Great customer service can be costly, but it doesn't have to be with the latest generation of hosted communications tools that allow growing businesses to match or exceed the customer care offered by large enterprises.
Holding on to the customers you have is almost always cheaper than acquiring new ones. Providing those customers with high-quality service helps build loyalty and keeps them coming back. The catch is that first-class customer service doesn't come cheap. But according to Speakeasy president and CEO Bruce Chatterley, enterprise-class communications tools are now within reach for small and midsize companies. He sees the phone system as the front door for most growing businesses and believes that using integrated communications systems to support customer care can offer smaller businesses competitive advantage and increase profit margins.
bMighty: What challenges do growing businesses face in providing quality customer service?
Bruce Chatterley: The biggest issue is that growing businesses don't have the resources or the tools or the capabilities to compete with the big guys [on customer service], but many have a fundamental belief that customer service is the big differentiator. But how can they take care of this stuff that is not in their core business but is fundamental to their success?
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To do it they need data connections, phone systems, customer records, and a management system -- but growing businesses often don't have IT departments to take care of this. Growing businesses can outsource the tech infrastructure that will allow them to do customer service. There are fundamental capabilities almost every business needs, such as phone systems, data connections, a LAN within the office to connect computers, and then, on top of that, there are the unique functions. For instance, a retail company will need a credit card swiping machine; an attorney will need a billing system; and most businesses will need some sort of payroll system. A company like ours can deliver a suite of capabilities that small and midsize businesses can use generically across all industries.
There are three fundamental truths about small and midsize businesses: they want to save money, they want to save time, and they want to make money.
bMighty: How can improving customer service help growing businesses?
Chatterley: It's all about staying connected with customers and giving them more options to connect with you. For instance, a small real estate company [and Speakeasy customer], Ballast Realty, has a mobile workforce and in order to compete and give better customer service, it needs to allow its customers to always be able to reach them. It wanted that as a competitive advantage. It used a VoIP system to improve connectivity with its customers and it implemented a feature that routs calls to other lines. This improved business.
bMighty: What are some other features growing businesses can implement to help communications with their customers?
Chatterley: Businesses can get voicemail via their e-mail. It can come to their Outlook as an attachment. All communications can be in a single place. Voice services can be integrated with Outlook so if the phone rings you'll get an ID screen that pops up and will identify who is calling. You can track the time on the call and you can get call stats like who called while you were away. This is an emerging technology that small and midsize businesses are taking advantage of to compete with the big guys.
These features are all standard with larger phone systems but now they are affordable because the phone systems are hosted. Typically, larger companies buy the equipment and host it on their own. It's taking that equipment and putting it in the cloud. Small and midsize businesses get all the functionality and they don't have to pay someone to maintain it.
Companies like Speakeasy host private networks for voice and data traffic. They never transition to the public Internet. If you have a location in New York and one in San Francisco, you can connect easily on the private network. Many companies work this way and you should be looking for a company with a private network because of the security and because of the quality and the reliability. Businesses also should look at the level of customer support and the provider of the customer support. For most growing businesses, your phone system is your front door. You'll want to know that if something goes wrong, it will get fixed. Our customers have told us that they hate buck passing by providers. It's always someone else's problem!
bMighty: How else can growing businesses enhance their customer service?
Chatterley: We did focus groups to understand what small and midsize businesses are looking for. We found [that they want]:
- A single provider for voice, data, and IT infrastructure
- A single bill
- A single support interface
- Simple, predictable, flat-rate pricing
I think customer service is critical for small and midsize businesses to compete. It helps with both customer intimacy and product innovation -- and even if you're only focused on one of these two, customer service has to be there.
The companies we compete with have been very bad at customer service. The telcos and the cable companies are not known for customer service. Many companies are cutting costs at the expense of customer service. This is where small and midsize businesses gain a competitive edge over larger companies. In most companies, businesses that have good customer service can charge at a higher rate and that is especially important in this economy.
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Naomi Grossman is assistant editor of bMighty.com.
