We've all experienced the highs and lows of working remotely. Without the right resources, productivity can hit a wall. When it comes to customer support, the stakes are even higher. Satisfaction and loyalty are at risk.
Whether work-from-home acts as a temporary solution or a long-term pivot, your support team must overcome a unique set of challenges. This article discusses two innovative ways to make it work.
Unique challenges of remote customer support.
Customer support associates typically train in the office, where workstations and processes all look similar. Unfortunately, spreading out a team often causes details to fall through the cracks. Working from disparate systems can also slow down response times, lowering productivity, and risking dissatisfied customers.
To provide reliable customer service, your support staff needs resources to:
- Access customer records, order information, and inventory.
- Open tickets.
- Triage customer needs.
- Share files.
- Run mission-critical processes and workflows.
The good news? Several methods can help remote support teams thrive.
What are my options?
One option is to select from the thousands of packaged remote support solutions on the market. Unfortunately, these products can be costly and may not solve your specific issues. Also, the process of implementing a new system and training representatives poses its own set of challenges.
Another option is to connect your team to your existing infrastructure. With this method, you eliminate the learning curve of a new platform, and your team can quickly adapt to using tech tools from home.
How to connect your existing systems to enable remote support.
There are two ways to approach connecting to your existing infrastructure.
1. Build a custom app.
This method is a solid choice if your team already has access to customer data or if you’re starting from the ground up. You can use a service like Claris FileMaker to create a custom app that helps your team update customer contact information, manage product issues, and check orders, inventory, and service tickets. FileMaker can bring together data from many different sources into a cohesive modern app experience.
2. Leverage your existing CRM and integrate apps you already have.
If you're currently using a CRM, you've likely made a significant digital investment. There's no need to start from scratch to accommodate remote work arrangements.
Instead, consider using Claris Connect automated workflow to move pertinent data to and from your CRM. For example, with automated processes, you can:
- Record interactions and automatically add them to the customer records.
- Trigger follow-up tasks for seamless ticket resolution.
- Get real-time purchase order information updates to customer records.
With this option, automated workflows eliminate many manual processes involved in the customer support process, freeing your team to devote more energy to serving your customers.
Here’s an example of how you can build a workflow in Claris Connect for Remote Support:
- Use your existing CRM: Hubspot.
- Add customer service data from Zendesk to a contact record in Hubspot, so reps have visibility into recent support interactions.
- Create a web-based customer support form for your website using Typeform and configure form submissions to create a support ticket in Zendesk.
- Boom! Web-based customer support for your remote team, plus a 360-degree view of customer interactions in CRM, using all your existing apps!
How to use the power of automated workflows.
Supporting a remote customer support team doesn't have to be painful. Building a custom app with FileMaker is one approach, or leveraging your existing CRM and apps might be easier. Whichever method you choose (or both), you’ve got options.
If you work with applications like Typeform or Zendesk, Claris Connect may already offer a built-in template to speed up your automated workflow implementation. There are endless workflow processes that can help you modernize your application ecosystem.
Want to quickly build a remote support solution using your existing apps? Check out the Claris Connect App Directory. You can even try it free for 14 days.