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AGENDA • WELCOME • OBJECTIVE • WARM UP • PRESENTATION • VOCABULARY • EXERCISES • FAREWELL
Objective: By the end of the lesson, students will be able to handle the vocabulary related to Online Support, in order to put it into practice when studying and applying online support for customers in the Call Center area, by the realization practices in the forum and learning new vocabulary during the class.
1. In your own words, what is customer service software?2. Why do you think customer service software is important in the Call Center Area?
What is customer service software? Customer service software is any program that helps an organization provide assistance and/or advice to the people who buy or use their products. The most basic role of customer service software is to provide a centralized system, known as a ticketing system, where service agents can track, prioritize, manage, respond to, and resolve customer queries or employee requests in masse. Customer service software also includes any tool that helps inform or facilitate customer service delivery. This includes tools such as knowledge bases, messaging apps, automation software, analytics dashboards, and more. Customer service software is often integrated with CRM software to give agents access to contextual data, such as a customer’s purchase history, from external sources. This equips a support team with context about who a customer is, where they’re coming from, and why they’re reaching out—regardless of channel.
How does customer service software work? At its most basic level, customer service software enables businesses to improve customer service delivery by unifying customer conversations and information across channels and systems in a single location. Why do small businesses need customer service apps? Small businesses need customer service applications to help organize, prioritize, and consolidate customer service inquiries. When used well, customer service apps enable quicker, more reliable, and more personalized responses to customer inquiries. This helps small businesses set themselves apart with superior customer service.
Benefits of customer service software Customer service platforms can benefit companies of all sizes and types—from multinational enterprises supporting millions of other businesses in multiple languages, to small consumer-facing businesses that need to answer customer questions quickly without hiring an army of support reps. Here are some key benefits of customer service software:
Drives customer satisfaction and loyalty When service agents have the information and tools they need to provide fast, personalized responses to customers, they can deliver better service. With better service, your customers are less likely to churn and more likely to become loyal buyers. And since 52 percent of customers go out of their way to buy from brands they’re loyal to, more loyalty usually means more sales. In this way, by facilitating improved service, customer service software can help your business grow with more satisfied, loyal customers.
2. Streamlines self-service 63 percent of customers always or almost always start with a search of a company's online resources when they have an issue. For enterprises, the challenge is managing a system for creating and updating those resources in real-time. Customer service platforms enable your business to streamline knowledge base creation and management, saving agents time and providing customers with the resources they need. Plus, you can track how your customers are using your knowledge base to help inform further self-service improvements.
3. Fosters a seamless agent experience Customer service tools help agents access and use the customer information they need, when and where they need it. These tools also facilitate improved internal collaboration with shared inboxes and greater efficiency with streamlined workflows. The result is agents that are more prepared and motivated to provide better customer care. All that leads to greater productivity, saving the business time and resources.
4. Gives businesses the ability to scale smarter At a certain point, rudimentary tools like spreadsheets aren’t enough to facilitate transparent internal and external customer service communications. But without effective collaboration among your service team, maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction as your business grows is nearly impossible. Customer service applications give a business the power of customer-centric agility. In other words, they enable a company to grow and scale based on the needs of its customers.
5. Enables smaller teams to do more, faster The speed of 'first reply' is one of the biggest influencers on customer satisfaction. But with so many service channels and the growing demand for personalization, service agents need customer service apps to help them respond to and resolve issues faster. And the data backs this up: in the Zendesk Benchmark Guide for Enterprise, the top-performing service teams have almost double the ticket-to-agent ratio of other companies. The way they perform well with fewer agents is by using customer service software that enables each agent to do more.
Types of customer service software: • Live chat • Phone support • Email • Knowledge base • Messaging • Customer service can be internal—supporting the employees within a company—or external—supporting the people who buy or use its products or services. • Each customer service channel is often considered a different type of customer service. Here are the main types of customer service you should know about:
Live chat Live chat software enables agents to solve customer issues in real-time, from where they already are, such as the homepage of your website or inside your mobile app. This gives a business the ability to be proactive and get ahead of an issue before it happens or even occurs. For instance, an e-commerce company might offer live chat on its checkout page to answer frequently asked questions before a customer abandons their cart. Live chat also enables a business to offer support around the clock. While your agents are busy being humans, chatbots can handle customer requests for them.
Phone support A phone conversation remains an effective way to solve a customer’s problem, especially for high-stakes issues. It’s sometimes even more effective than drawn out email conversations or real-time chatting, thanks to the personal touches that come with a phone call like a human’s voice. With features like call recordings, smart internal routing, access to the full customer history, and automatic ticket creation, call center software enables customer service representatives to be more strategic.
Email Email is the bread and butter of customer support. Similar to the phone, it’s long-ingrained, and remains a preferred channel among older generations. Email often serves as an internal form of support as well as an external one. A Human Resources, Payroll, or IT team, for example, could use email to answer questions for full-and part-time employees.
Knowledge base With a knowledge base, community forum, or customer portal, support teams can empower customers to self-serve. In fact, 81% of customers would rather figure out an issue on their own. But this is only possible if support teams have tools to make knowledge creation and upkeep easy. For instance, AI can flag when content is out-of-date or when a new article topic is needed. It can also use agents’ collective knowledge to automate resolutions for low-touch tickets.
Messaging apps The proliferation of messaging channels—like WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, and Facebook Messenger—has changed the way that people get in touch. That convenience factor has made its way to customer service as well. Customer service software apps allow customers to get in touch over the same messaging channels they use to communicate with friends and family. The benefit of using customer service software to communicate over messaging channels is the ability to keep conversations and context in a centralized location. If resolving a customer’s issue starts with a message then necessitates a follow-up phone call, all of that information is logged within the same support ticket.
15 best customer service software tools to enhance the customer experience: Zendesk Sprout Social Hootsuite MailChimp Apple Business Chat Facebook SurveyMonkey Slack Recurly NICE inContactCXone EZOfficeInventory Boss Solutions Suite Jira ServiceDesk LiveAgent Freshdesk
Auto-response: Auto-response is an email response function that composes and sends an appropriate email response automatically based on templates and email keywords. Contact Center: A contact center is an office where a company sends and receives business correspondence by telephone and email. Distribution: Distribution is the process of assigning different parts of a set or group to different people or departments. Email: Email is a system tor sending and receiving electronic messages in text format over the Internet. ERM: ERM (email response management) is the system that contact centers use to efficiently delegate and respond to customer email.
FAO: An FAQ (frequently asked question) is a common question that a company receives from many customers. FER: FER (first email resolution) is a situation in which the customer's question or issue is resolved completely by the first reply to the question. Follow-up: A follow-up is an action that completes a previous process or transaction. Integrated: lf a system is integrated, it combines multiple functions efficiently. Personalized: If something is personalized, it is created or developed for one particular person.
Rapid: If a response is rapid, it is very fast. Response Time: Response time is how long a customer waits for a reply to his or her email after sending it to a company. Template: A template is a computer document that can be used as a model and can be adjusted quickly to respond to a wide variety of email subjects.
Instructions: Read the following article and then answer some questions.
