Customer support is no longer just about long telephone calls with unhappy customers. Time and technology have revolutionized how brands stay connected and serve their customers. High-quality customer support directly translates to high customer satisfaction rates, increased retention, and revenue. Recent research shows that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on their customers.
SaaS-based customer relationship management (CRM) solutions have been game-changers in the customer support sector. Businesses around the world are increasingly using CRM helpdesks to manage their sales and support processes remotely amid the ongoing widespread pandemic. A customer support automation platform can streamline and simplify the ticketing process to resolve customer issues faster from any part of the world.
A deeper look into the ticketing automation enabled by CRM solutions
Having an all-inclusive ticket management system has become the need of the hour. These systems help enterprises deliver personalized and delightful customer experiences at all touchpoints. A helpdesk ticketing system assists the customer support team in creating, tracking, and resolving customer queries and issues efficiently.
More often than not, real-time ticket resolutions lead to a surge in loyal customers and an increase in customer repurchase rates. A CRM platform can automate tickets pertaining to the contact center, service center, and field force in a systematic manner.
Some of the key capabilities and benefits of using a helpdesk ticketing system include:
- Faster ticket resolutions: A powerful SaaS-based ticketing system can organize the incoming customer tickets and route it to the right team or agent automatically. The ticket is also populated with all the relevant customer data such as the contact details, past interactions, purchase history, etc. This process, by freeing up a lot of time for your agents, lets them focus on pressing matters as well as resolve tickets faster.
- Multi-channel support: Customers like to reach to support teams through their preferred channel of communication (email, live chat, social media, etc). A CRM ticketing system helps support agents access incoming tickets from all channels on one single dashboard. Thanks to CRM, a customer service representative working remotely can respond to customers and resolve tickets without having to leave the application.
- Increased customer satisfaction and retention: With an intelligent helpdesk ticketing system in place, your support team can focus on giving additional one-on-one attention to customers and deliver contextual solutions to their issues. Providing insightful, personalized experiences makes customers feel valued and appreciated. This, in turn, breeds strong brand loyalty and helps in maximizing the revenue in the long term.
- Field force automation: Using a mobile CRM application, supervisors can assign service requests to field agents whenever a service ticket is raised. Agents can access all the data of the customer and the request on the app. They can also resolve or post updates on the tickets within the application. Enterprises can manage their field force teams remotely with a simple smartphone.
- Knowledge base: A Knowledge management system (KMS) enabled by a CRM solution can help you make work-related information accessible for employees across all teams, including customer support. By referring to the data repository anytime, customer service representatives can respond to complex queries within seconds. KMS could include videos, pricing charts, FAQs, or even brochures.
- Reports and analytics: Enterprises leverage CRM to receive analytics and metrics around the performance and productivity of their support teams. A unified dashboard with all the relevant visual metrics can help you gain valuable insights at a glance. Some of the important ticket-related metrics include the number of tickets closed and the average time is taken to resolve issues.
Thanks to the advent of SaaS technology, businesses can manage their sales and customer support operations from any part of the world without any hassle. Agents working from the safety of their homes can attend to customer queries and resolve them using a laptop or a smartphone with a CRM application in it.
Customer support automation platforms such as Kapture CRM has helped multiple customer-centric businesses deliver seamless customer support experiences.
About the Author
Sheshgiri Kamath is the CEO of Kapture CRM.