The Connection, Inc Blog

Providing outstanding customer service is a requirement to be successful in today’s business environment. If you ignore this valuable tenant of business, then you’ve got a competitor who will gladly jump on the opportunity to steal away your customers and prospects by offering better service. What steps is your business taking to make sure that your customer service is second to none?

For this week’s tip, we’ll share four fundamentals of what good customer service looks like, as well as how technology can help.

Be Easy to Work With
Having a customer service team with likable personalities and good communication skills goes a long way when it comes to gaining and retaining customers. That said, it should be fairly obvious that not every employee fits such a profile. It’s, therefore, advantageous if you’re deliberate about putting the employees that are the easiest to work with on the front lines with your customers. Alternatively, having employees with awkward and obtuse personalities serving customers may end up driving them away from your business, and to another company with a more likable customer service team. Depending on what technologies you use to communicate with your customers, some solutions allow customers to rank the quality of service they receive, allowing you to get an accurate picture of your team’s customer service skills.

Meet and Exceed Any Commitments
The customer-business relationship comes with a set of expectations on the customer's part regarding your company’s product and service. Keep in mind that doing the minimum amount of work to meet these expectations will only put your business in the danger zone, seeing as your customers and prospects will be susceptible to being swept away by a competitor that promises to go above and beyond. Remember, if you go above and beyond and exceed customer expectations, you’ll build brand loyalty that will keep customers within the orbit of your organization.

Be Available to Answer Customers
We live in an age where more services are offered 24/7. Maybe your business can’t have a customer service representative on call 24/7, but you can implement communication tools that will allow your staff to be more available to customers.

You can achieve this in two ways: 1) by having your staff carry mobile solutions that allow them to stay in touch with customers while they're on the go, and 2) by equipping your company with multiple ways that customers can reach your team. Regarding the latter, keep in mind that not every consumer prefers to communicate the same way. You’ll want to take advantage of email, phone calls, instant messaging, and more. Even having a designated employee to answer inquiries over various social media platforms will go a long way in serving a customer's needs in a satisfactory manner.

Have an Agile Work Environment
Having an agile work environment really shows when it comes to handling a customer’s request. By having departments equipped with technology that allows them to freely share information and collaborate easily, you’ll be assured that customers will be processed as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you don’t take such efforts, then it’s quite possible for different departments to be their own silos of information, and for a customer’s request to get tied up by a single employee at the top.

For all of these customer service initiatives, you’ll want to collaborate with your IT provider in order to find ways that technology can be integrated into these processes and provide customers with the best experience possible. What technologies can your business implement that will keep your customers coming back for more? To find out, give the IT experts at The Connection, Inc a call at (732) 291-5938.

Too many businesses suffer due to issues with their information technology. The IT department, that is supposed to be innovating, is just too swamped down solving immediate technical problems to do so. However, if left unchecked, having an IT management deficit could swiftly create larger problems throughout your organization.

No technology is stagnant. Either it improves, or it is replaced by something better. But what if the people who are in charge of improving your solutions were too busy rectifying issues to ever get around to making the necessary improvements? In a situation like this, you’d soon have to make do with insufficient systems, which would only lead to more issues that would eat up IT’s time. This would, in turn, keep them from solving the root problem.

Finally, you’d ultimately be unable to work around the issue and be placed in a position with two pretty lousy options: either you finally bite the bullet and update everything, or you wait for your company to slowly be pigeonholed into providing a few very basic services until the effect it has on your business can no longer be ignored.

However, there is a third option that could help prevent you ever reaching that point in the first place: managed IT services.

A trusted managed service provider, or MSP, can help you take back control of your IT strategy by supplementing your internal team’s efforts with their own. Is your team overwhelmed by service requests? An MSP can take some of that burden from their shoulders, freeing them up to innovate and improve your business’ network and infrastructure. Alternatively, your MSP could devise and implement a strategy to help keep your systems on the cutting edge, while your internal team runs interference on any issues you might encounter.

Adding to the benefit of the MSP is the fact that their services are delivered at a steady monthly rate. This allows you to incorporate the expense of professional IT support and management into your budget with confidence, while also providing budget flexibility.

The expert IT technicians at The Connection, Inc can help you design and implement an IT management strategy that can help your organization avoid downtime and protect your technology investments. For more information regarding our powerful managed IT services, give us a call at (732) 291-5938.

Often times, people can get distracted by flashy new features, and with technology, this happens more than anywhere else. Since IT grows at such an abnormally fast rate, end-users can be left in the dust if you’re not intentionally trying to keep them in the loop. In fact, it’s highly recommended that you implement IT solutions for your business that are not just effective, but also user-friendly.

A whole lot of technical training is what separates an average PC user from the IT technician servicing their malfunctioning computer. We know a lot about how technology works, and this knowledge is no guarded secret. In fact, we’re happy to share it with you.

When it comes to service jobs, there are two kinds: Those where the work is highly visible, and those where work gets accomplished behind the scenes. Each service is valued and needed, yet, one may receive more attention and recognition than the other. Managed IT service falls under the latter category, and we’re totally okay with that.