Customer service is what distinguishes successful businesses. Being able to provide a great experience and solve problems for customers, while not becoming a roadblock yourself, is the ultimate goal for every business in every sector.
According to Gartner, 89 per cent of companies expect to compete through the customer experience they provide. Those businesses that invest in technologies that help improve the customer experience can see a quick ROI, delivered through referrals, return, and long-term customers.
Save Time & Control Costs By Automating Business Processes
Automation is a cornerstone of technology-driven customer service. Leveraging the right tools, businesses can take most of the manual processes out of quoting, invoicing, payroll, bank reconciliation and bill payments, meaning that the process of interacting with the business is more efficient and seamless.
The efficiencies that are offered by this automation rapidly build up and with it, organisations can deviate from the paper invoice that has previously consumed valuable time. In addition to conveying an efficient and reliable customer-focused process, automating many of these back-end processes can help a business manage its cash flow, with greater oversight into performance and easy forecasting to assist with the accounting decision making.
Manage Your Customer Interactions To Improve Satisfaction
Technology can also be used to improve the efficiency of engagements with your customers. For example, if a customer’s HVAC breaks down, the last thing they want is to go for days before a technician can be on-site to diagnose the problem. Technology can mitigate this in two ways:
- Firstly, sensors on the HVAC devices themselves can monitor performance and provide predictive analytics. Often a potential issue can be addressed before the customer is even aware that something is wrong!
- Secondly, digital tools like Resource Schedule Optimisation (RSO) can help manage the customer relationship by automatically scheduling maintenance or customer service check-ins. Customers are typically impressed with the proactive engagement and delivery of a better experience.
Additionally, a good customer service platform should be data-driven and centralised. Every interaction between the customer and your business should be located within a centralised CRM so , from customer service to field agent, the full profile of the customer and all their interactions with the business are immediately accessible. Manual records can be lost, or unavailable to people when they need them. A cloud-delivered CRM, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 accessible via mobile, ensures that customers have rich and concurrent insights that create a consistent experience and better decision making.
Streamline Your Business With Mobile And IoT Technology
If a customer wants a quote, having to wait several days for the on-site service agent to go into the office and draw it up is a recipe for frustration. With the right cloud-based platform, on-site agents will be able to generate quotes on the spot. Additionally, the customer can sign immediately, reducing the time before work commences.
IoT is another technology that can be built into providing leading customer service. In addition to the sensors that can be placed on machines to provide live monitoring and diagnostics, field agents can be fitted with GPS devices, and have their schedules managed in the cloud. Then, when a customer rings for support, the customer agent can immediately determine the quickest available support option for the customer.
Improve Your Marketing Game
The time when marketing was broad-based and inefficient is long gone. Now, with the kind of data that is available, customer experience-focused organisations only reach out to customers with information that is relevant to their needs.
Because the CRM is centralised and all interactions with the customer are logged, the marketing team can know, at a glance, what pain-points an individual customer has, and what HVAC equipment they have installed. They can subsequently recommend services, upgrades, or create offers that are tailored to that individual. A friendly email or call from the customer service team can remind a customer that their filter will need replacing soon, or when would be the optimal time to schedule a repair.
Finally, the right digital platform improves the customer experience by introducing better accountability into interactions. From HVAC device uptime data to improved security processes that protect the customer data, a good customer experience platform will help your business present itself as reliable and transparent in how it interacts with its customers.
For businesses in the HVAC space, having a technology partner that has the experience and specialised skills to understand how the business interacts with its customers is important. Equally important is the ability to tailor the solution in such a way that it meets that business’s unique needs and its approach to the market.
With the right technology-driven and intelligent solutions, organisations can rapidly scale and grow their businesses. Not only will the efficiency and productivity boost be immediate and measurable, but the technology will help the business become far more customer-driven, winning a significant competitive advantage in both finding and retaining customers.
For more information on Nexon, click here. To learn more about the Nexon Field Service Solution – ideal for businesses in the HVAC space, click here.