Building A Great Customer Service Reputation

Customer service skills that every one of your employee needs to know or learn.

Willingness to Learn
This is probably the most "general" skill on the list, but it's still necessary. Those who don't seek to improve what they do, whether it's building products, marketing businesses, or helping customers, will get left behind by the people willing to invest in their skills.

Persuasion Skills
This is one a lot of people didn't see coming! Experienced customer support personnel know that oftentimes, you will get messages in your inbox that are more about the curiosity of your company's product, rather than having problems with it. To truly take your customer service skills to the next level, you need to have some mastery of persuasion so that you can convince interested customers that your product is right for them.

A Calming Presence
There's a lot of metaphors for this type of personality: "keeps their cool," "staying cool under pressure," etc., but it all represents the same thing... the ability that some people have to stay calm and even influence others when things get a little hectic. The best customer service representatives know that they cannot let a heated customer force them to lose their cool; in fact it is their job to try to be the "rock" for a customer who thinks the world is falling down due to their current problem.

Being Goal Oriented
This may seem like a strange thing to list as a customer service skill, but I assure you that it is vitally important. In my article on empowering employees, I noted that many customer service experts have shown how giving employees unfettered power to "WOW" customers doesn't always generated the returns that many businesses expect to see. That's because it leaves employees without goals, and business goals plus customer happiness should always work hand-in-hand.

Time Management Skills
You should spend the right amount of time with customers, the bottom line is that there is a limit, and you need to be concerned with getting customers what they want in an efficient and timely manner. The trick here is that this should also be applied when realizing when you simply cannot help a customer. If you don't know the solution to a problem, the best kind of support member will get a customer over to someone who does. Don't waste time trying to go above and beyond for a customer in an area where you will just end up wasting both of your time!

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Your Customers Need IT Service Management Software

As you know, your customer expectations for service are rising every day. Being able to meet these changing needs often means providing a type of personalized service that has to go beyond what your competitors are delivering. 

Give your customers the solutions they expect, whenever and where-ever they need them. Today’s customers expect to have access to customer service and on their terms. 

Your customers deserve a more satisfactory experience with your business. Our customer care solutions improve their experience at every touch-point, from simple billing questions to Tier III technical support, and from outbound problem resolution to relevant, personalized sales offers.

We take a people-centric view of the customer experience. Our robust mobility and social business solutions empower your employees to collaborate, communicate, and carry out their customer service tasks with the best information and tools available. 

Our managed services are dedicated to optimizing the customer experience, regardless of the device your customer chooses to use to connect to you with. And then, as headlines regularly remind us, all of these conversations and transactions must be conducted in a secure and safe manner.

Customer care has moved from the back office to the front lines with the explosion of mobility, social, and cloud. IT organizations find themselves in the center of the customer experience supporting critical touch-points including online and mobile applications. 

Many companies are struggling to support these services and find themselves in a constantly reactive state. The result is that business performance and customer experience suffers. SMART Service Desk Management offers an IT organization the core capabilities to provide a true consumer experience for IT services; from a service strategy, to a strong service portfolio and a great user experience.

Our mission is to improve the way organizations get and keep loyal customers. Our solutions have proven to dramatically impact service performance and consistently exceed customer expectations.

Exceptional customer service requires more than knowing what to do. It also involves attitudes, motives and values. Participants in customer service identify dimensions that influence delivery of exceptional customer service in the future. When these dimensions are in alignment, improved job satisfaction, increased teamwork and customer loyalty result.

Finally, SMART Service Desk is where your customers are. Our multichannel, global environments provide service in your customers’ preferred language and channel, including: phone, social media, chat, email, and Web self-service.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Learning To Take Customer Service To The Next Level

Everyone with a business will agree that customer service is important. Really important.

If you've ever been to a restaurant and received awful service you know exactly what we are talking about. It doesn't matter how good the food is, bad customer service can ruin a meal. Same goes for shopping: Customers who receive bad customer service from an online store are highly unlikely to return, and even less likely to refer your business.

