" or "Must have the ability to automatically send reports every week to stakeholders." This makes it easier to cut through the noise and find a tool that works.

Aligning customer service software with your business goals involves a strategic approach to ensure it supports and enhances your overall objectives. Here's a step-by-step approach to achieve this alignment: 1) Identify Business Goals 2) Understand Customer Needs 3) Map Customer Journey 4) Choose the Right Software 5) Customize Software Settings 6) Integrate with Other Systems 7) Train and Educate Your Team 8) Monitor Performance and KPIs 9) Gather and Utilize Customer Feedback 10) Iterate and Optimize By following these steps, you can ensure that your customer service software becomes a powerful tool in achieving your business goals and enhancing the overall customer experience.

Define a few key areas, such as first response time, messages per conversation until resolution, one-touch ticket rates, handle time, etc. Select where you want to be in 30, 60, 90 days, and beyond. If you aren't sure, google benchmarks of others in your industry to get an ideal. These benchmarks can change as you improve!

The best way to define your business objectives and metrics for customer service software is to identify what is important to the business, its customers, and its employees. This can include goals such as improving customer satisfaction or resolution time, reducing customer churn, or increasing customer loyalty. Metrics can include customer feedback, customer satisfaction ratings, customer wait times, customer retention rates, and customer resolution rates. By understanding these objectives and metrics, businesses can better measure the performance of their customer service software and make necessary improvements to achieve their desired goals.

Como dicen por ahí: "lo que no se puede controlar, no se puede medir. Y lo que no se puede medir, no se puede mejorar." Es muy importante que los objetivos siempre tengan métricas relacionadas, pues así podrá tener mejor visibilidad del avance en los mismos, o bien, si se requiere de alguna acción preventiva o correctiva para asegurar que se concreten. Precisamente para en esto es donde el software que utilicemos puede brillar; pues puede ser una herramienta muy buena para darnos esa información y hasta dejarnos tomar acción. Claro que esto dependerá, en gran medida, de la alineación entre ambos.

investing in cutting-edge chatbots and AI solutions enables us to efficiently address the increasing demands of our customers. Staying competitive in today's market hinges on our ability to embrace and integrate the latest technology trends in customer service.

This part will be easy since you have already done the heavy lifting by clearly outlining your needs and wants. It will be evident which software meets where you currently are AND can grow with you. I also recommend asking folks on LinkedIn, too! Start a poll, and see what comes up on top and why!

When choosing the customer service software for your business, it is super important to consider the features, usability, and cost. The customer service software should have features and capabilities that are aligned with your business objectives and can be tailored to your business goals and specific needs. It should also be user-friendly and easy to use so that your customer service team can maximize efficiency and productivity.

Most software have training materials and even self guided on boarding for your team, take advantage of those! Another place I love to start is by creating a loom video series. Each week, I do a short video in my series "Get to know Zendesk" outlining an area of the tool that I want the team to dive deeper into. This helps my team visually digest new areas and skills in bite-sized pieces.

La implementación de un software, o de cualquier herramienta, siempre requiere de la capacitación correspondiente para poder utilizarla de la mejor manera. Es muy importante que la información de los objetivos y su alineación con el software llegue correctamente a quienes lo van a operar, pues si no tienen el contexto adecuado, se corre el riesgo de caer en errores de uso.

This is the most crucial part and, honestly, the most fun too! Once everything is implemented, you can start adding automation, rules, and apps that can help you become even more efficient and help serve your customers in smarter more meaningful ways. Don't be afraid to try things- there is no one size fits all, but remember to keep in mind how easy it is for your customers to connect with you. My two rules for testing and optimizing: 1. Does it improve the experience for the customer? If yes, then I will try it! If not, I won't. 2. Does it improve my agent's experience working every day? If yes, then I will try it! If it doesn't negatively impact, I might as well. If it negatively impacts them, I absolutely will not.

Before selecting your customer service software, you should have at least 3 shortlisted software to start evaluating and understanding the platform's capabilities, complexity, and scalability. Build an evaluation plan with all your needs and requirements and evaluate the shortlisted software against these elements. By doing so, you will have a better understanding of what software will align with your business objectives and goals.

In my experience CS software is only as good as the build out for your company’s needs as well as the willingness of the CS team to use it to its full potential and the ability to use it to its full potential! Make sure the software you use has a dedicated CSM for your CS team as well as a great poc in your company. Like anything communication, training, internal and external FAQ databases are a must and trial and error will be the key to success. From a end user side and reporting side I highly recommend finding a software that can be used as a soft phone and that tracks your calls and emails. Automated emails and automated follow up tasks are also a must! This will ensure calls and emails are logged and all clients get their touches.

Play around with your softwares and platforms! I cannot recommend this enough. I have learned so much from exploring a system with no real end-goal in mind. In doing this, I’ve been able to learn aspects of a platform that others might not be privy to, and I can now share that information and make us all more knowledgeable. I have found many short cuts this way, that have lead to more efficient work and better results internally. Explore what buttons do, create test accounts, etc. If you’re worried to do this, there are ways to set up a test version of most platforms. Use it to your hearts content!