Improving Customer Satisfaction With Knowledge Base Software
The customer is the almighty ruler of the retail and service industries. Taking their wants and needs into consideration is the obligation of every business owner, and at times the customer’s needs can be exhausting to a business. One example of this is customer service. Dealing with errors, handling customer retention, and ensuring customer satisfaction requires a great deal of human interaction. Quality customer care can eat into a business’s manpower and time. When a business gains a surge of orders that they cannot keep up with, or when there is a need for downsizing, usually customer satisfaction is the first thing to suffer. This snowball effect can be devastating to new business, but luckily this can be counteracted with the integration of knowledge base software for customer service.
A knowledge base system designed for customer service can free up employees from dealing with minor customer issues. For example, having a knowledge base with company and product information, known as the 1st degree of customer service allows the customer to browse the data for themselves, saving themselves a phone call and the business from time taken away from other projects. It can even eliminate the businesses use of call centers completely. Information to be made available via online knowledge base can include product and service pricing, business locations and hours, methods of payment, and frequently asked questions.
While this is effective for basic customer needs there will be times when people need a little more help. These concerns, known as the 2nd degree of customer service, have a solution as well. Other, more complex knowledge base software systems involve an intuitive program attached to the knowledge base that can answer customer’s questions in real time, 24 hours a day. This is done via chat protocol, giving the customer the feel of personalized service. This customer service feature has quickly taken hold online as the most popular way to deliver 2nd degree customer service on a business website.
In the event that a customer needs live attention, the knowledge base system can reroute them to an employee on standby. When implemented, these customer support programs can perform a customer triage of sorts; meeting the customer’s information needs while reducing customer calls by up to seventy percent. Systems like these free up manpower to be devoted to developing better products for clients.
The self-service industry is extremely competitive, so when choosing knowledge base software to implement for customer satisfaction, there are elements to be considered. First, the demographic of the business’s customers should be taken into consideration. For example, a chat based customer care system is only effective if the customer is willing and able to use it. Start by offering multiple customer service options (e-mail, chat, self service, etc.) and monitor the use of each. The ones that clients use the least can be phased out. It is important to remember that there are some other costs associated with a knowledge base system such as IT support, but the price of services like these pale in comparison to potential savings and the retention of loyal customer.
Having customer service options that require little to no labor are a great way to increase customer satisfaction without increasing other costs. On the contrary, a business could potentially save money on labor costs and facilities by reducing the size of customer service teams. Meeting the customer’s needs is an important aspect of business that can often be overlooked, but with some pre planning, implementing knowledge base software has the potential to drastically improve a small business’s customer satisfaction. There are many knowledge base software available in the market but the ideal solution for SMEs is a SaaS knowledge base software like ProProfs.
Author Bio
David Miller is an educational researcher who has vast experience in the field of teaching, Online testing and training. He is associated with prestigious universities and many leading educational research organizations. He’s also an ed-tech veteran, currently pursuing research in new eLearning developments.
