Document management platforms absolutely benefit your company. But the perks don’t stop there. When you invest in document management software, your customers benefit as well. By integrating your various software platforms and keeping your staff connected and efficient, you provide your customers with a superior experience. Improved customer service means improved customer retention rates. This means higher profitability for your company! Here are three ways that document management will revolutionize your customer service.

Document Management Allows For Faster Responses

When customers reach out to your organization, they expect a quick response. This is even more true in the era of 24-hour access via the internet. In the past, messages from customers would be routed, rerouted, and sit for a while before they received a response. Now, however, document management gives you the ability to respond promptly to customer correspondence. Thanks to automated routing, each department receives its messages directly, with built-in notifications and other accountability measures to make sure messages receive an answer. In turn, your customers feel heard and connected, inspiring loyalty and repeat purchases.

Start off by creating an automated online contact form on your website. The form should include customer name, phone number, email, and a box where they can type in why they are contacting you. It should also include a dropdown box where they select a predefined reason for filling out the form (i.e. billing, returns, general, etc.). Once submitted, the form will be routed to the correct person or department. Since the form is all online, it is easy for employees to make updates to it whenever necessary. The information entered into the form is secure as it is encrypted during transit as well as during storage. Once the issue is resolved with the customer, forms can be categorized and stored in case they need to be referenced in the future. By storing previous contact forms, your business can start to see and analyze trends to help make processes better. For example, if you are receiving a lot of complaints about difficulty using your website, then take that as a sign you need to work on the ease and accessibility of your site. Online forms can be searchable so that certain topics are easy to find amongst all the documents in your storage system.

Greater Shared Knowledge

How often does a customer speak to someone in your company who doesn’t know the whole story? When you use separate software for sales, billing, correspondence, and other interactions, many departments can only access part of a customer’s information. To rectify this situation, employ an integrated document management platform. When all your systems are housed under one roof, every employee who speaks to customers can see all relevant data on a customer’s account. This simplifies customer interactions and guarantees that your customer service representatives can offer the appropriate help and insight a customer requires. Take the time to train all employees on customer interactions. That way, no matter who a customer reaches, they will get the best possible help. In order to truly have all customer information in one spot, scan in old paper copies to go fully digital! 

More Relevant Information

If your organization self-promotes through a newsletter, targeted promotions, or any other direct correspondence, knowledge about your customers dramatically increases that efficiency. With this in mind, many companies use document management to target specific types of offers and information to clients with the greatest interest. For example, create a mailing list of clients who regularly purchase a specific product and are up-to-date on payments. Then, when the product is on promotion, use that mailing list to your benefit and theirs. Customers appreciate a company that has their best interests in mind. Being aware of their regular patterns and needs is one way to keep them coming back.

Targeted advertising and marketing is much more effective than mass advertising, and is made possible with a document management platform that stores customer data. People tend to ignore advertisements that they feel aren’t relevant to them, but tune in to ones they can relate to. With a document management platform, you can easily extract important information about your customers and advertise to them. Whether you advertise digitally on Facebook, Google, Instagram, or via email, or through physical mailings, targeted advertising is the way to go. Here are some great ideas of ways to target your customers based on extracted data:

• Base advertisements on customer addresses. Advertise to those who live within a certain mile radius of your store/office. 
• Create ads based on past purchases. When a new product comes in, advertise to customers who have purchased similar products before.
• Create ads based on gender or age. If you have products or services that cater to a particular gender or age, extract the data and advertise to that group.
• Send ads to loyal customers. Extract data from customers who are in the top 5-10% of spenders at your company and advertise to them.
• Bring back previous customers. Using data, determine customers who shopped with you 1-2 years ago who haven’t been back since. Advertise to them to try and get them to re-engage with your brand/company.

As a company, decide which data you want to collect on your customers so that you can use it down the road for successful ad campaigns. A good document management platform allows you to store this data and easily extract it when needed. 

Document management software doesn’t only benefit your team. In fact, if you employ a high-quality document platform, it benefits everyone who deals with your company. It helps you improve relationships with your customers by catering more directly to their needs. It also allows your customers to get better service in a quicker and easier manner. To learn more about the benefits and tools that good document management brings, contact Vasion today.