Think about what your customers go through when they contact your business for help. Are they quickly connected with a chatbot or agent who efficiently resolves their issue? Or, do they send an email, then wait more than a day before an agent finally gets back to them with a solution? This is why your case management system — how you keep track of all your customer data and resolve issues — can make or break customer relationships.
How your team responds depends not on how much they want to help – but on whether they have access to customer data and the AI and automation tools to quickly get the job done. To give your customers a service experience that turns them into fans of your company, now is the time to invest in the right case management system. No matter how your customers contact you — chat, phone, email, SMS, or social media — your support team will have the customer data and tools they need to efficiently solve problems right away.
Get actionable customer service insights
High-performing service organizations use data and AI to drive efficient case management without compromising on the customer experience. Find out how in Salesforce’s latest State of Service report.
What is a case management system?
At a basic level, a case management system collects and organizes customer service interactions that occur on any channel, then tracks each case to resolution. It does this by pulling customer requests into a centralized customer relationship management system (CRM), so your agents can view, categorize, and respond to them.
This helps your agents solve cases faster and reduce costs for your business – even as case volume increases – by unifying data into one CRM and automating processes. Our research underscores the desire for speedy resolutions: 81% of customers expect faster service as technology advances.
How does a good case management system help your business?
A case management system offers many benefits, including that it lets you:
Understand your customers better
Your agents can see a customer’s full history with your business – from purchases and order status to past service interactions. With this data at hand, your agents can provide personalized customer service, including recommendations and offers tailored to that customer. When agents have the key information they need, they are freed up to focus on the customer, and may gain deeper insights that are also very valuable to other departments like marketing and sales.
Assign the right agent to the case
Another benefit is omni-channel routing. When a case comes in, the right agent is automatically assigned based on their skill set and availability. Your customers don’t have to wait hours for answers to their questions, or explain themselves over and over as they get transferred from agent to agent, because they are routed to the right agent in the first place. Your agents will also improve average handle time and first contact resolution.
Improve efficiency and save time
Automation and AI remove repetitive tasks from your agents’ queues, freeing them up to focus on complex cases that require critical thinking and empathy. Generative AI can suggest recommended replies to customers, or even write knowledge base articles to be used in your customer help center (be sure to have a human review and edit). With the support of automation, your agents can follow sequences to resolve cases more efficiently with prompts on what to ask and what to do.
What features does your case management system need?
Your solution should help your support team work more efficiently to deliver better customer service. Key features include the ability to:
Give everyone a single view
When your support agents have everything they need at their fingertips, on a single screen all the time, they can deliver service more efficiently. Cloud-based case management systems that are integrated with your CRM data and your external data provide every agent with the same view of the customer, no matter where they are – or what device they are using. This makes sure your customers always have a consistent experience.
Serve customers on their preferred channel
Customers want service on the channel of their choice – chat, email, social media and even the phone. (Yes, people still use voice as a way to get service – especially for complex cases). This is critical as customer behaviors continue to change and new channels emerge. A good case management system natively integrates these channels, so all your customer data and workflow automation comes together to resolve issues seamlessly – no matter how or when a customer contacts you.
Offer efficient self-service
Many customers prefer to solve their issues on their own. Self-service options like a customer portal, help center, or chatbot, offer 24/7 support. Customers use these channels to access knowledge base articles, FAQs, and routine information such as delivery date. They may also choose to ask a question on a customer community portal to tap into in-depth knowledge of your product’s features and functionality.
Remember: customer experience can mean the difference between rants or 5-star reviews. Set up for success with a case management system that helps you keep track of customer data and get the insights you need to deliver effective service.
Visualize contact center performance
You need to understand what’s happening in your contact center – both the good and the bad. A case management system with native customer service analytics provides reports and dashboards that show how you’re doing. It helps you track important metrics like average handle time, first contact resolution, customer satisfaction (CSAT), and more. Armed with this information, you see problem areas and can work to correct them.
Customize the lifecycle of support cases
A good case management system allows you to tailor the lifecycle of support cases in order to meet your service goals. For example, your support team may have different service level agreements (SLAs) with different customers, depending on the plan they select. Those paying for premium service may have access to a live agent 24/7, whereas customers with standard service may have only self-service or email support.
You can also customize workflows to include entitlements that represent the terms of each customer’s SLA, and add milestones that track how you meet those entitlements. That way, individual agents don’t have to ensure you serve your customers as promised – the system does that for you.
Another example would be creating business rules and workflows within your CRM that help automate case escalations. Again, this takes the burden off the individual agent to shepherd that case – it happens automatically within the system, on the desired timeframe.
Looking for efficiency? Start here
See how you can help your agents become more efficient — and your customers happier. When you have an easy-to-use platform for your data, agents have all the information they need to provide the service customers expect.
