ERP, CRM and eCommerce Blog

Customer service horror stories – I have them, you have them, and I’m pretty sure any other person you ask off the street has one. There are the never-ending calls on hold, the representatives who don’t have a clue about either the product you purchased or your order history, and the ever-present feeling that you’re going around in circles trying to solve a seemingly easy and straightforward issue.

And when you have to deal with extremely frustrating, and sometimes useless, encounters with customer service representatives, it’s not very likely that you’ll hold that particular store in high regard, or that you’ll be in a hurry to return any time soon. And this can cause some serious problems for the business in concern.

According to a 2009 study conducted by Genesys, research firm Greenfield Online, and Datamonitor/Ovum analysts, poor customer service that results in abandoned purchases or defections to other companies costs U.S. companies an estimated $83 billion annually. People have no problem going elsewhere: in the U.S., 71% of consumers have ended a relationship due to a bad customer service experience, with survey participants stating that when they end a relationship, 61% of the time they will switch to a competitor.

These statistics show hard proof that good customer service isn’t just something that businesses should strive for – it is a business requirement. Given the importance of providing high quality customer service, companies need to look at any tool that enables them to more effectively work with, as well as manage, their customers. With the rich features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, companies offer their customers the premium service that results from having a comprehensive insight into customer activities and histories.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides an instant overview of customer accounts, enabling representatives to quickly identify customers and view past history.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the ability to instantly access crucial account information allows representatives to get a quick understanding of customer needs. Providing good customer service means getting the right information at the right time. For example, If a representative is scrambling to find a customer and that customers order history with a long hold time – you take a bad situation and make it worse by the time the conversation starts. By establishing a basic information framework from which a representative can build on, Microsoft Dynamics CRM improves question and problem handling and offers the ability to address issues quickly.

A survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit shows that the biggest obstacles to productivity growth are too much time spent on administrative tasks and lack of customer understanding (See graph below). By providing centralized information and a 360 degree view of the customer Microsoft Dynamics CRM drives up both agent productivity and customer satisfaction. The creation of different types of workflows enable specific service processes to be consolidated and executed across a company, and also allows customer service reps to manage their work more efficiently. By creating either personal, workgroup, departmental, or federated workflows, organizations reduce their reliance on IT and gain a clearer understanding of the tasks and assignments associated with different job roles within the company.

The top two indicators for customer satisfaction are First Contact Resolution (FCR) and Call Handling time/ Resolution time. Contact centers that have FCR of greater than 80% have a much higher degree of customer satisfaction than contact centers that have an FCR between 60 – 80%. Anything less than a 50% FCR is a recipe for customer churn. Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s robust case and incident management functionality, a customer service representative can easily create, manage, and resolve cases through many different communication channels – such as by phone, email, chat, Web, or in-person contact. Dynamics CRM automates the assignment and supervision of customer issues by routing, queuing, and escalating support incidents based on the specified rules ensuring that cases get to the agents that are qualified to handle the issue. In addition functionality to get Export on Call assistance provides the ability for an agent to get help while online with the customer. With this automation, representatives speed up first call resolution and better serve their customers.

With the in-depth case management capabilities, representatives are able to get an at-a-glance view of each customer’s information, case history and service contracts and deliver appropriate service fast.

After planning and completing case activities, a representative can record in the customer account the issue raised by the customer and the representative’s actions in resolving the issue. By saving a record of the entire case resolution process, representatives have information that can be referenced in the future in case the same issue pops up, or if a similar one does. Keeping that information on-hand and using it when it’s needed shows a company’s commitment to maintaining and updating their clients’ data, which in turn proves to the customer that their needs are a first priority of both the representative and the company as a whole.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s all-encompassing customer service functionality, companies benefit from a system that delivers customer information, order and case history, sales information, case management, automated workflows for assignment and escalation quickly and efficiently. With this detailed knowledge right at their fingertips, customer service reps are better equipped to provide excellent support to clients by quickly and efficiently resolving any problems or issues.

