Someone used to examine a letter you mailed through the United States Postal Service every step of the way. It was personally carried from your mailbox, hand sorted at the distribution centers, and so on until it safely reached your recipient’s mailbox. Enter the Information Age. Now technology provides barcodes on every parcel, sorting machines to filter mail automatically, and a computer system to make it all work. Think of all the time saved! There are a lot of parallels when it comes to mail and customer issue tracking. But while mail has moved into the future, some companies still handle customer support issues just like the U.S.P.S. used to handle letters: without automation.
Issues arrive via email, and from there, the confusion begins:
- Who’s responsible for fixing the issue?
- Have we received more than one complaint about this?
- Did we already resolve this customer’s issue?
If this sounds like your company, it’s time to move your issue management out of the past and into today. The key is automation, and below, we’ll explain how it can benefit your business.
Organization
It’s time to let go of that support@yourwebsite.com email address. As soon as you begin to receive even a small amount of support requests, you’ll need a full-time employee to spend their day reading emails. To keep track of one customer’s support history, and to ensure your company isn’t creating duplicate tasks, that employee will need to update a database after every interaction. Do you really want to spend tens of thousands of dollars per year on what will still be a subpar solution? Customer issue tracking software can handle it quicker and more cost effectively.
Metrics & Reporting Can Uncover Trouble Spots
With issue tracking software comes the ability to view reports about the support requests your company receives. If you can compile every support request and look for trends, you might discover a large amount of your customer base is having the same issue. With this knowledge, you can quickly work on and deploy a fix.
Customer Issue Tracking Eliminates Redundancy
Someone assigned to handle support through an email account is going to cost you quite a bit of time, because, frankly, humans aren’t perfect. If you’re receiving a lot of similar requests over days or weeks, your go-to support specialist may be asking other members of your team to fix what’s already been solved. These tasks will fill their own inboxes, making it more difficult to find high-priority items, and ultimately slow down your entire support process.
The Efficiency of Technology
For companies with multiple wings of support, having the right amount of specialists on staff can mean the difference between happy customers and angry customers. If you’re using customer issue tracking software, you can identify if one department is receiving more support requests than another and move staff to provide appropriate relief.
If your company is still working on an outdated customer support model, contact PhaseWare today and learn how automated issue tracking software can help your support team increase efficiency and provide better results for your customers.