Technology is evolving so fast and users are adopting to these new technologies everyday . But as people get used to these new technologies, also business should jump on the wheel and find ways to engage with their customers using information technology. Customer service is a key factor in any business growth, because when ever a customer is well served, they will advertise your business through word of mouth, which in return will result into a quick business growth. Information technology can be used to improve customer service in so many ways.
However , IT experts must know some basics about their customers before they implement any technological method which can add value to their customer service section. As an entrepreneur, make sure that your business is using information technology in a manner that helps the customer and not hinder customer experience. You have got only one chance to make a great impression, so make sure that you use information technology very well to serve your clients. Yesterday i covered a topic on ”How to Improve Customer Service in IT Departments? ” and we saw that IT experts must understand who their customer is and what their expectations are. Today, i want us to cover details on how any business or organization can use Information Technology (IT) to improve its customer service.
5 Ways IT Can Improve Customer Service:
1. Use Emails to notify customers about new offers and deals: It is human nature people want to buy at a lower cost, when ever a person see’s a 50% discount on any product they will be encouraged to rush and buy while the product is still on discount. So as a business, you can use this human weakness, by tailoring electronic HTML emails with products or services on discount, suggest deals which can expire in a specific period of time, this will create trust and desire to buy on instant. Offering these special deals and discounts to your customers will make them feel cared for . A good example of a company which has used its information technology to improve customer service is AMAZON.COM. When you purchase a product from Amazon, they will track your interests when ever you go back to their online store , they use web cookies gather data about you, the information they collect is used to tailor shopping deals and suggest items related to your previous purchase at a lower price.
2. Collect information and data about your customers: As a business you can use Information technology to collect data about your customers, so that you tailor your services basing on their needs. A business can serve its customers by delivering the best service or product on time at an affordable cost. Their some companies which have concentrated on creating the best service or product for their customers and this has saved them money they would have spent in creating expensive persuasive adverts. As a business, it makes no sense to create a very beautiful persuasive advert, yet your service or products can not fulfill customer needs and expectations. To collect this data, you can set up a website which loads a survey form when ever its loaded , or provide a help section on your website where your customers can file complaints and concerns about your service or product . Listen to what your customers are suggesting so that you serve them basing on their needs and expectations. In business, it is not what you want; it is what your customers want. You can use feed back tool like uservoice.com to get feed back from your users
3. Have a customer care representative both on phone, email and social networks: Make sure that you respond to customer requests on time. Avoid using auto responders or robots answering phones when customers call for support. Remember, you’re not the only one in the market, your competitors will base on your weakness to gain competitive advantage. So it is very important to be available at all times when a customer needs your support. It is not expensive to have a well organized customer support team at work, simply dedicate some one experienced for that job and train them so that they know how to handle customers. For example, when it comes to email support, you can draft a template which a support representative will follow when replying a customer, if the issue is technical, let some one in the technical department handle the customer, also make sure that you create a support mail in your company name for example ([email protected])
4. Make payment of services and products easier: Now that you have listened to your customers, you have tailored the service or product for them. They like what you provide and its time to make an order. Make sure that this is one of the simplest thing for them to do. Your mode of payment is part of customer service, provide various means of payment. For example, offline businesses can provide electronic visa card payment systems so that their clients can simply use their smart money cards to purchase products. Then for online businesses, you can use smart card electron payment services like ”VISA ELECTRON’’, and then also integrate other payment services like ”Paypal”. For security reasons, many online buyers have resorted to PAYPAL as their default mode of payment, since they do not have to expose their financial details on every website online. If a customer likes the service or product, they will want to buy it and they expect delivery to be fast. So if possible you can provide free delivery and shipment as a bonus.
5. Be known and trusted: let your customers know your location via your website. Before a customer decides to do business with you, they will do some background check on your company. In this case, you will have to show a location of your business by use of Google Maps, then you can as well show some decision makers profiles in the ”About Us ” section of your website. Let the support phone number and email be seen clearly and let customers who have used your service post testimonies to your website. The main advantage of these testimonies is to win confidence and trust among new customers.
