The current pandemic has made client relationships more value-driven than ever. That’s partly due to the inability to meet customers face to face, partly due to the need to support remote work, and partly due to the need to adapt to the new way of doing business in the digital workplace.
Before the pandemic hit, you probably used shared mailboxes to communicate with clients and customers. You know, mailboxes like “support@”, “info@,” or even more specific ones like customer_name@, where each customer had their own shared mailbox name. Communicating with clients this way is great for exchanging business critical information, and it enables you to maintain accurate records for governance and compliance requirements. This still works great. COVID or not, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…
But what has happened to the time between the arrival of the customer email until the time you respond? That has completely changed in the last year.
When a customer email arrives, more often than not, the response requires input from more than one person; the mail might be asking for a project bid, an update on project status, or advice on a wide range of topics, from pension schemes to management consulting, to tax implications, and so on.
Before the pandemic, a designated account manager could take the requests and walk around the office to collect the bits and pieces needed to answer the email. Today, with everyone working from remote locations, that no longer works. Business has changed. Today, you need to collaborate effectively with people working across a host of locations and time zones. This is one reason that Microsoft Teams has become the de facto solution for enterprise collaboration, going from 13 million users to 250 million users in less than two years. With Teams, conversations make discussions transparent to the team, wherever they are located.
Now, wouldn’t it be great to use Teams to collect all those inputs you need, without leaving your chair?
harmon.ie is developing a new product for customer service professionals, code-named “ServiceMate”, specially-designed for today’s Post-Pandemic Digital Workplace.
With ServiceMate, customer service personnel move customer requests from shared mailboxes to Microsoft Teams. Then, they set up a task to answer the email and collaborate with colleagues to generate the best response. You can even answer the email, all without leaving Teams.
ServiceMate vastly improves customer service by making request handling collaborative, transparent, and accountable since colleagues view discussions and conversations in a shared workspace. All from Teams, the collaboration platform you already use.
ServiceMate is not yet released to the public, but we are looking for the last few design partners to provide feedback on early releases and to help drive the product roadmap. Getting in on the ground floor will ensure you get a product that fulfills your own business process workflow, and it you will receive preferential pricing to boot.
Want to learn more? Join us to hear more about ServiceMate. Guest speaker Alexandra Banica, Head of Operations and Support for Applications at BearingPoint shares her experiences and explains why BearingPoint views ServiceMate and Teams as key components for servicing customers in the digital workplace.