When your customer complains, take it seriously and act on it immediately. Complaint departments have changed quite a bit over the years. People don't fill out comment cards or send emails to the complaint department anymore. They go on Twitter and other social media forums to raise hell, so it's very important to fix a squeaky wheel as soon as possible. If the complaint is legitimate you shouldn't cheap out... be generous in your response. 

Your company should always have a friendly Return Policy. Some people are hesitant to shop online because they're unsure about purchase and return policies. Does your ecommerce store have a return policy? If not, you should seriously consider creating one. While writing the details of your return policy, it's important that all sales are not final, and all your policies are stated in plain English and placed somewhere on your website that is easy to find.

You will find that 20% customers are asking 80% of the questions! Most questions are asked over and over again. You should build a dynamic Frequently Asked Questions system for your customers and greatly reduce your inbound customer inquiries. By organizing all your product details and frequently asked questions in your knowledge base, giving customers a quick and accurate answer can be as easy as directing them to a knowledge base article. The self-problem-solving rate can also be increased as customers can easily find answers to most of their questions by searching in your knowledge base. This will surely lead to more satisfied customers and more effective staff.

The real test for your customer service is determined by the return customer, not the first timer. A good experience, during every visit, encourages customers to tell their friends and partners about what a surprisingly great time they had working with or buying from you. Superior customer service isn’t something that can be outlined by secret shopper reports, it’s something that starts with the hiring process during and after company formation and ends with that special smile on your customer’s face.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

The University of Customer Service

Just where can you go to get a higher education in Customer Service? After all even McDonalds has what they call Hamburger U so their franchisees can learn all they need to know to operate their new fast-food business.

Yes, some Colleges and Universities offer classes on customer service. But can you get an MBA in “happy customers?” Yet many of our schools of higher education have many customer service problems themselves.

Recently at the University of Texas, and at many other universities around the country, there has been quite a bit of discussion about privatizing administrative tasks necessary to keep the institution operating. The overall discussion is a good one aimed at improving efficiency in a time of tight budgets. But it also has raised an important problem in how people think about higher education. And it boils down to two words: customer service.

Is a public university a business and, thus, should it be run with the idea of pleasing customers and providing a service to students? Or should it be run with a different mind-set? The answer is clearly that a public university (and most privates as well) is not a business. Universities and colleges are institutions of learning and research that do not have customers; instead, they have multiple stakeholders, including students, faculty, administrators, parents and the public.

These stakeholders support the institution in a variety of ways by paying taxes, providing labor and paying tuition. But at no time is anyone a customer of the institution.

Here is a statement on the Davenport University website. GREAT Customer Service - "Davenport University strives to provide great customer service to all of the internal and external audiences we serve.  You are invited to tell us about your service experience -- positive or constructive.  Excellent service providers will be acknowledged for exceeding expectations and constructive feedback will allow us to improve in areas prohibiting great service."

So we can see at least some colleges and universities are becoming aware that improvements are still needed. How is your business and company doing, learning about and improving your customer's experience?

What tools are you considering for your IT Service Management Software solutions?

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

The Importance Of Customer Service Data

A very famous business is: “Take care of your customers and employees first, and profit will take care of itself.”

However, when a company grows it can become more and more difficult to give customers and employees the same sort of personal attention. For a business to stay successful it must grow. 
Most companies grow until inevitably some flaws in customer service will develop or at least begin to rear their ugly heads. 

It was at this point that the company realized the importance of developing ways of measuring customer service. One of the oldest sayings in business is “You manage what you measure.” This is when the idea of measuring customer satisfaction was developed.

It may seem simplistic but the best way to find out how satisfied your customers are is to ask them.  That’s right a simple and well-constructed survey.  Ask the right questions and most of all keep it as short and simple as possible. Target customers who seem highly satisfied and would buy from buy from your business again.

Ask them ways you could improve what you do and how you do it.   If possible avoid doing that as essay questions.

