Any entrepreneur will tell you – if you aren’t focused on providing a phenomenal customer experience you are setting your business up for failure. Traditionally, this required hiring a customer service team to manage customer interactions, a costly investment for any startup or small business. Luckily, recent innovations in Customer Experience Technology can help solve this problem without breaking the bank. These innovations can not only make your life easier, but also help provide an additional element to your value proposition that can set you apart from competitors. Although there are many, here’s three cost-friendly solutions that can help a startup soar.
1. Call Routing – This is the most obvious choice and one you are likely familiar with. As a customer, we can all agree that one of the most annoying experiences is calling a business who fails to answer their phone or has to redirect you manually a bunch of times. As a business owner, it’s not just an inconvenience but a nightmare. You may have also been led to believe that this is only a solution available to banks and cable companies, but fear not! With recent innovations driving down the cost of this solution, every small business can and should set up their own call routing IVR. Whether you are a restaurant owner, a mechanic, a dry cleaner or a tech startup, a simple, “Press 1 to talk to Sales, or Press 2 to talk to a customer service representative” can go a long way in both professionalism and customer experience.
2. IVR Payment Processing – Do you currently manually process payments, either in person or over the phone? Not only is that fraught with security issues, it’s not a great use of you or your employee’s time. You are in luck. IVR companies with PCI Compliant environments can set up an automated payment solution that will help save you money. At the end of the day, your customers want to complete their task of paying their bill in the easiest and quickest way possible. By setting up an automated payment IVR, they just call in, input relevant identifying information and make their payment. Some companies can also help store payment information so that customers who pay often can pay even faster. However you choose to employ this technology, payment processing IVRs will save you time and money – every entrepreneur can use both!
3. Speaking of payment processing, how do your customers know when they are late on payment? Do you manually send them a reminder via snail mail, or do you call them directly? If you have a lot of customers, this can be quite cumbersome and expensive. An outbound broadcasting system is your solution! This tool is very simple to deploy, but you need to make sure you are in line with the legal restrictions regarding outbound voice, text and email campaigns (the short answer is that they need to ‘opt-in’ to receiving messages on the medium that you choose). At the end of every month you can upload a list of customers who have past-due payments and send them a quick call, text or email, to remind them they need to make a payment. In addition, you can have them “Press 1 to make a payment” which can forward them to your payment processing IVR! In as little as five minutes you’ll have completed a task that would have taken a call center of ten people hours to complete.
It’s time to propel your business by integrating CX Driven Solutions! Save yourself money and time by integrating cost-efficient solutions into your customer service processes and you’ll see happier customers and an increasing profit margin. By combining call routing, payment processing and outbound messaging you will set your business apart. Don’t get left in the dust by your competitors, upgrade your CX systems today!
