Technological advancements have created new ways to optimize customer service and increase sales. One of the most exciting developments over the past decade has been the live chat feature that has become a staple for most websites. With this feature, customers can ask questions before buying or get assistance with a product without the frustration of long wait times.

In a world with an increasing amount of priority being placed on the customer, making the most out of every single interaction matters. Businesses never truly know what conversation will spark an expansion opportunity or referral dialogue, so nailing your customer communication on a frequent basis can separate the “good” from the “great” companies.

Competing in the business world can create excitement. Winning a hard-fought deal over a top rival can be a huge morale boost and lead to new opportunities for your company that weren’t possible before. But, what happens when a competitor comes for one of your key accounts? In this scenario, it’s not up to the sales team to provide the victory, but instead the onus falls squarely onto the customer success group. With customer retention critical to business success, fending off the competition means a healthy balance sheet and minimal churn.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can have many different definitions, and can sometimes cause confusion. Does CRM include correspondence before a company becomes a customer, such as sales and marketing? Should CRM extend to all areas of a business, including internal IT teams who don’t interact with customers? Drawing the line of what is and isn’t part of the CRM experience can be difficult. 

If you’re a B2B (business-to-business) company and you don’t have Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place with your customers, you're missing out on an important opportunity to improve customer retention and satisfaction. SLAs are contractually agreed upon terms between a company and their customers that ensures the services provided meet certain thresholds (i.e. uptime, responsiveness, etc.). This can mean guaranteeing servers will have 99.9% uptime for your product or that all customer service inquiries will be responded to within a 24-hour window.

In business, sometimes making the wrong decision is worse than making no decision at all. This is especially true when it comes to the customer service industry. With customers being the foundation of so many businesses, going against their needs can be a make or break decision. And, in the fast-paced technology age we live in, making the wrong call is costlier than ever before.

Customer relations are very important to all businesses. Building positive relationship with your customers can do wonders, because customers want to have a positive relationship with you, and if you're lucky they will actively work to maintain it Of course, businesses also put in considerable time and effort into making a relationship rewarding and enriching for both parties. Problems can still arise, but customers are more likely to be patient with businesses that they like and trust. Every interaction a business has with a customer shapes the attitude the customer has towards that business, even if it seems like an inconsequential instance. Businesses can control many aspects of their relationships with customers, but the one thing they cannot control is the customers themselves.

The concept of a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is common in the business world, yet for some customer support teams it may be new terminology. A KPI is a measurement of your operations that you can compare over time to see how your business has changed. With more companies realizing that customer support is a profit center and not a cost center, measuring KPIs in the industry has been a hot topic. Some of the more traditional customer support KPIs – like abandonment rate and first response time – are classic KPIs borrowed from departments like sales that aren’t always a natural fit.

There’s a chance that your business, and subsequently your help desk, has grown organically and at a rate that outpaced your internal processes. While growth is exactly what you’re after, it can mean there are a few opportunities where you can get your arms around more efficient ways to do things.