Ashley Harbaugh is a Product Marketing Specialist at Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, software solutions to banks, insurance and financial service institutions. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

What has been one of the single-most defining issues of the American culture these past few years? The one thing that has affected virtually every facet of the American populace, from high-powered corporations right down to the single American individual? What is still the main topic of politicians and pundits, who make authoritative declarations on how they would undoubtedly fix this particular issue if they were in power? The economy!

Although the economy has moved into a slow recovery – people don’t forget the hard lessons learned during those challenging times. Both individuals and businesses are far more cautious on where they spend their hard-earned cash, hoping to make safe, solid investments and avoid potentially risky decisions. And finding the right, secure place to keep their money is a crucial judgment call.

For banks and financial institutions that serve the wary, watchful public, conveying to both clients and prospects that their money is in safe hands is absolutely necessary for conducting business. Financial organizations are built on the people’s trust; if they don’t think their money is in a dependable place, then they have no problem putting it somewhere else. The best way to communicate to clients that responsibility and reliability are core values of a bank is by offering outstanding customer service.

With Ignify’s Banking Customer Relationship Management Solution, banks and financial service institutions can better strengthen their relationships with customers through the 360-degree view of customer transaction history, account information, and individual preferences. Built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, this powerful solution is tailored for retail banks, commercial banks, investment banks, credit unions, private bankers, and others, enabling these organizations to utilize the robust functionalities that allow them to make their customers feel more connected, and thus more dedicated, to their services.

One crucial way that financial service representatives gain crucial insight into their information is through the rich dashboard functionality present in Ignify’s solution. With the clear, well-defined parameters that these graphical displays exhibit, these dashboards enable representatives to understand data at a glance. The ability to set up and design these dashboards according to personal preferences enable salespeople and representatives to instantly access the important customer information that they need, and to thus quickly assess the action items needed to take on their part to develop customer relationships.

Robust dashboard capabilities allow financial service representatives to get a comprehensive overview of customer data, and give them better insight on what action items to take.

A representative can also click on a dashboard screen and drill down to find out more details on the data presented. For example, a bank representative can drill his Active Accounts dashboard screen (as shown in the image above) down to the New Accounts by Month specification, if he wanted to identify the number of new accounts that were added in the past few months. All of the dashboards are real-time and bring data from the different functional areas of the application, so users are assured of viewing data that is both current and accurate. As soon as you make a change, the reports automatically refresh to reflect it.

Because dashboards are dynamic and instantly reflect even the most recent data changes made, these tools allow representatives to access fresh, current data at any point in time.

Using Ignify’s Bank Management Solution enables financial institutions to maintain complete visibility into customer data, offering detailed and up-to-date records of the customer’s needs that can be used to a representative’s advantage. For example, if a customer calls up a representative, that rep can immediately pull up the customer’s file and view their account and transaction history while on the phone, and check on other issues that the customer might have had in the past. By having an in-depth record of customer activities, and by being able to discuss those customer actions with the customers themselves, banks prove to their clients that they – and their accounts – are receiving the utmost attention and care. And people notice: if a person feels that their financial needs are a top priority, then high customer satisfaction is the inevitable outcome.

Ignify’s Bank Management Solution ensures that detailed, up-to-date customer information is always readily available.

Establishing trust and providing good customer service to clients really cannot be overstated, especially for banks. Just going off of my own experience, I have personally known friends to transfer their funds to different banks because they continually felt that their account needs were not being taken care of, and that the bank in question was not listening or paying attention to what they wanted. If the bank had been able to instantly identify past problems that my friends had, and then made a concerted effort to attend to those issues, they would’ve been able to retain their business. Instead, their competitors got to benefit.

For the business clients who utilize multiple accounts and different currencies, the solution enables financial representatives to consolidate this disparate information in one view, as well as look at the transaction histories and activities for each individual account.

By using a customer relationship management solution that is specifically built for banks and other financial institutions, these organizations are better equipped to offer their customers the premium service that ensures customer satisfaction and, ultimately, retention. And the more happy customers there are, the higher the chance they will spread the word to their friends and relatives (and if there are some folks in their network who are disgruntled with their bank, they’ll definitely be listening intently to the message). Give them every opportunity to sing your praises – capture those customers from your competitors.