You might ask why not survey unhappy customers.  First you are less likely to get many responses.  Second you will find they will just respond to the single incident that lead to their dis-satisfaction. 

We live in the world “powered" by the Web and communications where one in every three people have access to the internet and close to quarter of a million phones are shipped every hour globally. The amount of data shared every day is astonishing, reaching exabytes (millions of terabytes) every day. Analysis of the vast requires new techniques and tools that make our online experiences more personalized and give effective and understandable feedback.

However, in the customer service domain, the use of data analytics is far from optimal, leaving petabytes of valuable customer data unexplored and lowering the quality of customer service.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with your customer interactions? Are you looking for new ways to understand and analyze your data?

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

The Science Of Customer Service

Years of research have shown that being rude or abrupt with customers has immediate and long term detrimental effects on engagement, commitment and future purchases, quite apart from its negative impact on workplace relationships, job and life satisfaction.

There is an experiment that will show you how your customer’s memory works, and how to turn the quirks of consumer memory to your businesses’ advantage.

You need to be blindfolded to stop you from cheating, from being able to write anything down until you are told to.

Your blindfold secured, you are read a list of cooking items: Tarragon. Lavender. Cardamom. Chicory. Safflower. Cinnamon. Turmeric. Marjoram. Don’t write them down yet! Let them settle into your memory.

Now: Take off the blindfold, and write down all the words you remember from the list. You were just walked through a traditional experimental demo, used hundreds of times each semester in introductory lectures by cognitive psychology professors all around the world. 

The point:  Imagine that each of a hundred people took this test without peeking. Which spices would they remember best? There’s a very particular pattern that researchers always see.

The result is known in psychology as the Serial Position Effect: People most clearly remember the first thing that they heard to them (Tarragon) and the last thing (Marjoram). The stuff that happened in between? Not so much. It is always a bit of a blur.

You might say, firsts and lasts are the real spice of life!

This insight provides us with a valuable shortcut in providing great, i.e., perceived to be a great customer experience. Here’s the takeaway from this simple experiment.

The way you greet and say good-bye to your customers are your “firsts” and “lasts”, their high points on the serial position effect. Handle them superbly, and your customer will recall, and perhaps even more important will describe to others, their overall superb buying experience. And they’ll be able to immediately call to mind specific examples of how your company was superb. Conversely, if you only excel in the middle of your interaction, you won’t get the credit for all your hard efforts.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Just When Is The Right Time?

When is the right time to add or update new IT Service Management Software?  That pretty depends on what we are talking about.  Could it be… When is it the right time to retire?  When is it the right time to buy a new house? When is it the right time to ask for a raise?

When is it the right time for your business to do something about your customer service headaches? Now there is a question that just might be keeping you up at night. Or do you just lay there watching your customers jump over the fence rather than counting sheep?

And, may I ask, just where are those customers jumping to? Or maybe, what are they jumping away from? Do you want to wait until all of your competitors have already improved their customer service?  That sounds like more than a little bit too late! In fact that sounds like a move that may end any chance of being competitive.

Finding a new customer is one thing. Have that customer return for another purchase is another matter altogether. Keeping that same customer long-term is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Have you heard the expression, “You don’t know what you don’t know?”  Unless you have a customer service management system in place that is exactly where you are… You don’t know what you don’t know and you don’t know it about the most important part of your business, your customers.

There is no need to lose sleep even one more night.  Your customer service business solution is as near as your phone, SMART Service Desk at 602-235-0975. Are you picking up your phone yet?  Why not?

Our system is easy to implement, easy to use, expandable and the best news yet, is that it is affordable.  Now are picking up your phone?

Do we need to say it again? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software allows you to deliver a better, more efficient and personalized customer experience that is easy to implement, quickly establish and very cost effective.

Does there need to be another question?

Are you looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software should be your solutions. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Do Happy Customers Buy More?

Nurturing relationships with your customers is a crucial part of growing a successful business. In this age of automation and innovation, caring for your customers has never been more important.

