Customer service is an essential piece to any business. Customers want prompt answers to their questions, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM has added even more customer service management and scheduling tools to their offering to ensure that you can go above and beyond your customers’ expectations. By using the service module with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you are able to obtain and store the information you need to deliver efficient service to your customers to keep them coming back and keep your business growing.
With almost no limitations as to how much data you can record into your system, the module offers countless possibilities but can also be somewhat daunting without a framework in place. Align yourself and your team by asking the right questions to ensure that you have everything on hand to keep your customers happy. Here are some of the ones we feel are the most important to begin with.
1. What important information do you need to help your customers?
Just like with the other modules in CRM, the key to ensuring that the service module truly helps you support your clients is to make sure that you can enter all the details necessary to resolve their issues. Being able to record relevant and useful information into a case avoids frustrating customers as they do not need to re-explain their situation even if the case gets handed to a different agent. Information is populated and updated automatically by linking cases and accounts together. This way, users don’t have to manually modify and copy information, and agents don’t need to view both the case and account to properly address customer concerns. You can also highlight key fields to help them open and resolve cases as quickly as possible.
2. How do you manage new support cases?
What is your process for handling new support cases? Ask yourself how your clients contact you (e.g., by phone, by email or through an online form) and how this affects the way cases are created in your system. Do you need to attribute cases to your agents using specific rules in regards to the product that needs to be supported, the region where the client is located or the priority level they are given? By putting in place a well-defined process for the management of your support cases, there is no confusion as to who should take care of whom and what, agents are notified when a new support case is created and assigned to them, and they can get down to the actual resolution part more quickly.
3. How do your agents share information and learn from previous cases?
Do you have a bank of information or a description of procedures that serve as a reference for your agents? Think about what your customer service team needs to access in regards to the case history to learn from previous, similar cases. A searchable knowledge base can improve the productivity and efficiency of not only your support staff but everybody else in your organization as well, as they will have the information they need when they need it. Everybody can collaborate on this resource library and gather as much knowledge as possible by contributing articles, product guides, data sheets, and any other helpful documents that will help provide answers to your customers quickly and easily.
4. How do you track your customers’ priority levels?
If you offer different support plans to your customers, you should think about how this will affect the level of service they will receive. List out the elements that define your contracts, such as response times or monthly call allowances, so that you can set appropriate business rules on how they are prioritized in your queue and ensure that their expectations are fulfilled. In order to ensure that you are meeting your customer priority levels, warnings can be triggered to notify managers if operations are not meeting these targets or if an unusual situation is taking place and needs to be addressed. Also think about whether you have an escalation process in place and how you want to manage it as you can optimize and automate this process with Dynamics CRM.
5. How do you evaluate your customer service?
What are the standards on which your customer service gets evaluated? Whether it is overall customer satisfaction, customer retention, conversion rate, average resolution time, or any other criteria, consider these points to make sure that you are putting in place the necessary indicators and recording the results to measure your performance. These metrics allow you to verify whether you are indeed fulfilling your service promises to your customers and meeting their expectations. By tracking these elements in real time, you can provide feedback to your service team on a regular basis so that they can continuously improve.
The service module is often less talked about than the or modules in CRM. While they certainly add value to your customer relationship management tool, customer retention is key to keeping a business alive. Furthermore, having all the relevant information about your customers into one single CRM system encourages work collaboration between your sales, marketing and customer service teams. It increases their effectiveness, as everybody has a 360-degree view of your clients and access to the details they need at all times. A careful analysis and thorough planning will help you successfully implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM and its modules, ensuring that you make the most out of your management system investment.
Was this blog helpful? Check out our other posts in this series to find out what questions you should ask yourself before implementing the sales and marketing modules in Dynamics CRM.
By JOVACO Solutions,
