The Software Side of CRM

CRM (Customer Relations Management) is a term used in today’s world to refer to interacting with your customers on a daily basis. When Customer Service Managers like me hear the term CRM, it’s usually referring to the software we use to do just that. These CRM software packages are our life line to our customers so it’s important that we work with the best possible features within these packages. Making our job easier and doing it better is what every Customer Service Manger is looking for, is it not?

All CRM tools basically operate in the same way. A question comes in, in the form of a “ticket”, to the software, an agent looks at it, resolves it, and a response goes out. Sounds simple enough, but the execution of that simple task can make a huge difference. Let’s take a look at four basic features I as Manager am looking for in a good CRM software package.

Making the top of the list is the ability to filter the tickets that come into support. The larger your traffic flow for these tickets, the more important it is to have them filtered into groups for your agents to work on. Managers will have agents who specialize in some fields more than others. The ability to get those tickets to the right people is crucial to providing the support our customers need.

Next up is a strong knowledge base for our agents to pull from. New and updated answers to questions are being discovered every single day. A place to pool these answers for the correct information to be given to customers every time is one of the better features a CRM package can have. Its good not only for the customers but for the agents as well! Being able to find an answer quickly will help speed up the process of responding to a ticket and stop the agent from having to do a lot of research that has already been done.

Coming in third on my list is the ability to see the actions taken on a ticket up to this point. The goal of every CS agent is first response resolution. Getting it right the first time doesn’t always happen no matter how hard we try, or there can be multiple steps that have to be addressed on a ticket to resolve it. Being able to see the work flow of a ticket and the actions taken can be the key for the completion of a ticket. For an agent they can see where the next step is based off its history or what has been discussed already if the ticket has come back for more help. For us Managers it can help determine a place where we might improve upon our service by finding a place where tickets may be getting delayed when we audit tickets to make sure we’re providing good service to customers.

Rounding up my best of features list is almost strictly for us Managers. And that is the Reports! These wonderful things can come in graphic or raw data form but ultimately provide the ability to see how many tickets are being done, where they have gone and who worked on them. Numbers don’t lie and reports will show us trends that might not otherwise have been seen unless tracked by all agents and reported back. We are always looking for ways to improve our work flow and without a way to see this data we would just be taking shots in the dark when trying to make improvements.

Every Manager is going to have their own twist on how they like to do things, but these four basic features will make life a whole lot better for every Customer Service Manager. Make sure your CRM package provides these “basics” and help your company do the best it can for every customer.

– Stephen Briggs