1) Budget & Time scale: As a Support Head/Manager always understand the Budget from the Business Team/Management as it will save a lot of time when selecting vendors. If you know the Budget, you can target and select the vendors within your Budget. Also, it is essential to create time scales for the selection, evaluation, and implementation of the new software. While looking at the budget you need to evaluate both short- and long-term costs associated with the purchase to make the correct buying decisions. To do that you must calculate (TCO i.e Total Cost of Ownership of the software) which includes all the direct and indirect costs associated with the software for a minimum 3 – 5 years. Many times, Managers forget to calculate the indirect cost. (Example: You are selecting software assuming that you have to pay a monthly cost as it is a SAAS software, however, later on, you might find that to customize the software you are asked to pay additional fees which is an indirect and unknown cost which will impact your overall Organization budget. If you are replacing existing software because some feature is missing there is always a possibility that if you research in detail you might end up getting a new software at a lower price compared to the existing software. Therefore, it does not necessarily mean that organization needs to increase the Budget to add on features. Sometimes companies buy a big package directly and do not use all the features in such cases the money and implementation are wasted. So always suggested building the requirement keeping in consideration the current business requirement and long-term requirement. Assume that your strategic vision is to provides Chat, Email & Phone service but in the beginning, you decided to start with a Chat & Email support. So here you should select a software that not only meets your current need for Chat & Email support but also future need i.e phone support. Otherwise, you will end up migrating to new software in a later stage and that will involve a lot of time-related to onboarding Agent, learning the product from a Management standpoint, building necessary knowledge and setting reports, etc. So always suggested selecting a software keeping your Strategic goal into consideration.
2) Multichannel Support: It is always suggested to select technology that has the capability of handling multiple touchpoints. In the market, you will get technologies that cover the omnichannel approach i.e (Email, Chat, Phone, Social Media, Knowledge Base, CRM Integration, Mobile App Integration, WhatsApp & Text. You must select Multichannel vendors so that if you have any business requirements it can be accommodated immediately.
3) Internal & External Knowledge Database, Self Service option: Internal & External Knowledgebase option is an essential part of any Service Management software. Therefore, as a Customer Support Head/Manager you must ensure that this capability is present in the software. The Support Department knows the most about customer issues — and the best way to solve them. That is why a knowledge base is a crucial part of any company’s customer experience strategy. It organizes frequently asked questions, product details, policies, and more, and empowers customers and agents with that information. While looking the Knowledgebase feature it is always recommended to consider features which empower support agent with easy access to knowledge, having the opportunity to develop and improve content across the Department like setting up article management lifecycle option were knowledge manager can assign article updates to team with notes on what needs to change through Team publishing, providing article publishing permission, content clue capability like AI-powered recommendation which will automatically let the knowledge manager know for which case a new article needs to be created, surfacing knowledge article option to the customer, so that before they contact support they can check the article and then if required can create a support ticket, this will reduce the support ticket
4) Automation & Triggering: To increase efficiency & Productivity it is always suggested to ensure that Automation & Triggering is included in the requirement. As a Customer Support Head/Manager the best way to improve the ROI of the system is to automate the process as much as possible within the software. The software should be able to handle dynamic resource allocation and route customer support tickets to an appropriate team member by expertise, availability, or a combination of both. It should also support automatic escalations and be able to escalate customer support tickets based on a combination of categories and time criteria. With the help of automation, you should be able to send a Customer satisfaction survey, the case follows up, etc. You must understand each solution and whether they are customizable enough to meet your needs. It is always suggested to use software where you should be able to set up all the Triggers & Automation without calling any third-party consultant.
5) Business Rule – Service Level Management: As a Customer Support Department you have SLA commitment with the customers. Therefore, you must select the software that has the capability of the Service Level Management process keeping into consideration all your business process Service Level Requirements. Also, you should be able to configure software in such a way that all the service level deviation should be directly seen in the dashboard so that support agent gets visibility and they know the priority of case to be worked upon.
