How To Automate Public Relations With Customer Management Software

Today’s post explains how to automate low-level, repetitive public relations tasks with our customer management software to free up your reps for more creative and strategic work.

The Importance Of Quality Customer Service

Most readers already understand the crucial role that customer service plays in their business success. But since we’re discussing automation, it’s worth reiterating to show you what’s at stake with your choice of customer management software:

• Customer service increases sales. According to a recent study by Zendesk, 42% of B2C customers showed more interest in purchasing products or services after positive customer service experiences. In the same study, 52% of customers indicated that they decided against completing a purchase after a single negative customer support interaction.
• Poor customer service costs big brands big money. According to new research from NewVoiceMedia, U.S. companies lose more than $62 billion annually as a consequence of their poor public relations.
• Poor customer service breaks down brand loyalty. One study by Microsoft found that 56% of people around the world have stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer services experiences. Moreover, brand loyalty did not moderate these effects as expected, which suggests that poor customer experience sours even the most loyal customer relations.

If you choose the wrong customer management software, or overdo your automation, you risk losing a lot.

Does Customer Management Software Provide True Automation?

Is it really possible to automate 100% of a franchise’s public relations?

Plenty of futurists and big brands definitely endorse this idea. For instance, in a recent report, Servion Global Solutions predicts AI will power 95% of all customer interactions by 2025, including live telephone and online conversations; similarly, Gartner predicts that this year customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the brand without any human interaction whatsoever.

Despite their optimism, however, AI has a long way to go before we achieve complete customer service automation. Though efficient, AI representatives lack flexibility and the human touch, and finicky voice-recognition technology can be frustrating for consumers (think of all those automated phone calls you may have struggled with in the past, or those annoying Siri mistakes). Supporting this idea, research by American Express showed that 68% of customers believe the key to great customer service is a polite and compassionate customer service representative. In that same study, 62% of respondents said that “service insight and knowledge is also key to a good experience.”  In other words, most customers still prefer the human touch—at least for now.

Clearly, then, artificial intelligence won’t put PR pros out of a job just yet, but customer management software can help us automate repetitive, low-level tasks. In doing so, customer management software frees up time for your PR talent to focus on the fun and rewarding tasks they do best, like cultivating relationships, crafting messages, and solving unique problems customers encounter.

• Automate low-level customer service tasks. FranchiseSoft’s customer management software includes attractive and simple self-service options. Customers and franchisees can access instructional videos, manuals, step-by-step guides, and updatable FAQs for common problems and concerns. While not suitable for every customer service need, this low-level customer service automation frees up customer service reps for more taxing tasks.
• Eliminate invoicing errors and communication failures. Whether you communicate via SMS or email, FranchiseSoft automatically archives all customer correspondence to head off any communication failures, quote mix-ups, or service time misunderstandings. Beyond heading off customer service complaints, this feature also helps big brands reduce their liability. This effect is further enhanced by our detailed reports on customer operations.Our customer management software also provides intuitive customer invoice and statement generation, with application of payment against invoices.
• Automate customer research for greater responsiveness. “Customer responsiveness,” the ability to identify and respond to customer needs, is listed among the top-5 “building blocks of competitive advantage” in Charles Hill’s seminal work, Strategic Management: An Integrated Approach. This is measured in part by your company’s ability to respond quickly to customer questions and complaints, which our software makes easy, and also by the degree to which products, services, and marketing messages reflect the interests and needs of your target audience. Customer research is vital but time-consuming, unless you’re working with our customer management software, which automatically generates customer reports and sends them to your email. You’ll never spend another work day researching customer wants.
• Automate interactions at the top of the sales funnel. According to Statista research, “lack of speed” is the number-one customer service frustration for 12% of US consumers. This lack of speed and responsiveness is especially harmful in B2B relations (e.g. franchise development efforts), where the competition for leads is fierce.For franchisors focused on B2B sales, our customer management software automates low-level interactions, cutting your response time down to seconds. Once readers become leads and take action, whether that’s requesting further information or completing contact forms, franchisors have the option of setting up automated “Welcome!” messages. These messages are totally customizable, and many franchisors choose to include investment information, industry analyses, and virtual brochures to keep the lead engaged and active in the sales funnel. At the very least, you can use these automated messages to inform new leads that a franchise representative will be with them shortly.
• Automate customer-service related data entry tasks. FranchiseSoft is designed to eliminate redundancies. You’ll never have to input the same information twice—everything from invoicing to lead information to customer research data is automatically inputted into the appropriate fields, and shared between interrelated modules.

Book A Free Customer Management Software Demonstration

In the same way you should never judge a book by its cover, you shouldn’t judge our customer management software based on this introduction to our custom service automation capabilities.

Visit the FranchiseSoft customer management software module page to learn more about the functionality we offer businesses big-and-small, or call 888-302-3676 to book a free virtual demonstration.