What is Cloud Customer Service?

20 Feb 2018

When dealing with a cloud based company, many people assume that they are going to get poor customer service. After all, there is little-to-no face to face interaction in an industry like ours, so how do you make sure you are building and maintaining those all important relationships.

We have all heard the saying ‘people buy from people’ and overall I would agree. Going through those early stages of rapport building can often lead, where there is a need, to a prospect becoming a client.

This is the same regardless of whether you are face to face or a cloud based Company…it’s just that the mechanism is different.

Contact that is regular is the key to providing great customer service, those touch points, making sure all is okay and being top of mind.

So how can I make sure I stay in contact?

My advice: look to your CRM.

The whole point of a CRM is that it helps you to manage the customer relationship…I know, stating the obvious. The clue is in the name. but bear with me.

Whether you’re meeting people face to face on a regular basis or just dropping them a short email (or making a quick phone call) to see how they are getting on. You want to a system that can make sure you are getting in these points of contact when it is most important in their journey with you.

I’d like to go through a couple examples of how you can use OpenCRM to stay in contact and deliver great customer service.

Recurring Activities

Firstly, we can use recurring Activities. I can create an Activity that recurs once each month (as an example) that will remind me to get it touch with your client. As with all Activities in OpenCRM it will appear in Green on the day of the scheduled Activity and if for any reason you don’t manage to complete on the given day it will turn Red to remind you the Activity still needs to be completed.

You can also display these Outstanding Activities on your calendar page if you choose to. (This FAQ will give you a greater understanding.)

Custom Views

Secondly, you can create a Custom View in Contacts or Companies or both. We call it KIT – Keep In Touch (Nothing to do with Knight Rider for those old enough to remember!), so these are people where there has been no Activity recorded for 30/60/90 days as an example.

For some companies, getting in touch with their customers every 30 days is waaaay too often. After all, pestering someone too much isn’t the great customer service you want to deliver. Saying that, other companies will think that 30 days is far too long to go without some kind of contact…it’s all down to your customer journey.

The KIT View works from your Last Action Date. For instance I create a View which is KIT – No Activity for 30 Days. This looks at the data within Contacts or Companies and if the last Action ( Call, Meeting, Task or Email Sent for example) was greater than 30 days ago the client would fall into the View. As soon as you log an Activity against the Company or Contact the last Action Date become today and they will automatically be removed from the View.

Contact is key to customer service and your CRM is key to contact.

So those are my ideas for a couple of simple ways your CRM can help to make sure you are in regular contact with your clients.