6) Reporting & Dashboard: As a Customer Support Head/Manager Reporting is one of the main things which you require to measure the performance of the Customer Support Department and present your report to the Management Team. Therefore, the software you select must have the capability to by default display all the important KPIs which you want to measure. Also, it should give you the ability to customize the report as per your requirements. It should have the capabilities like exporting the report to Excel so that you can create pivot charts for further analysis. The Reporting feature must also have automation which should trigger email reports to stakeholders as per your requirement so that your efficiency is increased.
7) Integration & API: As a Customer Support Head/Manager you must speak to other Department and check out the software they use for supporting the business example your Product Team might be using a Problem Management software to manage Incident, so having an Integration between the Problem Management software and the Service Management system you select should add an advantage because it will increase the efficiency of your Support Department. Similarly, you should check with Marketing Team what CRM they are using and check out if the Service Management system you are selecting has the Integration so that Support Team and Marketing Team can have a holistic overview. The software you select must have API capabilities example you may want to integrate your company software with the Service Management software so that all the user's information can be brought from Company software to the Service Management software which will prevent the Agent not to separately check your company software while needing information as all these details would flow in the Service Management software automatically through API call. So you must check if they provide API support to support the integration between your company software.
8) Scalability & Architecture: As a Customer Support Head/Manager you must ensure that the Service Management System you are selecting could scale as per your Business requirement. (Example: In the beginning, you might need a Service Management system to handle 1000 tickets in a day, however, in future there is a probability that you might get an influx of around 4000 tickets in a day, so in this instance, the software should have the capability to scale up immediately as per your business requirement. In this digital age, it is always suggested to use SAAS software, as it has the capability to enhance, must faster, and lower downtime.
9. Maintenance & Administration: As a Customer Support Head/Manager you must ensure that the software selected must be able to maintain and administer the software without any vendor interaction. A core requirement should be that any change to user interfaces, views, options, and workflows can be done without any programming & consultancy help. Also, you must check how the upgrade process is executed in such a way that it doesn’t impact any customization or user-specific functions. You must ask the vendor about how flexible the software and how easy it is to customize UI’s, screen data, workflow, and business process. Sometime Manager does not inquire about the additional customization and the downtime after the initial implementation. In the end, companies are surprised to find themselves paying high fees for implementation consultants every time they want to adapt their software. So as Manager, you must understand the Total Cost of ownership in terms of modifying different parts of the process over the long run this can be avoided.
10) Licensing & Deployment option: There are various Licensing options are available in the market. On-premises deployment which requires capital expenditure in the beginning implementation and ongoing service cost is attached and it has a fixed Licensing cost. Nowadays there is a huge demand for SAAS i.e Software as a service, which can result in a significant saving over the short term. However, it is important to understand that if you use it over a period of more than 3 – 4 years then the total cost of ownership is much higher than a traditional On-premises system. Furthermore, it is very important to ensure that if you decide to use the SAAS system that you have access to export the data in case you want to move away from the selected platform. Most vendors do support both traditional and SAAS systems. For a hosted system, you normally pay monthly with a minimum commitment of 12 – 24 months. SAAS vendors offer less beginning fees however, in the long run, the price can be increased. Hosted software is best when you are confident that the system will meet your organization's needs over the long run with a lower overall cost. Also, more customization will be a challenge with the SAAS system as it is co-hosted with other companies and heavy customization will lead to lower system performance. Also, you have less control over outages and you have to depend on SAAS vendor.
1) As a Customer Support Head/Manager did you assess and select any Support technologies? If yes what challenges did you face?
2) As a Customer Support Head/Manager did you migrate your current Support technology to a new one? If yes what challenges did you face?
3) As a Customer Support Head/Manager what challenge did you face while Integrating your company software with the Support technology? If any?
4) As a Customer Support Head/Manager did you integrate your Support technology with the Project Management tool? If yes did you increase the efficiency?
5)
As a Customer Support Head/Manager did you integrate
your Support technology with the CRM of the company? If yes what change did you
face?
Want to learn about how to select Customer Support Software read a book How to Establish & Manage Customer Support Department
Want to get real-time training about Support Center Leadership & Management Training (3 Day training)
OUR SERVICES
To know more information about Pricing & other details contact us by filling the form which you will find on the left-hand side of the website also click on the left-hand side to Chat/Email us.
Our Account Manager will immediately get back to you.
Our Account Manager will immediately get back to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment