Showing posts with label customer support. Show all posts
Showing posts with label customer support. Show all posts

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Communication is Essential

Interpersonal communication can involve a wide variety of modes of communication including oral, written and other non-verbal forms. But the most common reference to interpersonal communication is the spoken form where the two individuals are sitting, face-to-face. Business organizations generally conduct such communication through staff meetings, formal discussions related to projects or services, employee performance reviews within the office. Other forms include client meetings, employment interviews or sales visits which are conducted outside the office.

Relevance of good communication
Interpersonal communication is necessary for any organization, especially for small and medium enterprises, which must supervise and coordinate with a variety of other organizations. It is inescapable and also irreversible. Communication, in any form, cannot be defined as simple. It is a complex process which cannot be reversed. It has a good chance of failing if not considered properly and it can also be confusing in many cases. Clarity is a must and care must be taken to keep it optimum. Maximum information also leads to maximum difficulties for the consumer. Also, interpersonal communication has a definite context. 
Let your customer know that he's important

Ways of communicating
There are different styles of interpersonal communication which can be classified as one-way or two-way as per the transfer of information. In a two-way communication, two or more parties are involved in a constructive exchange. Companies can apply both forms as per their requirement. While one-way communication refers to a more controlling and directive mode, two-way relies on a more interactive approach. Primarily, there are six types of communication adopted in business settings, namely controlling, egalitarian, structuring, dynamic, relinquishing and withdrawal.

Do it right with the customer

Conducting a successful form of interpersonal communication with the customer is necessary for any SME to progress. The disconnect between the customers and company can prove to be the biggest barrier in a company’s progress. Good communication ensures happy customers, efficiency in output, productivity and an unmatchable synergy within the enterprise. This form of communication also ensures that the company is made aware of the various modifications and improvements required in each of its various products. A good enterprise has to understand customer’s thoughts, feelings and grasp their situation better to respond to their needs and expectations with the company and its products.

The flaw of repetition
Repetition is another important aspect of effective communication as customers need to be informed correctly about the products and services of a particular enterprise. Useful details and necessary information needs to be imparted from time-to-time to the customers. Listening to your customer is a necessary part of the communication. Effective listening also involves understanding both verbal and non-verbal signs and intent of the customer. It also helps SMEs in responding in a more holistic manner to the customer.

As someone rightly puts it, interpersonal communication can be compared to a two-way street where on one side, the companies have to listen to customers and also speak in the right and responding manner to them. Communicating effectively also ensures a loyalty from the customers. After all, any customer would prefer an organization which dedicates its time in understanding his needs, which contributes to the rise of an organization. 

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Online Tools to Reduce Down Cost of Customer Service for Your SME

For any Small and Medium Enterprise customer service is a challenge to be addressed. Large businesses can afford to maintain dedicated customer care departments and can hire people to specifically respond to customers on time. For Small and Medium enterprises though, this is a challenge to reckon with.

Many of our partner SMEs have previously posed customer services as one of the major impending operational challenges. For any SME maintaining customer relationships while providing best of class service is difficult.

What is the challenge with Customer Service for SMEs?
The challenge with customer service for SMEs are multiple:

  • sustaining a customer service team dedicated to resolving any issues in time, everytime
  • charting out efficiency of the resolutions
  • taking customer feedback on an on-going basis at all times
  • creating, maintaining and sustaining a proper process for assigning tickets to the relevant customer service professionals in the team
All these are challenges which come associated with customer service as a business objective are tough to be solved by small and emerging companies.

How to create a scalable customer service solution?
Internet again comes to help! There are many tools online which can help you set up a process oriented customer service set-up without much hassles. Depending upon your size, if you are a start-up/ budding organization, you might not even need a dedicated resource to really service your customers.

An online help-desk solution is the answer to all your customer service problems. One such interesting application is Zendesk which is an online help desk software solution. 

What is Zendesk?
Zendesk is a web based help desk software with an inbuilt support ticket system and a self service customer support platform.

Zen Desk works like any other customer service/ support department of an organisation. It creates a virtual (online) customer support for your organisation and helps you address customer complaints while setting a process for the same.

How can I start?
Zen Desk allows a free 30 day trial of their product and hence you can try the product and see its features for free before actually thinking of investing your money for the same. Once you login to your Zen Desk account the first landing page that you reach to is your dashboard which lets you access everything of the software and support multiple clients. Refer the screen capture below to have a look at the dashboard:


You can always customize your customer service online help desk with your own branding (logo, colors) etc. To start with you need to create a pool of knowledge oriented resources for your customers to see as a self help portal. You can do this by clicking on the button called 'forums' at the bottom of the screen.


Once done, you must now start defining rules on the platform, with the help of the 'manage' tab on the top menu.

Once the 'manage' options are set and defined, the platform is ready to be used for extending customer service to the customers online with defined support options.

How does this help SMEs?
For small and medium enterprises such online platforms are a boon as they help in creating a process oriented structure for emerging enterprises to deliver quality customer support services.

To know more on leveraging online tools for business success, drop in a comment to this post OR contact our team of experts at the IndiaMART Knowledge Services!