Advantages of Technologies enabled business
Today, business organizations are using electronic medium to identify, attract, and retain customers. Technology has helped business houses greatly to offer extended customer support.
Interactive Computer and Communicators Technologies have helped business organizations to collect detailed information about the customer’s behavior, preferences, tastes, needs and buying patterns; and use the information to take right decisions on product, price, place and promotion. Various advantages of enabling technology in business are briefly explained below.
Table of Contents
Advantages of Technologies enabled business
The advantages that are obtained in using technology for providing customer support are many: They are
- Reduction of Cost per Contact
- Creation of Intimate Relationship
- Reduction of Human Errors
- Quality of Work
- Good return on investment
- Generates revenue
- Quick response
- Reduction of Development time.
1. Reduction of Cost per Contact
In personal contacts, any sales Representative should pay full attention in one-to-one interaction. Lot of time, money and labour resources should be allocated for such one-on-one interaction.
A web based chat or e-mail involves a relatively low cost per contact. E-mail are generally handled in batches. The customer support executive while communicating with potential customers on the web can handle other functions between sessions during a live chat. It reduces cost incurred on labour which reduces the cost incurred on each contract. Using technology to acquire customers decreases the customer acquisition cost.
2. Creation of Intimate Relationship
Computer mediated chats create and support intimate relationship between the sales Representative of an organization and the customer. The conversation and refined method of’ answering queries help to develop emotional bondage between the representative and the customer.
An integrated database to deliver consistent and improved customer responses improves the service level agreements and enhances the relationship between the customers and the business.
3. Reduction of Human Errors
“To err is Human”. Errors may creep in when the customer support executive lacks training or influenced by moods. Computer-enabled communication results in less errors in relation to tracking orders, identifying the customer base and verifying the charges. If the data of the customers are accurately fed into the computer, then the reports generated on customers will be very accurate and meaningful to business organizations.
4. Quality of Work
The interaction between the customers and the representatives are generally monitored in business with computer mediated communications. Various business organizations also provide incentives to customer support executives based on their performances. This motivates and influences them to provide better and consistent service as they are subject to quality control
and performance appraisal.
5. Good return on investment
Low cost per contact, outsourcing of customer support functions and filling up the customer representative post with temporary and seasonal workforce generate good return to any organization. An E-Commerce transaction reduces the cost on middlemen, advertisement and labour and generates good return on investment.
6. Generates revenue
Using interactive service tools to sell various product helps to decrease cost of product which in turn increases revenue and retail customers.Technology enabled business helps to shorten the sales cycle of the firm and increase sales performance such as revenue per sales representative and per Customer, avg order size etc.
7. Quick response
The customer support executives respond to customer queries quickly. The services of the organization are available 24/7 x 365. Likewise, the supporting staff are well trained to handle queries. Such quick response brings satisfaction to customers and help business organization to retain customers.
8. Reduction of Development time
It is very expensive to train, motivate, influence and retain customer support executives. The image and the performance of the customer support executive has an impact on the image of the business organization. So, it is vital to recruit a pleasant looking customer support executive in traditional business.
In E-business, where the transaction and communication take place on web, there is a need for customer support executive with good communication skills. The organization need not worry about the physical appearance of the individual as there is no face to face communication.
A person with good communication skills can be acquired and trained to work in electronic world even if he is poor in dressing habits. Training the customer support executives will also incur low cost as most of the business processes are automated and they are user friendly. Low cost generates more profits to the organization.
