Seth Godin recently posted a very timely and thoughtful post on, “Starting over with customer service” where he provides several reasons why customer service is broken.
One major reason is that companies do not do a good job of organizing their data. Often times information is separated by departments, locations, or position titles, and so you are often left explaining your issue over and over again to one employee after another as you move horizontally or vertically up the ranks. This is unacceptable in my opinion.
I personally just recently had a very long and drawn out issue with the company, iRobot regarding my Roomba. It had me red in the face until I finally talked to a supervisor who ended up agreeing to replace the product. One primary problem was they could not access all of my records starting from the first day I had a problem (one year ago) until the end. This took hours of my time holding, waiting, and explaining my situation to several different people. Even though they replaced the product, my perception of the company was tainted.
There is a better solution, but I cannot provide it without using this blog as a bit of selling proposition. But I hope you will find it worthwhile information.
Twelve Horses recently partnered with Salesforce, an on-demand customer relationship management company. The reason why is because we have long since used them for our own personal organization of customer data, and we have been very happy with it. We can easily customize fields to capture the data that is specific to our needs. For example, if someone fills out a form on our website, not only does that action send the online visitor the information they requested via email, as well as fire off an sms text message notification to certain people within Twelve Horses, but it enters that visitor’s information into Salesforce as a lead. This begins a relationship with Twelve Horses that is aided by solid management technology.
So now that customer data is in Salesforce; for instance, name, address, and what information they requested. If a phone or email dialogue transpires between Twelve Horses and that prospect, it is also recorded in Salesforce. If a contract is written up, and the prospect becomes a customer of Twelve Horses, then that contract is also recorded in Salesforce. We can go back at any time and look at how the relationship started, identify what products and/or services they are using, and potentially uncover other solutions we can provide to better their business. The point is there is never a disconnect in the relationship, and it provides us with the ability to offer good customer service no matter who the employee is on either side.
Twelve Horses has been providing customized solutions for better customer service and organization of data for a variety of different industries. For example, we recently designed an online event management solution for a client that completely integrates with Salesforce. After an event, the client can go back and look at what customers went to what events, who they brought with them, how they paid, at what point in the sales cycle did they finally decide to purchase and so on. It helps this client better service its customers and structure its business.
We have also customized Salesforce for real-estate investment companies who want to group their customers by land-buy locations, amount paid, length of relationship, and type of transaction. The client can run a variety different reports related to sales, marketing, and customer service scenarios to maintain a deeper understanding of how they are doing and where they are going. There are many other examples of how we have used Salesforce to empower businesses.
The point is everything that transpires can be documented and organized. Online and offline touch points with the customer can all be integrated, recorded, and easily accessible through a web-based platform. At any time, place, or level of interaction with the customer, the company can understand the needs of their customer and address them in a timely and effective manner.
Understand your customers through better data management and organization. It will reflect better on your brand, and you will retain more of your customers.
tags: customer service, event, data management, Salesforce, Twelve Horses
