When it comes to cutting the cost of running a business every day, your company has probably been looking for as many methods as possible. Yet you also understand the importance of maintaining proper customer service—and the fact that it takes money to do this.
If you are seeking avenues to save money in your company without having to sacrifice quality, you should consider cloud computing solutions. Cloud computing is the next exciting frontier of business, and is considered an effective solution for many issues facing modern companies. One of the most useful cloud computing applications is customer service. Cloud computing is unique because it allows you to house expensive and cumbersome equipment—used for customer service data management—offsite. You don’t have to manage a heavy-duty in-house customer service management solution, or the servers and physical infrastructure it takes to support the CSM software. Your agents can just log in at any computer, and handle their work remotely from any location.
Cloud computing companies offer remote hosting, and the management of large applications like customer relationship management, knowledge management and sales force automation—while reducing the need to keep a staff of IT professionals on hand to maintain and repair the system.
Practical Application
Let’s take a look at how Ashland Distribution, a distributor of chemicals, plastics and composite materials, was able to share information throughout the company and effectively track customer service activities. When they began looking into cloud-based apps, they had no single system or location for housing orders, which meant that reps were unable to view open orders or inventory figures easily. Additionally, customers were contacting the company through several channels, and the distributor had no effective way to compile all the customer information.
Once Ashland found a cloud computing provider, who offered a Web-based interface with point-and-click ease, they were able to streamline their entire system, from sales figures and customer support, to master data and supply chain. They rolled out the system to over 1,000 users in just a few stages, and subsequently found that their IT requirements were drastically reduced—both in terms of personnel and in infrastructure and hardware. Now the company has one integrated system for data storage and management, which provides accessibility and transparency to all departments.
Customer information collected on cloud computing platforms can be easily accessed by any employee with authorization and a secure Internet connection. They don’t even need a desktop—they can do the work from a laptop or other mobile device. Updates to the information can be seen in real-time, so that everyone has the most current statistics and data available. This can lead to higher sales figures, more efficient customer service, and more targeted marketing campaigns.
Throughout the life of a company, there occur adjustments to standardized business practices and protocols, management shifts, employee turnover and other changes. Information is often lost or misplaced during times of transition, and is sometimes never found again. With cloud computing platforms, however, your information and workflows stay secure in the cloud, ready to be accessed whenever necessary, and without having to hire IT professionals to dig around in your servers and hard drives to retrieve information.
IT costs are one of the biggest expenses for companies that rely on information management and data storage; it only makes sense to outsource this expense and let your business run–effectively and cost-efficiently–in the cloud.
