crm customer services

Automated definable actions

For both sales prospecting and customer service it is necessary to initiate activities or tasks. These tasks may involve sending a letter or email, or an agent calling the customer.

They may also involve a series of tasks where the completion of one task initiates a second or subsequent tasks e.g. the customer service letter followed up by a call back one week later, followed by an email in six months.

CRM Sales Manager will automate and control all of these processes.
It allows users to:

• Define and diarize tasks
• Link tasks to actions and goals
• Automate task creation through triggers in the ERP system
• Chain tasks together so that depending on the result another task is initiated
• Require authorisation for certain tasks
• Escalate tasks that are not completed on time
• Associate profiles with results to automatically capture a record of the outcome

Triggers

Maintaining contact and responding to customer requests quickly and efficiently are the issues in today's customer service environment. Ensuring that the customer always receives a response, is both time consuming and difficult to achieve.

CRM Sales Manager enables you to automate the processes that maintains and controls customer contact. Triggers allow tasks to be created depending on events that occur within the PRIAM ERP system. These are called triggering events.

Examples of triggering events are the creation of a customer name and address record or the raising of a sales order.

A triggering event can initiate an action or series of actions. This could be a follow up call to a customer or a letter / email in response to a customer enquiry.

Actions are allocated as tasks to customer service agents or used to create (pre-defined) letters and emails. Tasks can be chained so that the telephone call can be followed by a letter or email.

Triggers can be applied to any transactional event within the PRIAM ERP system and can have many different uses. For example a trigger could be associated with a stock level falling below a pre-determined minimum level and actioning an email to be sent to an account manager or supplier.

Without a doubt this facility will be of enormous benefit to companies wishing to automate and control their business processes, particularly in a customer service environment.

Customer services

The Customer Services Editor allows operators to create and record customer service events or amend existing ones. A unique call reference number is allocated to every call. Each call is treated as a unique event with an associated audit trail which provides the basis of reporting and analysis.

A customer services event can be created against an existing customer record or against an anonymous account. For example the service call might be to enquire on shop opening times and customer details need not be recorded.

The Customer Services Editor allows you to record:

• The original source of the call i.e. phone, email or letter
• The status of the call i.e. pending, urgent, closed etc
• The nature of the customer service event and a sub reason. For example if the reason for the call is a customer complaint this may be analysed as a sub reason of product malfunction, incorrect goods or late delivery
• The customer details or if an anonymous account
• Add sales orders, product or store details or notes without having to move from the primary screen

Sales orders

The Customer Services Editor allows you to identify and record sales orders against the customer service record. The sales order inquiry screen allows you to create a new sales order or view all of the details of existing orders. This includes:

• The products associated with the order
• Any payments
• What despatches have been made
• Any additional charges i.e. carriage charge
• The current status of the order i.e. awaiting despatch
• The status history of the order, providing a complete audit trail

Products

The Customer Services Editor allows you to record products against the service call. These are products that the customer may have purchased from a shop or store and have not been supplied through the order processing system.

It also allows access to the Stock Inquiry screen which provides complete details to all stock information.

Stores

The Customer Services Editor allows you to record stores or shops which are associated with the customer services event.

Accounts

This section allows you to record and view the account details of all of the accounts associated with customer services event. Details that can be viewed within the Account Inquiry screen includes:

• Outstanding (unpaid) items
• Transaction history
• Outstanding orders
• Product history
• Period and annual totals i.e. invoices raised, cash paid
• Despatch history
• Any returns that have been made

Notes

Ensuring that a record is maintained of all customer contacts is vitally important. This area allows you to create comprehensive notes of all customer conversations and events.

• Create an unlimited number of customer notes
• Different types of notes can be created by the user, for example complaint, query or customer service
• Notes can be filtered according to the type, date created or author

Correspondence

The Customer Services Editor allows you to automate the process of creating and maintaining letters or emails for specific customer service events. You can also store documents that have been sent by the customer or that have been created externally.

Letters can be created on an ad-hoc basis (single shot) or via existing templates. Templates are created using the template editor or imported from existing documents.

The PRIAM database can be accessed to mail merge any existing data into single shot or template letters. This includes:

• Account balance and credit card details
• All name and address details
• Information from transactional files such as orders, delivery and despatch notes

MS Word, WordPad or Star Office can be used as the letter editor. Letters can be displayed and filtered by date or author.

Tasks

Tasks are created automatically based on the nature of the customer service call and the business processes that have been pre-defined. Tasks may require authorisation prior to the task being addressed or can be escalated to a supervisor or manager if the task has not been completed by the set time.

Tasks may also be created manually and allocated to a group as well as an individual.

Time tracking

This screen gives an activity breakdown for every customer service event. This provides the audit trail for a customer service event and the basis of reporting and analysis. The time tracker screen records:

• The date and time when an activity started
• The date and time when an activity ended
• The name of the operator
• What the activity was

Customer services editor history

This screen gives an activity breakdown for every customer service event. This provides the audit trail for a customer service event and the basis of reporting and analysis. The history screen records:

• The date and time of the event
• The event type i.e. adding a note or task
• The name of the operator creating the event
• Description of the event

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