• Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Youtube
  • Rss
  • Savings Calculator
  • Get A Demo
  • Login
  • Contact
IntelliChief
  • Why IntelliChief?
      • The IntelliChief Difference
        • About IntelliChief
        • Best Practices Expertise

        • See how much you can save with AP Automation

          Find out exactly how much you're spending to process invoices with the IntelliChief Savings Calculator. Then, see how much you can save by implementing Enterprise Content Management and Process Automation for Accounts Payable. Savings Calculator >

    • Introducing IntelliChief
      Industry leaders choose IntelliChief to reduce costs and increase efficiency in: Accounts Payable, Order Management, HR, and more.
      Here's why:
      Watch
  • Solutions
      • Enterprise Content Management
      • Process Automation
        • AP Automation
        • Order Management
        • AR Automation
        • HR Automation
      • Solutions By Industry
        • Manufacturing
        • Distribution
        • Transportation
        • Construction
        • Logistics
  • Technology
      • OCR Capture
        Automatically capture and convert data from incoming documents.
      • Workflow
        Ensure that your business rules and processes are followed without error, every time.
      • Integration Link
        Connect IntelliChief to any ERP system (or multiple ERPs) to unlock advanced capabilities.
      • Digital Repository
        Archival made easy. Store and retrieve documents in seconds with full search capabilities.
      • Analytics
        Gain insight into your team’s productivity with customizable analytics dashboards.
      • Mobile Access
        Expand your operational footprint with reliable mobile solutions that integrate with your ERP system.
      • Email Import
        Automatically capture documents from emails to maximize touchless processing rates.
      • Retention Manager
        Manage Document Life Cycles, by securely storing, retrieving, and maintaining digital files.
  • ERP Integrations
    • What Does Integration Mean?
      • Oracle
      • JD Edwards
      • Infor
      • SAP
      • Other ERPs
  • Resources
      • Blog
      • FAQ
      • Events
      • Webinars
      • Case Studies
      • Guides
      • Product Sheets
      • Savings Calculator
      • Support
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
Paper-Based Customer Service Challenges

Overcoming Paper-Based Customer Service Challenges

September 17, 2020

Paper-Based Customer Service Challenges

Businesses need customers to survive. No matter how good your product is, if you can’t serve your customers’ needs in an efficient manner, there’s no guarantee that they will remain loyal to your business. All it takes is ONE small mistake or slip-up to turn a 5-star customer into a 1-star review.

 

High-quality Customer Service is determined by a number of factors, but speed is paramount if you want to keep customers satisfied. Even the most gracious and eloquent apology can’t make up for slow response times when your customers come calling. Your Customer Service team needs to be quick on their feet, and that’s impossible if your business still relies on paper-based Customer Service processes that leave your customers on hold listening to a repetitive tune while they shuffle through a cluttered file cabinet for information. Even companies that have already started implementing digital solutions to enhance Customer Service will find themselves at a disadvantage when compared to companies that have automated Customer Service capabilities. Do you know where your company stands?

Welcome to Your Paperless Office

If you want to overcome the paper-based Customer Service challenges that plague most businesses, you will need to focus on the following two objectives:

Digitizing Your Customer Service Documents

Paper-based Customer Service challenges stem from the physical limitations of paper. Paper takes up space and must be moved manually to transfer information from one person or department to the next. As a result, paper-based Customer Service processes are tedious, time-consuming, and ripe for error. By digitizing your documents, you can create precise digital replicas that allow you to store and retrieve documents instantaneously from a computer, tablet, or even mobile phone if you want to expand your Customer Service team to incorporate remote work. OCR software is the technology used to capture documents and import them into a Document Management system. Advanced OCR software can even recognize the numbers and characters on a document and use them to perform automated tasks, which should be your second goal if you want to overcome the challenges of paper-based Customer Service.

