Customer support is all about being approachable, human, and flexible. But without the right tech support behind it, all that humanity is going to get lost in the shuffle and nothing will get accomplished very quickly or efficiently. So with customer support and service, you need to find the right balance between the human connection and the technical support behind the decisions to make things better.
And to go about this, you have to understand customer relationship managers (from the software side), general IT knowledge (for troubleshooting), analytic processes, how to keep searchable archives, a how to maintain tight security to protect privacy and personal information.
Customer Relationship Managers
One of the best ways to find this balance immediately is by studying customer relationship managers and finding out which one best suits your needs. These software programs aggregate a whole lot of data into one simple place, and essentially give you the opportunity to make decisions about your customer relationship processes based on hard data and real trends, rather than just guesswork. And if an entire company pays attention to these readouts, steps forward are made successfully and incrementally.
General IT Knowledge
If you’ve you’ve ever taken online IT classes, you know how important it is to be able to troubleshoot basic software and hardware problems that deal with connectivity, especially when it comes to technical management of customer problems. If you can’t step people through the basic ways to connect with your service, that’s like throwing money down the drain, so all of your employees should at least have their basics handled, and online learning is probably the most cost and time-efficient ways to do that.
Working With Analytics
And along with the idea of the full customer relationship software package, one of the smartest technical things that you can do to support yourself will also include knowing how to work with web analytics. If you can see not only what your interactions with the customer are, but also what the interactions between the customer and your website, in terms of searches, in and out pages, and time spent, you’ll have a great chance to tweak your technical management processes.
Keep Archives
One of the biggest things that you can do in the technical management aspect of any sort of continuing relationship or feedback loop is to keep searchable archives. Whether this is through text message, email, attachment, internal communication, or even snapshots or faxes – they all need to be organized so that you can search for any piece of text, or any date, or any number, at any time.
Maintain Security
Security is paramount when you have a business that keeps people’s names, phone numbers, addresses, or other private or personal information. In terms of technical management, keeping security tight around this information is a priority.