Ashley Harbaugh is a Product Marketing Specialist at Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, software solutions to banks, insurance and financial service institutions. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

Have you ever ordered something online, and then when that something was delivered, you found that it was completely wrong from what you originally ordered? It could have been the wrong color, wrong size, or even the wrong item altogether. Having to first deal with the shock of opening up a box containing a totally different item than the one you’re anticipating, and then having to go through the hassles of either returning or exchanging it, is enough to sour anyone on the web store they ordered from. And if a business puts a customer in a bad mood, it’s pretty safe to say that the ticked-off customer won’t be rushing to return any time soon.

For any business, pushing customers away because you don’t fulfill their orders correctly is a mistake that you do not want to make. Fulfilling orders may seem like a simple enough idea, but it is an absolutely critical process. Getting your customer the product that he or she orders can mean the difference between a loyal, long-term client and a one-time-only visitor.

For salespeople and customer service representatives, being able to correctly enter the right customer information and view the history of a sales order is crucial for providing good customer service. An excellent tool for sales folks to use for viewing and organizing their customers’ sales information is Ignify’s Order Entry Solution for Microsoft Dynamics. Built on Microsoft technologies, including the .NET framework, the Order Entry Solution is a Web-based portal that offers salespeople and customer service representatives complete visibility over customer order information, as well as the ability to enter data quickly.

With the Order Entry Solution, a salesperson or account executive is able to easily look up and view customer and account history, and create new sales orders if needed. And if an order has not been processed, a representative can edit the information in the order, enabling him or her to add or remove items from an order, change the shipping method, or change the shipping address on an order or order line. The Excel-like interface of the solution makes viewing and editing especially easy by allowing you to tab in and out of fields, and key in products.

The Order Entry Solution improves customer satisfaction and minimizes order errors by offering salespeople and customer service representatives a comprehensive view of customer data and order history, and the ability to make appropriate changes.

Customer management is also enhanced by the fact that the solution can identify for you the customers who have earned preferential levels or VIP status, meaning that you can offer adjusted product prices to the customers who meet those special status levels. Because really, who would turn down a lower price if they can get it? When a store makes an effort to give their return customers tokens of appreciation in the form of discounts and special offers, those customers notice (and become more likely to return – which of course continues the sales cycle).

The integration of the Order Entry Solution with Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM systems also assists with providing customer-specific pricing. With this integration, any specific price lists or trade agreements that are set up in the ERP and CRM systems will be reflected in the Order Entry Solution. So for example, if there are particular retail or distributor prices that a store offers, the Order Entry Solution will have that data, allowing the customer service representative to again modify the product prices for customers to correspond with this information.

The in-built marketing functionalities of the Order Entry Solution also bolster a company’s efforts to reach out to both existing and potential customers alike. The instant alerts of an order that qualifies for a rebate, the cues given to salespeople and representatives of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and the ability to create and apply promotional codes and gift certificates are all examples of marketing activities that can help increase a company’s revenue. By utilizing these marketing capabilities to offer customers unique, attention-grabbing promotions, businesses up their chances of immediately capturing those customers and ensuring they come back.

As with any database or software that allows monetary transactions, ensuring that all the data contained within is fully secure is of the utmost importance to both the customer making an order, and the business that is conducting the transaction with that customer. The Order Entry Solution protects against potential problems by instantly indicating to a representative when an order isn’t kosher. For example, the system contains fraud alerts for orders, as well as alerts for other order issues, and it can even be parametrically set up to track advanced fraud. The system can also automatically put orders that meet a certain criteria on hold until they are checked and verified.

By using the rich set of order entry features and functionalities within the Order Entry Solution, and by gaining the valuable insight into customer transactions and history that those functionalities provide, salespeople and customer service representatives acquire a reputation for outstanding customer service that inevitably spreads to the rest of the company.

As business icon Warren Buffet once said, "It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently." Don’t chance ruining your store’s reputation in the five minutes it takes a customer to open a box and discover their order was processed wrong. Use the tools that will ensure your company’s reputation stays spotless.