Digitize all of your Customer Service documents, including:

  • Product Literature
  • Orders
  • Invoices
  • Shipping Documents
  • Return Documents
  • Manuals
  • Parts Lists
  • Maintenance Histories
  • Customer Correspondence
  • RFPs
  • RFQs
  • Quotes

Automating Your Customer Service Processes

OCR software will help you digitize your documents, allowing you to finally get rid of those filing cabinets that take up valuable real estate in your office. Furthermore, a paperless office will never require additional offsite storage to accommodate paper loads, which means no more spending exorbitant amounts of capital on storage that yields no tangible return for your organization. However, this is only the beginning. If you want to truly eliminate all of the inefficiencies that result in Customer Service slowdowns, digitizing your Customer Service documents should be followed with Business Process Automation. By automating your Customer Service processes, you can serve customers faster and more efficiently while focusing your human capital on improving customer relations and tackling nuanced problems that require a human touch.

Customer Service Touchpoints Give You a Chance to Improve Customer Retention

While the statistics quoted by industry analysts vary, it is generally accepted that it costs as much as 10 times more to win a new customer than to keep an existing one. Expanding your customer base is crucial, but not at the expense of your existing customers. Winning customers and, more importantly, keeping them, are critical business requirements. But what keeps customers loyal? Price, quality, availability, relationships, and inertia all play a part, but Customer Service is the touchpoint where your business and your customers meet. It’s a make-or-break environment where great service is your only option if you want to maintain positive sentiment.

It’s no secret that customers respond favorably to good service. In fact, it affects their purchase decisions. According to Accenture, poor customer service has, at one point, caused nearly half of all U.S. consumers to switch at least one of their service providers.  To add insult to injury, recent reports suggest that Customer Service expectations are rising at a faster rate than companies can (or are willing) to adapt to. In a separate survey by Accenture, which canvassed 1,200 technology consumers in North America, Europe, and Asia. It was revealed that consumer technology companies that offer average – not poor, just average – Customer Service alienated consumers and risked losing almost three-quarters of their customers to competitors. The results are clear. Customer service is critical to customer loyalty and company profitability. It can’t be viewed as a cost, but it should be viewed as a prudent investment.

Paper-Based Customer Service Challenges

One important difference between Customer Service and other areas of your business is that resolving customer issues often requires access to information that is spread across multiple departments.

Consider, for example, a standard Customer Service call:

  1. A customer telephones to complain that they did not receive everything they ordered.
  2. To ensure that the customer did, in fact, order everything they recall ordering, the CSR first examines the original order document that is likely located in a filing cabinet in the sales office.
  3. If the items and quantities match, the CSR then has to verify that none of the requested items are on backorder by referring to a copy of the packing slip that is filed away in the warehouse.
  4. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, the CSR must then review the shipping documents to see if everything was shipped in one box or in
    multiple boxes.
  5. If there were multiple boxes, the CSR has to verify that they all made it onto the truck and were delivered.
  6. Depending on the company’s shipping policies, the boxes may have been delivered by the company’s own truck or by one owned by a third-party shipping company.
  7. Finally, the CSR is ready to assist the customer — except wait, the customer has moved on.

Most Customer Service interactions aren’t this tedious, but this example does serve to show how the dispersal of information across an organization can send your CSRs into a tailspin.  When some or all of this information exists on paper, providing high-quality Customer Service becomes a costly and oftentimes futile endeavor.

The Financial (and Operational) Costs of Paper

The following are among the characteristics and costs of paper that hinder your CSRs:

  • Paper is costly to store, handle, copy, and distribute.  On the enterprise level, warehouses may be required to store the paper required to resolve customer issues. That paper has to be manually filed when it comes in (or is created) and then retrieved when needed. For collaborative purposes,  the necessary documents may need to be photocopied at a cost of several cents per page in addition to the related labor costs.
  • Paper storage leads to human error. In physical storage environments, documents may be misfiled or accidentally destroyed, resulting in hours spent hunting them down or trying to recreate lost information. This is not a trivial cost. Research from Price Waterhouse Coopers suggests that the average cost to search for a misfiled document is $120. In the meantime, increasingly frustrated customers are kept on hold awaiting an answer to their questions.
  • Paper is difficult to backup or recreate. Fires, floods, vandalism, there are countless ways for a paper document to become lost, damaged, or destroyed. Most companies lack a true disaster recovery plan, so it’s not until the unexpected occurs that they understand the danger of paper documents. If the only copies of valuable customer information are destroyed, it would be impossible to serve customers, and other ongoing operations may also be obstructed. In addition, failing to adequately protect customer and transactional data against such destruction, accidental or not, may place your company in breach of a number of regulations.
  • Paper can’t meet customer expectations. A shift in customer expectations over the years has further increased the drawbacks of using paper to support customer service. Web-based technologies have resulted in a greater expectation for rapid CSR responses from vendors. Customers no longer readily accept “I’ll have to put you on hold” or “I’ll have to call you back” when they call with a question. Yet that is exactly what they hear when a CSR has to track down information that exists only on paper.
  • Paper doesn’t support self-serve options. Customers today often expect, and industry economics frequently demand, new alternatives for customer service, including 24/7 self-serve support options. Paper-based information makes it impossible to offer this level of convenience. Plus, by refusing to offer self-serve options, you are funneling all support requests directly to a Customer Service department that is already overwhelmed by a lack of digitization and automation.