At any moment, an unhappy customer can share their opinion with the masses through social media and the web and negatively affect your business. That’s why it’s even more important than ever to create an excellent experience for your customers to help develop your company’s relationship with them into love.

Walt Disney said it best, “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” Creating love between your company and your customers can help scale positive word of mouth that’s absolutely priceless.

Creating a customer-focused culture of this nature is a business opportunity that should not be overlooked. Most businesses are failing when it comes to the customer experience, which is your opportunity to swoop in and enchant those same customers into falling for your company.

The data speaks for itself:

Only 37% of brands received good or excellent customer experience index scores in 2012. Whereas, 64% of brands got a rating of “OK,” “poor,” or “very poor” from their customers. Source: Forrester Research
As many as 89% of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. Source: RightNow
Up to 60% of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience. Source: Desk
Average annual value of each customer relationship lost to a competitor or abandoned – $289. Source: Genesys Report

On average, loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase.

5-20%
Probability of selling to a new prospect

60-70%
Probability of selling to an existing customer

Any business with customers is in the "people" business. Losing even a single customer can be very costly. It’s critical for companies to turn a complaint into a positive for the customer and to help the company to continue moving forward.

Although your customers won’t love you if you give bad service, your competitors will.”

80% of companies make the claim that they deliver "superior" customer service.  However only 8% of people
think these same companies deliver "superior" customer service. Decide what data is critical to measuring customer satisfaction. Don’t just go with your gut; prove that you provide great service with known metric points. Also, don’t hesitate to survey customers for feedback and measure success that way.

People want this level of engagement from the companies with which they do business ... even the best of what formerly passed for good customer service is no longer enough. You have to be no less than a customer concierge, doing everything you can to make every one of your customers feel acknowledged, appreciated, and heard. You have to make them feel special, just like when your great-grandmother walked into Butcher Bob’s shop or bought her new hat, and you need to make people who aren’t your customers wish they were. Social media gives businesses the tools to do that for the first time in a scalable way.”

Employees only ask for the customer’s name 21% of the time. Your Customers has a name 100% of the time, and they like hearing you use it.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

SMART Service Desk: Using Humor In Customer Service

We must start this blog with a note of caution.  Humor is a integral part of life and has many benefits.  But some folks may have reached a point of frustration where your levity could be ill received and then a mea culpa must be offered to defuse what the customer may perceive as mocking.

Humor is an area that is sadly lacking in customer service. With greater technology comes distracted human interaction. Humor is necessary, just like putting a smile to your voice. 

Laughter relaxes the whole body. When you laugh it relieves physical tension and stress. It’s reported to leave your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after. When a customer service agent uses humor it can relax the customer and allows them to make a better decision.

Laughter even boosts immune system function. When you laugh it decreases stress hormones and increases immune cell function. It also increases infection-fighting antibodies, improving your resistance to disease. So, when a CSR makes a customer laugh and smile, they may need a thank you for extending the customer’s life.

Laughter triggers a release of endorphins. Endorphins are the body’s natural feel-good chemical. They promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain.

Laughter protects the heart. Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow. Now, that’s a heart healthy alternative to drugs. This can help protect you against a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems. Did they just save your life again?

Laughter boosts social skills. Many scientist believe laughter allows humans to connect, bond and communicate with one another. Laughter is a universal means of communication. It’s a great way to connect with many cultures and is the reason “…when you laugh, the world laughs with you, but when you weep, you weep all by yourself.”

Humor and laughing is a natural part of being. So why are so many companies avoiding this connection between their company and their customers? Does yours?

How does laughing and humor make you feel? Have you had an experience where it changed the outcome of a situation you were in?

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

SMART Service Desk Celebrates St Patrick’s Day

Shan n begorrah of course we are Irish! At least on Saint Patrick’s Day!

