Customer support
Customer support is another popular CRM feature. Customer support in a CRM application is for the management of customer issues. Issues could be general complaints, complaints about products such as returns, refunds or replacements, cancellations of an order, and so forth. Issues that are managed in CRM are called cases, or support tickets, or just tickets. Customer support can also include after sales service to ensure a good customer experience.
In a non-integrated CRM application, tickets that involve returns, refunds, or the replacement of products are not linked with the ERP inventory control system, and this makes the process disconnected. A customer support user may need to enter a ticket into the CRM application, and then they may need to go to the ERP application to process a refund, or replacement. This requires application hopping and double entry of data.
Customer support workflow
The business process of managing customer support tickets is called the customer support workflow. Tickets are managed from initial creation through to successful or unsuccessful resolution:
Part of a customer workflow state diagram from SageCRM
A typical customer support workflow may contain some or all of the following steps:
Log ticket: A level one support user may be tasked with entering new tickets into the CRM system. Tickets may originate from e-mails sent in by the customer, or phone calls, or they may come in via another system such as a customer self- service site.
Analyze ticket: The same support user or another more experienced support user may analyze the ticket to see whether enough information has been provided that will allow action to be taken. If there is not enough information they may have to contact the customer again to ask for more information.
Respond to the customer: The support user may respond to the customer with additional questions, or propose a solution to the ticket. There may be a pause at this point, while waiting for the customer to respond. The ticket will be put on hold until there is a response from the customer.
Process refund, replacement, or return: At some point in the life cycle of the ticket, it may become clear that the customer would like a refund, replacement, or return. At this point the customer user may need to go to the ERP application to continue with the workflow, necessitating application hopping and double entry of data.
Close ticket: Finally, on successful resolution of the ticket, it is closed, and the customer support user moves on to the next ticket in the queue.
Integration opportunity for customer support
A non-integrated CRM application is not optimal for handling customer complaints related to returning, replacing, or refunding products that have been sold, because there is no direct link between the CRM application and the ERP's inventory control or sales fulfillment process.
An ERP application is suited to recording returns, replacements, or refunds, sometimes called RMAs, but it is not suitable for managing the customer interactions.
The integration opportunity is to link up the CRM and ERP into a more seamless workflow allowing customer support to take the customer complaints using the CRM system, and then link up with the ERP system when dealing with the specifics of the returns, replacements, or refunds.
Another useful integration opportunity is to use the customer support workflow for chasing up invoices that are overdue, for delinquent accounts. In order to do that there needs to be a link between the ERP system, to get invoice information and the CRM application to handle the customer interactions.
Workshop
Briefly outline the customer support process in your business where customer queries/complaints are entered, and brought through to resolution. Can this process benefit by being linked with the ERP? Is there information in the ERP that is useful to a customer support person? When processing returns is it useful to have a link with ERP?