Say Goodbye to Paper-Based Customer Service Challenges

Despite the predictions a decade or two ago that we would by now be enjoying the benefits of paperless offices, most businesses are still dependent on paper because going paperless requires help — and good help is hard to find. If your organization, like many organizations, is still buried under mountains of paper, it will affect every corner of your business, from Accounts Payable to Human Resources and, of course, Customer Service. Once a paperless office has been established, automating customer service functions and offering Web-based self-serve options becomes simple. You can speed-up customer interactions and add value to those interactions while lowering their costs.

Are you ready to see how Enterprise Content Management and Workflow Automation can help your business overcome paper-based Customer Service challenges? Contact IntelliChief today, our experts are standing by to answer your questions and help guide your search for the right solution!

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Share on Vk
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://www.intellichief.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Paper-Based-Customer-Service-Challenges-1.jpg 1080 1920 IntelliChief https://www.intellichief.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/IntelliChief-Paperless-Process-Management.png IntelliChief2020-09-17 14:11:532021-03-03 14:38:48Overcoming Paper-Based Customer Service Challenges
You might also like
Accounts Payable Straight-Through Processing Cost Savings
Document Management vs. Content Management: Which Is Right For Your Business?
Business Process Automation Benefits4 Benefits of Business Process Automation in the Workplace
How to Get Control of Your Supply Chain Documents
ECM Solutions10 Ways Enterprise Content Management Supports Your Digital Transformation
Why Your Company Should Consider Going Paperless
4 Tips for Going Paperless
5 Must-Haves in Accounts Payable Automation Software

Latest From The Blog

  • Unleashing the Power of Automation: Revolutionizing Accounts Payable with the Right ToolsDecember 1, 2023 - 4:44 PM
  • Breaking the Routine: Navigating the Impact of Outdated AP Processes on Business PerformanceNovember 22, 2023 - 10:53 AM
  • Beyond Disruptions: A Deep Dive into AP Automation’s Role in Business ResilienceNovember 17, 2023 - 5:07 PM
  • The Green Revolution: How AP Automation Is Transforming Businesses and the EnvironmentOctober 5, 2023 - 11:06 AM
  • Seven Signs You Have the Right AP Automation SolutionMarch 16, 2022 - 8:00 AM

Next Steps:

Request Demo
Contact Us
Download Whitepaper
Watch Recorded Webinar

Experience IntelliChief

Request a customized demo to see how IntelliChief addresses your organization’s most pressing challenges. Simply provide some preliminary information about your project and our experts will handle the rest.

Get a Demo

World Headquarters

P.O. Box 320878
Tampa, FL 33679

508-594-2800

info@intellichief.com

Getting Started

Why IntelliChief?
What is ECM?
Solutions
Technology
ERP Integrations
Customer Success Stories
FAQ

Resources

Blog
Case Studies
Whitepapers
Product Sheets
Webinars
Savings Calculator
Careers
Press

Copyright © 2023 IntelliChief™. All Rights Reserved.
Website Development & Hosting by K.Tek Systems Inc.

Privacy Policy | Terms of Use and Disclaimers | Sitemap | Support Portal

3 Reasons to Support Paperless Logistics and Customs Clearance in 2020 and ...Paperless LogisticsElectronic Employee FilesHow Electronic Employee Files Support Human Capital Management
Scroll to top

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Accept Settings

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Accept SettingsHide Notification