St. Patrick's Day is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated on the 17th of March, and named in honor of the patron saint of Ireland. The festival commemorates the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrating Irish heritage and culture. St. Patrick's Day is now celebrated by many people throughout the world, Irish and non-Irish alike, with food, drink and all things green. 

St. Patrick's Day has been observed as a religious festival in Ireland for over a thousand years, though it was only recognized as a celebration of Irish culture and heritage in the 1970's. The day is named in honor of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, who has been credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland. There are multiple origin stories for St. Patrick.

Most sources agree that St. Patrick's actual name was Maewyn Succat. They also agree that Maewyn was kidnapped and sold into slavery at age 16 and, to help him endure his enslavement, he turned to God.

Six years after his captivity began, St. Patrick escaped from slavery to France, where he became a priest, and then the second Bishop to Ireland. He spent the next 30 years establishing schools, churches, and monasteries across the country. He brought Christianity widespread acceptance amongst the pagan indigenous peoples.

It is thought that St. Patrick used a shamrock as a metaphor for the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), showing how three individual units could be part of the same body. His parishioners began wearing shamrocks to his church services. Today, "the wearing of the green" on St. Patrick's Day represents spring, shamrocks, and Ireland.

You don't have to wear a sweater with a giant shamrock on it. The great thing about this holiday is you are free to go as subtle or as wild as you like. St. Patrick's Day t-shirts have been a common article of clothing to wear proudly.

If you're working this March 17th, you can still get into the festive spirit by incorporating a little green into your business attire. Try a green-striped polo or collared shirt, a green or shamrock-dotted tie, or green socks and undies for the closet Saint Patrick's Day fans.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

SMART Service Desk Says Learn About Customer Relations Management

Customer relations or relationship management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support.

The characteristics of CRM are;

Relationship management is a customer-oriented feature with service response based on customer input, one-to-one solutions to customers’ requirements, direct online communications with customer and customer service centers that help customers solve their issues.

Sales force automation. This function can implement sales promotion analysis, automate tracking of a client’s account history for repeated sales or future sales, and also coordinate sales, marketing, call centers, and retail outlets in order to realize the salesforce automation.

Use of technology. This feature is about following the technology trend and skills of value delivering using technology to make “up-to-the-second” customer data available. It applies data warehouse technology in order to aggregate transaction information, to merge the information with CRM products, and to provide KPI (key performance indicators).

Opportunity management. This feature helps the company to manage unpredictable growth and demand and implement a good forecasting model to integrate sales history with sales projections.

CRM is used in developing and maintaining client relationships

Increasingly CRM is expanding outside of the core sales and marketing areas and systems are available that incorporate support and finance data also into the CRM view that a user gets, enabling a wider holistic view of a customer from one screen for a user.

Customer relationship management systems track and measure marketing campaigns over multiple networks. These systems can track customer analysis by customer clicks and sales.

If you noticed that CRM is Customer Oriented first and foremost.  Putting customers first is always good for business and often places customer’s needs above the bottom line calculations.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Is Your Year Meeting Expectations Yet?

Well here we are 72 days into 2015 and we have run into a Friday the 13th.  Many folks have a bit of superstition that hangs onto these Fridays. We feel that your business luck has far more to do with good planning and best practice operations than blaming providence.

I’m sure that the adage of the lowest selling price is the key factor in customer decisions. A medium sized store doesn't have the buying power that a big box retailer does.  The manufactures don’t come to you with special models and very special prices. They sure don’t call you with an offer to buy out their over stock.

Many business don’t really want a customer that buys only at the lowest possible price. I know that means giving up on some sales.  But in order to stay in business there must be an overall profitability. You may have heard the old saying “We lose money on everything we sell but we make up for it in volume.” If that isn’t the scariest thing you have ever heard, I don’t know what would be.

Getting a customer through your door is one thing. Keeping that customer coming back is something else entirely. Will customer retention be top of the list for your new year’s plans? Existing customer are the real goldmine of all businesses.

