Automating Your Customer Support

Automating Your Customer Support My readers know that one of the things that I very much recommend a online business is automating as many of your daily tasks as possible.From a personal opinion, one of the tasks that have a lot of my time is the response e-mail . It is not just e-mail response that eats hours - sorting through and deleting spam and junk mail takes a lot of time. In the good old days, I used to get a few spam emails a day. Now it is closer to 1000 a day! In fact, if it is, e-mail is not always the best form of online communication. It is not just the junk mail problem, but also the fact that e-mail is not 100% reliable. E-mail are not "in progress" on a regular basis much more than expected. Often this is simply because the recipient's e-mail software has decided that a certain e-junk mail and was directed to the "delete" folder. Other times it is possible that the target ISP has decided that the spam is deleted before it was even by the recipient! (Yes, this really happened - imagine if the postman sorted through your e-mails and letters that the choice you want, and what should far!) One way to avoid the spam problem in dealing with requests for support make use of a contact form on your site, instead of sending an e-mail. This will certainly help to spam, but still does not mean that the problem of e-mails that do not always reach their destination (and if you have a customer waiting for this frustration is not the ideal). It is probably the best option for the market is currently a system of help-desk. The creation of a dedicated help desk is a great way to make your customer service automation and acceleration of procedures for dealing with information and support for e-mail. Not only that, but if you have a system with the client to create "tickets", you do not have an e-mail, as your customers can rely on a special web page and show your card and your answers online. Another feature of many scripts Helpdesk is a "FAQ" or "Knowledge Base" section. This is simply a collection of frequently asked questions / queries / problems with answers and solutions. This means that customers can knowledge base and, hopefully, is the answer to their question, without the support of the most advanced all.Some script scanning will also be customer service prior to the submission of the list and then a couple of possible answers to their applications only when they read the knowledge before submitting the ticket - very intelligent stuff.These scripts are also very powerful in the way that you can use. Think how long you can save if, for example, 40% of customer service e-mail just stopped coming due to the fact that customers are now in a position, the answers to their questions, help you automatically.Having desk on-line is also an advantage for those who travel a lot, or if you are away from office during the holidays, so instead of a laptop computer loaded with the old e-mail from customers, you can simply log in to your administrator page helpdesk and all previous correspondence and online is at hand. It also means that you will not spend hours in an inteet cafe 'elimination of one days worth of spam at a time, just to get to the important e-mails, so only the important e-mail will be the Helpdesk in the first line. As with most things, the establishment of a customer service help desk is one of the tasks that are always better the first time you start your business online. That said, it is relatively easy to integrate this functionality into your existing installation and that is exactly what I did for all of my websites ... In the coming months will gradually many of my e-mail - simply can not no more spam! With immediate effect, all customers support for all my products and websites are provided through a centralized customer service Helpdesk.I are confident that this will improve the overall support experience for my clients and I :-) If you are interested in installing a similar helpdesk on your own website / s, there are many options when it comes to appropriate software. I chose a product with the name eSupport (link below) and, while this is certainly a powerful script that I am cautious, so that has my full recommendation, because the installation of the equipment was, how can I, somewhat 'painful. It does not help that there are no instructions for the software, which means that new users are left to understand how it works by trial and error or trawling with hundreds of jobs on the company's forum. In other words, I am of the software has recommended that a handbook has been created in the process of being written and will soon be available. As I said, an excellent and powerful script once installed and configured, but certainly not for lack of patience (and some knowledge of computers). If you opt for this script, my advice is to software publishers to install for you. You can lea more about eSupport on alteative (I have not tried personally) even Perldesk () and Cerberus (). One advantage of Cerberus is that there is a free version :-) Copyright 2005 Richard Grady has been GradyRichard people ea online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter every two weeks. To view (and your free gifts), visit: