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Customers are the lifeblood of every business. Unless you get your customers to come back, your business won't be profitable for long. Good customer service is about bringing them back and sending them away happy - happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others.
In today's environment, customers demand instant service, or they will find it elsewhere. Typically, the only time a customer calls your business is when they have a problem and need an answer right away. They turn to you because they can't find the information needed to solve the problem themselves.
Unfortunately, the answer to the customer's question is located in paper documents and those documents may be spread throughout several departments in your organization. The result is that you have to put the customer on hold while you search for the information or worse yet, you must terminate the conversation and promise to call them back.
How do your customers rate your customer service?
One simple question can easily determine how your company rates at customer service. The question is: What percent of your customer service calls are answered on the first call without having to put the customer on hold?
A document imaging system can easily help you achieve a 90% first call response rate. The reason is that you can find the information to answer your customers question instantly from your PC. Document imaging makes the information that you need to do your job instantly available whenever you need to access it. Providing answers to a customers question in a timely manner insures a satisfactory experience for the customer.
Example: Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York
Before installing their document imaging system, Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York, one of the largest nonprofit HMOs in the New York metropolitan area, received 2,000 calls a day from its members. Only 10% (200 calls) of those people received answers immediately. The other 1,800 had to wait for a return call. Today, H.I.P. answers 95% of questions on the first call.
One of the consequences of not finding information, or finding it too late is the creation of unhappy customers. In most cases, the customers are already experiencing a certain amount of frustration over their inability to find the information within their own office. It becomes almost unforgivable if you can't find it. The problem is aggravated by two inherent problems associated with a paper-based file system:
1. According to a study by Cooper & Lybrand, 10% of all paper documents are lost, misfiled or misplaced. This can create a significant problem for your organization when you need to answer customers' questions. With a document imaging system you completely eliminate lost documents. And, because multiple members of your staff can access any document at the same time, you don't have to spend wasted time looking for a file that a co-worker is using and has been removed from the filing cabinet.
2. With a paper filing system, your staff must either put the customer on hold or call him back after taking time to retrieve the needed information. Then, once the conversation is concluded, the documents must be filed once again. With a document imaging system the information is retrieved in a matter of seconds and is properly re-filed when you close the document.
Conclusion
To work as effectively as possible, employees need fast, easy, accurate access to customer information. With a document imaging system that information can be retrieved instantly from your PC, and copies of the documents can be emailed immediately to your customer, without any time delays. With a document imaging system you are able to provide prompt service to your customers, answering ninety percent of their questions on the first call, and avoid putting them on hold. This results in stellar customer service and satisfied customers.
Management knows that good customer service leads to more business, which in turn leads to more profits. If you are a salesperson, you can sell anything to anyone once. But, it will be customer service that determines whether or not you'll ever be able to sell that customer anything else.
Learn how to choose the ideal document imaging system for your business in five easy steps...
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