Sales Rep Software: The Path to Better Customer Service

Love_customersCustomer service can make or break a business.  Excellent service can create loyal customers, and loyal customers will gladly give referrals.  Customers can disappear quickly with bad customer service.   

Inadequate processes are one of the main reasons customer service breaks down.  Issues that can arise are lost or erroneous orders, missed or late shipments, or incorrect pricing.  Having a tool that that can help define your order processing and eliminate a number of these problems and inefficiencies can be the key to better customer service

What is Sales Rep Software?

It is an online portal that lets your customer service staff and sales reps to view product and account details, check pricing and inventory availability, and place orders 24/7.  When sales reps and customer service staff can quickly answer customer questions, it creates a level of customer service that may have been missing. Having a staff knowledgeable on your products and customers can give you a leg up on your competition too. 

How does sales rep software alleviate some common customer service issues?

Uninformed Sales Staff

Each customer wants a customized and personal experience.  With a portal, you give your staff instant access to all pertinent customer information like past order and payment history, individual customer pricing, and shipments in the pipeline.  This simple tool can quickly create a very knowledgeable staff and garner lots of goodwill from your customers. 

Slow Information Flow

When you have uninformed sales staff, it usually means the information flow is slow-moving too.  This can cause unneeded delays. A customer’s particular rep could be on the road and out of touch, so your inside staff will need to answer their questions.  Or your outside rep must call the office or the warehouse to get pertinent customer information.  All of these scenarios tie up the entire order process, keeping a customer waiting, rather than getting an order moving through the system.  When your sales software integrates with your accounting software your entire team will be armed with the up-to-date information it needs to provide great customer service. 

Inaccurate Orders

With a portal, your sales team is able to place customer orders online.  The order will then be created automatically in QuickBooks, alleviating any need for rekeying the order, thus eliminating any errors or delays. 

With the ability to build customer specific order forms with a customer’s specific pricing and discounts, you guarantee orders that always have correct pricing. 

Lost Orders

Sales rep software can also alleviate the risk of losing sales orders.  With a sales rep’s ability to enter in the order and have it go straight into QuickBooks, there are no more lost orders.  If a customer wants to know where their shipment is, either the customer service team or outside sales rep can quickly find the answer by looking it up in the sales portal. 

Reactive vs. Proactive

With a proper portal, sales reps have instant access to real time inventory.  Thisimproves the likelihood of a PO shipping in full, with no backorders.  If inventory is not available, you can choose to display the anticipated in stock date.  This gives the sales rep and customer more power to make better decisions on the information at hand. 

With all the information available in a web based sales portal, you empower your sales team to engage effortlessly with your customers, building lasting relationships. order management system