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How You Can Use Service Management To Improve Customer Service Satisfaction

Regardless of the industry, businesses in today’s digital age are expected to solve issues quickly and accurately. We operate in an ecommerce where “the customer is always right” -- and in order to sustain growth, you have to set a solid reputation as a provider as great service. Juggling customer issues becomes even more troublesome when you consider the variety of platforms consumers are using to solve their problems, from social media to email, and even review platforms. In fact, 52% of consumers expect customers to respond quickly to their social media queries.

It’s important to keep your customers happy, because on average, a happy customer will recount their positive experience to at least nine people. And if that’s not enough to keep you inspired, consider this: unhappy customers, on average, talk about their negative experience to 16 people. That’s nearly double, and certainly not worth the trouble. Companies today are employing service management teams to keep their customer service processes ahead of the curve.

Understanding Service Management

A service management system is designed to help increase the value of your brand and better position you ahead of competitors. Agencies typically provide a suite of service management amenities, including:

  • Help Desk Services
  • Change Management
  • Incident & Problem Management
  • Project Management
  • Advanced Reporting & Analytics

These services help ensure the accuracy and responsiveness of your support team, allowing simplified ticket entry and automated process workflows. Each gear has its own job in the customer service wheel, helping you churn out issues, manage communication, and translate solutions from knowledge to text. It keeps your business in proper working order, satisfying customer after customer.

The Role of IT In Service Management

IT service management (ITSM) refers to the procedures, policies, and processes that the business uses for managing the delivery of robust IT services to your customers. Whether you realize it or not, every business uses some form of information technology in their operations, whether you have your own DIY service delivery setup or employ ITSM (which is under the framework of ITIL) systems. While traditional IT focuses on technology, ITSM is process-oriented with an approach that emphasizes customer value and business needs. To better understand ITSM, it can be broken down into five key areas:

Cost: Services and processes that make the most out of the business budget.

Services: The hardware, applications, and infrastructure provided by the IT team.

Resourcefulness: Handling issues in the most efficient and effective way possible.

End Users: Catering to the users that work within those IT systems.

Business: Enabling the company to achieve its goals.

ITSM helps increase productivity and shortens the gap between identifying an issue and fixing it. Overall, it helps business owners better understand the business needs and create repeatable (and scalable) processes for long-term growth.

Pinpoint Recurring Issues For Betterment

When you use service management to better your customer service, you start to learn more about the recurring issues your customers are facing. According to Lee Resources, for every one complaint, there are roughly 26 people with the same complaint who are staying silent. This doesn’t mean they’re going to stand idly by; often times, this means they’ll just take their business elsewhere without so much as a goodbye.

When you’re able to quickly recognize issues, you can push changes to the business and/or development team faster, ensuring that current and future customers aren’t faced with the same challenges. This greatly diminishes the chances of your unhappy customers staying silent, and improves your product.

Using A Help Desk For The Best Possible Service

Your help desk is the primary portal for support, and the functions it holds needs to be rock solid. Without an effective help desk, your chances of keeping customers happy are slim. A powerful ITIL verified help desk solution does more than your average SaaS help desk. It allows customers to send in requests from every avenue possible: phone, email, support center, or mobile device. And it’s capable of understanding the best way to handle that request. To locate a solution, it might push the customer through an automated resolution funnel, or route the issue to the most qualified customer service rep.

Help desks also provide the analytics necessary to continue improving your customer support. You’ll be able to see the average response time, the volume of inquiries you’ve received over a set period of time, what category most issues fall under, etc. You can also test how effective your service is after you’ve pushed recent changes or made improvements. Armed with this wealth of data, your options for fine-tuning the business are limitless.

 

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