MS 365 Apps for the Customer Support Processes
Customers are the backbone of any business, and ensuring a good customer experience is the baseline of success and growth. This is why having organised and streamlined customer support policies and processes is significant. MS 365 suite can play an important part in helping structure and align these processes.
This article is part of the series ‘MS 365 Apps for Businesses Processes’ where we explore MS 365 applications for significant business processes. This is Part 5 of the series, and you can also refer to the previous parts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4) which cover the MS 365 Apps for Project Management, HR, Finance management, and marketing respectively.
Before exploring the applications, let us first understand the responsibilities and processes handled by the customer support department of any organisation:
Customer Support
The customer support team is responsible for addressing customer inquiries, resolving complaints, providing support throughout the process, and maintaining healthy customer relationships. To help with these tasks, the team maintains and tracks customer tickets, collects regular feedback, and handles reporting and analytics as part of day-to-day processes.
All this highlights the significance of having efficient tools and platforms to help make the customer support processes easier to execute.
Microsoft Tools for Customer Support
The following tools stand as a great fit to effectively manage the organisation’s customer support processes:
Microsoft Teams
MS Teams is a must-have to ensure effective customer support processes. From setting up quick meetings and video calls to addressing customer inquiries and providing customers with a collaborative space to track their tickets – It helps with all. Additionally, it helps make the process of collecting feedback easier.
When subscribing to an annual plan, the MS Teams Essentials costs $4/user/month.
Microsoft Forms
MS Forms is a free tool that helps conduct online surveys and collect feedback. The customer support team can utilise it to collect feedback from customers. The best part about MS Forms is that it allows you to visualise the results in live mode, while you can apply built-in analytics on the data as well.
It is a free tool and part of Office 365.
Microsoft Outlook
MS Outlook helps streamline the communication process with customers. Having the option of sharing calendars with ease and making follow-ups efficiently helps make collaboration easier.
MS Outlook is a part of the MS 365 Business Basic plan that costs $6/user/month with an annual commitment.
Microsoft Excel
MS Excel is a widely used spreadsheet editor and customer support teams can utilise it to keep track of customer queries, maintain a list of common customer concerns, and visualise the data in the form of charts and tables.
MS Excel is a part of the MS 365 Business Basic plan, which is $6/user/month with an annual commitment.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
The pricing plan is dependent on the usage and requirements. However, the professional plan starts with a cost of $50/user/month.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service is a one-stop solution for ticket management, customer insights, and providing support. From helping track and assign tickets to providing detailed data analytics and setting up a centralised knowledge base – The tool helps with all.
With optimised customer support processes, a business can earn the much-needed competitive advantage to grow in the industry. Therefore, now is the right time to invest in tools and applications that help streamline and structure the customer support processes.
If you want to dive further into how these tools work and can offer your business the needed support, our coaches are a click away!
