Invest in the Right Resources

Because happy customers are so vital to the success of your business, it’s critical to pay close attention to how your customer service representatives perform and interact with your customers. Your CSRs determine the customer’s relationship with your company.

It’s not enough to hire employees with great people skills, though. You also have to equip them with the tools they need to perform their job well. Good customer-relationship software systems give your CSRs visibility into all of the data they need to ensure a successful interaction with the customer.

A user-friendly software solution with “quick search” features and relevant customer insights allows your CSRs to better serve customers. By rapidly accessing important information about the customer while they’re interacting with them, you can prevent those dreaded, “Wait, what company are you with?” moments when on the phone and enhance the customer’s overall experience in a myriad of ways.

Customers will feel valued when your CSRs can not only promptly recognize them, but also quickly respond to their requests by utilizing data. And when your CSR solution is directly tied to your inventory management solution (a.k.a., when you’re utilizing a postmodern ERP solution), your CSRs will quickly morph into superheroes (at least from the customer’s perspective).

Learn from Your Peers

For a real-world example of what we’re talking about, take a look at American Storage and Logistics, a new and used material handling equipment company located in Grand Rapids, MI.

Before overhauling their entire customer-to-cash operation strategy, American Storage was frequently frustrated by not knowing what a customer had previously purchased from them. When they made the switch to Cavallo, though, they found themselves with a plethora of easily-accessed customer data. Detailed order history, as a specific example, was a game-changer. American Storage’s newfound ability to quickly respond to customer requests skyrocketed, thanks to a solution that gave their CSRs the tools they needed to meet and exceed customer requests.

Insist on the Best

So, now that you’ve realized the importance of ensuring that your CSR solution is part-and-parcel with your ERP solution, what exactly should you be searching for in your hunt for the right software?

As the primary hub for customer information, your solution should provide ready access to:

  • Contact information for as many individuals as necessary
  • Notes regarding the customer, brought front-and-center right away
  • Sales history and up-to-date inventory data
  • Customer wallets for storing payment information
  • Special pricing options to reward loyal customers
  • A logbook of interactions
  • Access to revenue and A/R statistics
  • Audit trails for customer data

Anything less than quick, easy access to this type of customer data is settling for second-best.

This data should be available for more than just your CSRs, too. Anyone on your team who needs access should be able to quickly find it. You need a method to ensure that sales reps, management, support techs, etc. can view customer data when and American Storage and Logistics, they need it. With Cavallo, this is accomplished via security functionality, which gives you ultimate control over which areas of the software each of their employees has access to.

Look to the Future

The best of the best customer service solutions will not only provide your employees with the necessary customer data. It will also aid in pipeline management by providing prospect and opportunity insights.

When you’ve got a prospect on the line, you need to be able to reel them in. Organizing, reporting on, and tracking your team’s sales strategy will help here. Your prospect plays an important role in the overall success of your business. The right strategy provides methods of keeping in touch with your prospect until they are converted into a customer.

Similarly, if your CSR has a hunch that a customer or prospect is in the market for more than they’re actually asking for, the CSR should be able to quickly and easily loop in your sales team. If your customer-to-cash solution makes this process clumsy or confusing, that’s a big red flag (and probably lost business, too).

Don’t Hold Yourself Back

One last key CSR software requirement we’ll touch on is scalability. The last thing you as a growing, product-centric company want is to run out of digital room for customer data. You wouldn’t put a cap on how many physical customers your company attracts, so why should you be subject to a digital one?

Data caps are one of several factors that come into play when designing a scalable ERP solution, and they’re of particular importance when considering how to lay the groundwork for a superior customer experience.

Final Thoughts

As we mentioned previously, Cavallo prides itself in providing our customers with an excellent CRM toolset. To learn more about what Cavallo has to offer your company, reach out to us! We’d love to start a conversation with you.