The closest you can get to anticipating the future is taking a look back and using last year's numbers as benchmarks you can add or subtract from. Analytics can provide retailers with everything from what deals and discounts worked last year to predicting how much inventory to have in stock this year. Looking at dollars and sense can be quite clear using your accounting software.

So many businesses do an excellent job of making the initial sale, then drop the ball and get complacent, ignoring the customer, while they chase more business. Your selling has actually only just begun when someone makes that initial purchase decision because virtually everyone is susceptible to buyer’s remorse. 

To lock in that sale, and all of the referrals and repeat business that will flow from it, you need to strike while the iron is hot to allay your customers’ fears and demonstrate by your actions that you really care. You should thank them and remind them again why they’ve made the right decision to deal with you … and put a system in place to sell to them again, and again, constantly proving that they made the right decision. Learning how to keep in touch is what SMART Service Desk can help your company accomplish.

Looking at your customer’s experience requires a completely different metric and software tool.  Today that tool can even be cloud based and sharable by different business stores and locations across town or even worldwide. 

The last thing you want is for your business to be “growing broke.” Beside the need for accounting software is the need for SMART Service Desk software. Consider it the accounting for your customer interaction.  Are you running in the black when it comes to how your customer feel about your business? Don’t wait for the silence in sales to be your first indication that you have inadvertently let your customers down.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

What Challenges Continue To Face Business Owners?

That question may not be entirely fair, as different challenges are faced by different types of businesses. Many types of businesses share delivery deadlines.  Customers of all types tend to want their product or service when they want it and lead time is irrelevant to them.

We can say that most people understand that building a structure from scratch will take some time. The builder’s supply problems are not something the buyer considers.  Deadline expectations are something that must be built into the customer’s education process.

In the manufacturing process we have to look at whether there is tooling, molds or die involved. A supply of raw materials must be secured. Then a facility must be found or created to make the product. Beyond that there is the distribution for both pre and post production.

How long will a product be needed? That is a common business challenge. I sure hope I don’t need to go all the way back to the buggy whip to make my point. Few people foresaw how quickly the public phone and all related parts became nearly completely irrelevant.

Today the fast paced evolution of tech products lead to a business cycle where at six months a product can be considered yesterday’s wonder gadget.  In fact, upon introduction companies have found their product line was side stepped by a competitor and left in the dust. The phrase… “All dressed up and nowhere to go.” Quickly jumps to mind.

Customers and their wants and needs have been many times called, “fickle.” Out guessing or predicting the next fast moving product or idea can lead to many sleepless nights for all sizes of businesses. 

Learning to use data to forecast you customer’s needs (and wants) is a good first step to understanding and quickly responding to the business challenges your company faces and perhaps more importantly will face in the coming months and years.

Warning Reading This Could Lead to More Sleepless Nights: Forecast accuracy in the supply chain is typically measured using the Mean Absolute Percent Error or MAPE. Statistically MAPE is defined as the average of percentage errors. Most practitioners, however, define and use the MAPE as the Mean Absolute Deviation divided by Average Sales. This is in effect a volume weighted MAPE. This is also referred to as the MAD/Mean ratio. 

There is good news SMART Service Desk Can Help!

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

SMART Service Desk Says Give Customers Reasons To Return

Getting a customer to return isn’t as simple as price, availability or selections. OK, those help, no question about that. Nobody will buy from an empty wagon. And they sure aren’t going to buy something they don’t want or can’t use. While the correct pricing structure is a big plus it is never about always being the lowest price, regardless of quality.

Most of us know the 1967 Aretha Franklin song R E S P E C T.  Are you sure you are giving enough respect to you customers on a daily basis? Can we take a moment and make some suggestions?

Always show gratitude. Thank people for their assistance and their support on a regular basis. It's important to remember all the people who've helped you on your business journey. Show respect by saying thanks. Even if there's not an obvious occasion for thanks, showing it regularly will mean a lot to people. Send letters, calls, emails and texts to customers you've lost touch with. It doesn't need to take more than a few minutes to express businesses’ gratitude.

