Preserve Customer Loyalty With SageCRM Customer Care

Good customers are hard to find, especially in current economic conditions. This makes retaining the customers you have more important than ever, and one key to retaining them is to provide excellent customer service. Your SageCRM system is more than a powerful tool for tracking and closing leads. After the sale is fulfilled, the tools within SageCRM Customer Care give you the ability to provide superior customer service, increase customer satisfaction, and preserve your loyal customer base. Letís take a closer look.

Case Tracking
At the heart of Customer Care is Case Tracking. You can track everything from technical support questions to items missing from shipments. To create a new Case you simply click on the New Case action button, find the customer, and enter the details. The screen can be customized to collect the specific data you need to quickly resolve customer issues. Depending on the workflow you define, workflow action buttons appear, allowing you to advance the case to the next step.

Workflow Automation
The flexible workflow automation capabilities of SageCRM allow you to fully define customer service processes and escalation points for your organization. Typical statuses or steps you set might include: Logged, Investigating, Waiting, and Resolved. If the case remains inactive longer than the period of time you predefine, SageCRM will escalate the case, sending an e-mail notification to the manager you designate, alerting them to the condition. This powerful automation ensures that each case is handled expeditiously.

Real-Time Monitoring Of Service Levels
The current service level for each case is easily visible with a traffic-light monitoring column in the Cases Tab. This makes it easy for customer service staff to identify cases in need of immediate attention.

Customer Communication
It is important to communicate case status to customers. Customer Care enables you to view all previous communications related to a case, and schedule calls, record notes of conversations, and send e-mail updates.

A 360-Degree View
Customer service professionals can be more effective when they have fast access to every detail relating to the current customer. SageCRM provides 360-degree visibility into customers by bringing together sales data, customer service information, and transaction data from your Sage Accpac system.

Central Knowledge Base
Solutions to common problems or questions can be stored centrally in the Knowledge Base, providing easy and immediate access to this bank of information. Once a case is resolved, you can link the Solution or Knowledge Base article to the case. Powerful search technology enables users to find Knowledge Base entries quickly and easily, ultimately resulting in improved customer service.

Reporting Tools
Built-in reporting provides for easy analysis of customer issues, and allows you to quickly identify open issues requiring attention. For example, the Cases Open By Company report lists all the open cases for a customer, and includes a graphical depiction of case status. All reports include hyperlinks where appropriate, allowing you to drill down to uncover further details about a case. Existing reports can be fully customized, and new reports can be created from scratch using wizard-based report customization tools.

Customer Self Service
The SageCRM Self Service Portal allows customers to interact directly with your Customer Care system. Many customers prefer to search for their own answers using your Knowledge Base, and they can add their own cases and review the status of their open cases without waiting on hold. SageCRM Web Self-Service can be incorporated into a companyís existing corporate Web site, providing a seamless customer experience at a lower cost to your business.

This article appears in our May Newsletter.