Ashley Harbaugh is a Product Marketing Specialist at Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, eCommerce and ERP, software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

Even though it’s still a bit early, the holiday season is just around the corner. For retailers, this is the time to start gearing up for the mad rush of shoppers who will be invading their stores, and to get ahead of the game by setting out holiday-themed stuff early to catch the folks who want to get a head start too. For customers (like me), this is the time to start strategizing on how to avoid horribly crowded malls and ridiculously long lines.

Nowadays, virtual shopping makes the experience much more easy and convenient for the people who don’t have the time or patience to deal with the crowds and lines, and also for the people who are just plain lazy (like me). And with the transformation of cell phones from just devices you use to make a call into full-fledged, mobile computers, as well as the rising popularity of tablet PCs, the mobile scene has developed into another crucial retail channel that businesses should explore. In fact, earlier this year Ignify identified and forecasted that mobile and tablet ecommerce would be one of the top retail trends of the year 2011.

According to a survey of 1,500 adults presented at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition 2011, 38% of the people surveyed own a smartphone, with 41% of them having made a purchase on the device. Also in the survey pool, 3% of those surveyed owned a tablet computer, with 65% saying they made a purchase from their tablet. Now, of the 5% who owned both a smartphone and a tablet, a whopping 85% made a purchase from a mobile device (also called "m-commerce").

So why not tap into the mobile gadget-loving streak of these potential customers and offer a mobile retail channel? With U.S. ecommerce sales reaching $165.4 billion in 2010 (a 14.8% increase from 2009’s $144.1 billion), retailers should look at any way they can carve out a bigger chunk of retail ecommerce. And with mobile retail, you can easily accomplish this.

For creating a slick, user-friendly mobile retail experience that keeps your customers returning in droves, here are some helpful tips and guidelines that you can follow.

1. Make Sure Your Website is Fully Functional and Accessible

First of all, you need to make sure that your mobile website is completely accessible and functional from a mobile browser. If this seems like an extremely common sense first step, and you’re even annoyed that I’m mentioning something so basic and essential, then great; it’ll be burned even more into your brain. Because really, what use is a website that caters to mobile users if the mobile users can’t access the website? So it’s best to keep in mind that most mobile operating systems, including Windows Phone 7, iPhone, and iPad, do not support Flash. So, to provide a similar experience without using Flash, use AJAX or Animated GIFs to get the same effect.

Also, don’t be shy in personally testing your mobile site. Whip out your smartphone (or if you don’t have one, borrow a smartphone from someone who does), and access your site. Does typing in your mobile address automatically direct you to the correct site, or does an error page pop up? Do the links on your site work okay? It’s better for you to be the first one to find and fix bugs and broken links than to have them stay on your site unreported for too long… and inevitably scaring off potential customers from visiting again.

2. Make Sure You Have an Optimized Mobile Browsing Experience

Now, I don’t mean to stereotype all mobile shoppers, but if I go off of my own personal experience as a shopper, I can tell you one thing: mobile shoppers are lazy. In other words, people who are using their mobile phone to access retail sites do not want to encounter a cluttered, difficult-to-use interface that makes them squint or scratch their heads while navigating through. In fact, having an overwhelmingly crowded homepage can immediately turn off a mobile user from spending time on your site, and can actively drive them towards seeking out your competitor.

The Ignify eCommerce mobile store provides an optimized mobile screen for customers to your site, giving them a sleek, user-friendly browsing experience.

Knowing that the first moment a mobile visitor opens up a store’s mobile site is crucial for customer retention, the latest version of Ignify eCommerce optimizes the mobile experience by offering the ability to create a separate mobile store in addition to the web optimized store available on desktop computers. With this mobile store, the main mobile devices popular with users – such as iPhone, Android phones, Windows Phone 7, iPad, HP Slate, and all Windows 7 Tablets – are natively supported so that you have the option to allow a customer to view your product catalog, or purchase items online from your mobile store.

And just like in the first tip, remember to try out your mobile site for yourself. Is it easy for you to navigate through your site? Is the correct information displayed prominently for visitors to see and access? Does it look aesthetically pleasing? Tweak and tune your site until it offers your visitors the best possible user experience.