Always speak politely to everyone. Remember to compliment your customers often. When others are successful, draw attention to it and celebrate their ability and their achievement. Learn to recognize when people put forth extra effort and achieve something and praise them for it with sincerity. Take them aside and do it in private, so your compliments will seem genuine.

Always be sincere. While it's important to thank people and praise others, most people don't usually respect brown-nosing. Be genuine in your thanks and in showing your respect to other people's effort. Speak from the heart. Even something as simple as "It's always good to see you" can mean a lot and show lots of respect. It doesn't need to be complicated. It should never feel forced. Make it a daily habit.

Always do what you say you'll do. If you commit to an event or make plans with someone, come through on your end of the deal. Being reliable shows respect for people's time, and shows that you're making a special effort to be there for them. Respect other people's efforts by being on time, being prepared, and being enthusiastic.

Give your customers a reason to come back. Advertise a follow-up discount to your current customers. If they purchase something now, they'll get a coupon to use on their next purchase from you. Set up a referral program so that your existing customers will get a discount when they refer a new customer to you. This type of loyalty program is common in service businesses.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. 

We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

How Good Are Your IT Service Management Skills?

Some companies, seem to focus less on sound management practices, and more on the trendy and desirable work of leadership and coaching.

However, managers are responsible for making sure that practices are done correctly. And while leadership may bring us vision, inspiration and challenge, these things count for nothing without the efficient implementation brought about by sound management.

To be a great customer service manager, you must have an extensive set of skills. You must learn to inspire others using proper planning and delegation through communication and motivation.

Because your skill set needs to be so vast, it's tempting to build skills only in the areas of management that you're already comfortable with. But, for your long-term success, it's wise to analyze your skills in all areas of management. Then to challenge yourself to improve in all of the areas that need improvement.

Picking the right software tools to help you do this is critical. Technology is a key ingredient when it comes to finding the most innovative way to manage your customer service.  A craftsman can only go as far as the tools that he or she has available, right? 

That said, there is no shortage of IT Service Management Software to choose from. Selecting which one is right for your company can be challenging; decisions don’t always just boil down to considering cost and imperturbable features. There are many factors to weigh, from respondent experience to data output and everything in between. 

We feel the need to improve customer satisfaction and life time value from initial contact to post-sales support is only the beginning. SMART customer Service Management provides a detailed 360 degree view of your customer interactions. Improve customer service and delivery operations, while learning to maximize revenue opportunities and delight your customers with our affordable and mobile solutions.

Let us help you achieve faster implementation, successful change management, and lower total cost of ownership with our 100% configurable, intuitive and affordable solutions.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. 

We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Learn To Improve Your Customer Retention Rate

“Statistics are everything” – “No, understanding your statistics is everything.” In sports, we like to say, “you’re only as good as your last game”. In business and customer service, You should live by, “Your company is only as good as your last customer interaction.”

Your customer retention rate is the key factor to determining how good your customer service is and a he factor in how quickly you can grow your business. If you can get the formula right, you will start retaining more customers, which will lead to strong business growth.

If you start the month with 100 customers. By the end of the month, you have 105 customers (15 have cancelled their contracts and you brought on 20 new customers). Let’s do some math and it looks like this:

That means that 85% of your customers are continuing to use your services, thus a customer retention rate of 85%. Why should you measure your customer retention rate?

Many companies know their acquisition rate, after all getting new customers is fun. Relatively few know their attrition rate; losing customers is no fun.

Here are the cold hard facts on why customer retention is important.

It is 5-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an old one
Loyal customers are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase
Additionally, it is a great indicator of how good your customer service is and how loyal your customers are. Customer retention rate can be defined as a metric that indicates the proportion of customers that have stayed with you for a while. The retention rate can be calculated annually, monthly or weekly.

My thoughts are that your customer retention rate is calculated by measuring the percentage number of customers that you have retained over a given period.

