Recently we have published guest blog post by Andrew Gazdecki, founder and CEO of Business Apps. Here we are bringing you deeper insight in to their customer service culture in an interesting interview with their COO, Zach Cusimano.
1. How big is your “customer service team” and how many customers do you have?
Our dedicated Customer Success team is currently comprised of 15 individuals who spend their action packed days dealing with clients through our various support channels; live chat, live phone, email and business orientations. However everyone on our team does some form of customer service every single day, including our CEO. The team successfully handles around 500-600 new cases daily while maintaining a 98% Customer Happiness Rate on NiceReply. Bizness Apps currently services tens of thousands of clients all over the world.
2. What’s the main reason, you care about your customer support services?
At Bizness Apps, customer service is our culture and it is heavily ingrained into everything we do. Our passion is in providing the best service in our industry and helping other businesses grow. We are dedicated to exceeding our client’s expectations everyday and continually improving all aspects of our customer care.
Our excellent customer service is the foundation of what our business was built on and will always remain one of our most pivotal competitive advantages. Simply put- Our Client’s Success is Our Success!
3. What kind of metrics are you using to measure customer satisfaction and performance of your agents?
We love to use Nicereply to get a quick temperature check on our customer’s wellbeing and to also help keep our support team performing at their best by holding them accountable for each interaction.
Besides Nicereply we use a support ticket system called Desk.com, which gives awesome analytics on the cases received as well as agent productivity. We monitor client engagement using a software program called Everage that helps give us great insight into what our clients are doing (or not doing) so we can better service them.
Lastly, since most of our business is done through a reseller network, we measure client app sales as a major factor in customer success or satisfaction.
4. Do you have any special motivation programs for your customer service agents?
Currently we do not have any type of “Motivation Programs” in use at Bizness Apps. We believe everyone should take an equal responsibility in providing an excellent customer experience for our clients. However the support we do provide for our clients is extremely rewarding as it helps other individuals grow their businesses.
Luckily for us, there’s software out there such as Nicereply to make sure our agents are continually providing top-notch support to our clients without additional “motivation”. J
5. What is, in your opinion, the future of support ticket systems?
Support ticket systems will make some huge advancements in the near future as exceptional customer service becomes the norm to stay competitive in any industry. Also with how quickly a poor experience can go viral in today’s world, companies have to start monitoring every channel available to them. As Jeff Bezos noted, “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customer unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends”. This personally makes me very excited because everyone loves better customer service!
There will obviously be a huge push on the mobile and social help sides as those are the next big frontiers of client communication and interaction. I can also see a big push in Gamification for the help agents as well as for clients. Self-service classes or learning software would also be an awesome compliment to any customer service system.
6. What’s the most important virtue a customer service agent must have?
The number one virtue a desk agent must have is passion for helping others. They must be dedicated to focusing on outcomes for the customer and nothing else. However there is no magic bullet for great customer service, it’s comprised of several virtues such as patience, having stellar interpersonal skills and understanding clients on an individual basis.
7. Do you have a funny story from your customer service that you would like to share with us? (We know that there’s a lot of them)
We pride ourselves on working hard while having fun but typically the help desk does not make too many contributions to the fun side of that equation. Aside from a funny name here or there, most every interaction is conducted at a high degree of integrity and professionalism at all times.
Bizness Apps and Bizness CRM was created by Bizness Apps, Inc. — the world’s leading mobile app and mobile website platform for small businesses. Bizness Apps, Inc. is a technology company located in San Francisco, CA with a staff of 50+ employees.