3. Always Remember: Your Mobile Site is Different from Your Main Site

This tip really goes hand-in-hand with the second tip: when you’re optimizing your mobile site, always keep in mind that your mobile site is completely different from your regular site. So, different functionalities and appearances have more appeal to mobile users on a mobile site than for visitors on a regular website. For example, if you have brick-and-mortar retail stores in addition to a website and mobile store, make sure that the mobile store has your brick-and-mortar store hours, along with store locations, displayed front-and-center on your mobile site. This is important because since mobile users are usually, well, mobile, chances are that they’re trying to access this information if they’re looking it up on a mobile device (and hopefully it inspires them to jaunt on down to your store if they’re in the neighborhood).

Other examples of a mobile user’s browsing experience being different from a desktop computer user’s browsing experience is the fact that a person at a computer is sitting down in front of the screen, and thus putting more of a concerted effort in searching and browsing. So, a computer user is more likely to take their time to check out more of what the site has to offer, and to do more thorough searches. With mobile users, however, speed and simplicity are the key factors. A mobile user could be on their smartphone at home, sure, but most likely they’re out-and-about; so if they’re using their device to look up something in particular, they want to get to a search box quickly, and see their results instantly. Also, viewing a screen that’s much smaller than that of a computer means that they cannot access all the bells-and-whistles that are on a regular website.

Streamline the offerings on your main website to fit the reduced screen size of a mobile device. Speed and simplicity are crucial for mobile users, so make sure your search box and products are displayed prominently, as well as that your site is simple-to-click and easy to navigate.

So remember to accommodate for these considerations. So for instance, make your search box easy-to-spot on the page, and make your content simple-to-click. Streamline all the stuff that’s on your main website, boiling it down to only the essential items that a mobile user would be looking for. Know that a mobile user has a limited screen view, so adjust for that by, once again, making sure that the screen holds only the necessary information that a user would be searching for, or wanting to access. A visitor won’t stick around if they have to scroll down volumes of text just to find what they’re looking for. Even though it can be tempting to try to throw as much stuff as you can on your mobile site to entice potential customers, remember to simplify, simplify, simplify.

And the last rule for you to remember: you’re only limited by your imagination. It’s up to you to think of the new, creative, and exciting things that will make your mobile ecommerce site stand out from the rest. With the countdown on to the holiday season already, what are you waiting for – it’s time to start brainstorming before you get left behind!

Ashley Harbaugh is a Product Marketing Specialist at Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, eCommerce and ERP, software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.

The team here at Ignify has been working hard to provide the best ERP, CRM, and eCommerce solutions on the market, along with the best possible customer support and service, and people are taking notice! Ignify proudly announced its position on Inc. magazine’s annual Inc. 5000, a list that ranks the fastest growing companies in the nation. The 2011 Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2007 to 2010, and to qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2007. Additionally, they had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2010.

But not only did Ignify get to add this influential magazine’s acknowledgement to our proud list of accomplishments, but our company, represented by Ignify’s President of ERP Division and COO, Eric Shuss, was also recognized at the Inc. 500|Inc. 5000 Conference and Awards Ceremony on September 24, 2011. Held at National Hotel and Convention Center in National Harbor, MD, this event featured many movers and shakers in the business industry, with such guest speakers as Russell Simmons, hip hop business mogul and philanthropist; General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan; Ted Leonsis, founder, chairman, and majority owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, vice chairman emeritus of AOL, and founder of SnagFilms (and, if you’re a hockey fan, owner of the Washington Capitals); and many more.

Ignify’s President of ERP Division and COO, with his lovely wife, Lisa, at the Inc. 500|Inc. 5000 Awards Ceremony on September 24, 2011.

At the Awards Ceremony, Eric received Ignify’s award on stage, surrounded by business luminaries and celebrities alike. "I was honored to accept this award on behalf of Ignify," said Eric. "But I wish our whole team could have attended too. It’s great to work with such a talented, dedicated group of people, and this award is really a reflection of everyone’s efforts."

Eric Shuss (right) with Eric Schurenberg, editor of Inc.com (left), at the Awards Ceremony.

Congratulations to all the Ignify people who helped make this award possible!

Ashley Harbaugh is a Technical Writer for Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of CRM, eCommerce and ERP, software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 5 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and ranked as one of 100 most innovative companies in the world in the Red Herring Global 100 in 2011.