Sometimes customer retention rate is confused with attrition rate. Attrition rate is the compliment of retention rate. If a company has a 20% attrition rate it will have an 80% retention rate. Your attrition rate can be defined by the percentage number of customers you have lost over a given period.

Learn to benchmark and improve your customer retention rates.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Have You Chosen Your IT Service Management Software?

There is no question that there are many choices of customer service software for you to choose from. But, like all categories of products they all aren’t created equally. One thing is for sure they have many different price points.

Another area that you have to consider is how much it costs to implement the solution. There are two other related factors.  How long it takes to implement the different products and how long it takes to train your staff (or new staff) to be able to successfully use the product.

There is a solution that is both robust and easy to implement and use. SMART Service Desk is that solution. It is scalable in cost so that no company is too small to benefit from our solutions.

Increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. Our SMART Service Desk solutions can be adapted very quickly, easily and economically to meet your exact business needs. Achieve faster implementation, successful change management, and lower total cost of ownership with our 100% configurable, intuitive and affordable solutions.

Here is what one of our customers said about SMART Service Desk; "We needed a tool with automated workflow and easy to use interface. SMART Service Desk’s built-in workflow has made big improvements in our Service Operations - especially having online approval."

Your company can benefit from improved customer satisfaction and life time value from initial contact to post-sales support. SMART Service Desk provides a detailed 360 degree view of your customer interactions. You can improve customer service and delivery operations, maximize revenue opportunities and delight your customers with our affordable and mobile solution.

SMART Customer relationship management (CRM) software, offered both on-premise and cloud-based CRM, help businesses reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing and automating business processes to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty in the sales, marketing, and customer service fields.

Through SMART CRM solutions we deliver outstanding ROI through automation in customer service, and sales force automation. We also offer mobile apps that allow you to manage your customer relationships on your mobile devices, and software integration adaptors that integrate data and reporting from social media directly into your CRM application.

With our solutions your business can foster employee engagement, retention and productivity. Your satisfied employees can help create more satisfied customers and Improve processes, products, and services, and ultimately your organizational profitability.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Oracle Study Finds Customer Service Lacking

On March 4th Oracle released a study about modern customer service best practices. They found that some companies are investing in new technologies to realize the business Relevant Products / Services benefits of modern customer service, 62 percent don’t grasp the full importance and impact customer service can have when it is an organization-wide strategic goal. 

Eighty-eight percent of respondents say they believe they are making significant progress delivering modern customer service, there are several factors preventing companies from leveraging customer service as a true organizational strategy, according to the study. Among those are limited definitions of customer service; poor knowledge management and customer visibility; and a reliance on traditional channels and metrics. 

Despite the barriers to adopting customer service as an organizational strategy, companies are at least starting to understand the importance of investing in modern customer service technologies and CRM Relevant Products / Services (customer relationship management) systems to deliver the best customer experiences. Among the top areas slated for investment in 2015 are additional online customer service capabilities (55%); self-service technology (47%); mobile Relevant Products/Services apps (52%); social media (43%); and knowledge management systems (51%). 

They also found that most organizations are not fully embracing a modern customer service mindset, with only 38 percent of respondents viewing modern customer service as a companywide priority. 

The study found that many organizations still define customer service as a post-purchase function, with executives often not viewing customer service as a key agent for increasing sales (60%); retaining existing customers (47%); or enhancing their brands and marketing messages (85%). 

Many respondents say they have concerns about new customer service channels, including integrating them with existing systems (44%); cost (43%); implementation (39%); and technological limitations such as lack of support (36%). When evaluating customer service initiatives, some indicated there was relatively little use of new measurement tools such as net promoter score (22%) and customer effort score (37%). 

Company plans for the coming year show that while just 35 percent of organizations surveyed now leverage knowledge management systems, 51 percent plan to invest in knowledge management technology in the future, indicating they recognize its importance in delivering consistent answers, seamlessly. 

Where does your company or business fit into this study?  Are you putting your customers in a place that they deserve and most important expect?

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com