Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Your Customers' Best Friend: Is it Google? Or is it you?

October 06, 2014
By ContactCenterSolutionsWorld Special Guest
Patrice Orenes-Lerma, Solutions Marketing Manager, Bonitasoft -

Oh no, another article telling customer support professionals how they can do their jobs better? Not at all. Let’s talk instead about how BPM technology-based solutions can help you keep your customers engaged and happy.

Long ago, customers were at the mercy of their service providers. They were forced to use the channels providers had installed and managed so any request for information or insight became an exercise in cutting through red tape.  But those days are long gone. Today, Google is everyone’s friend. Customers aren’t required to engage you strictly in the ways you specify and social media publicly amplifies cries for help ten-fold.


Business Process Management (BPM) technology can improve the customer experience with support services, help desk and knowledge bases. It has the ability to connect the customer-oriented “help” process application to your CRM system and other in-house information systems and define business rules (for escalations, access to appropriate knowledge bases, etc).  Will BPM work for you? Do you have lingering questions? Here is a list of common questions help desk personnel often ask when discussing how BPM technology implementation can become their best friend.  

Customers often find it so difficult to find answers in our system that they’re Googling questions about our product. Can BPM help?

Yes, BPM can make it easier for them to find answers within your system by simply defining business rules in a BPM application that will automatically connect customers to the most appropriate and relevant knowledge.

Google can serve up 5,210,000,000 responses to “help me.” How can BPM make requests for information actually relevant to my customer’s request?

BPM applications can quickly collect the appropriate information from a request, join it with existing client information in your CRM system and then forward the issue or question to a suitable support representative directly.

The public forums Google finds don’t track responses to a request or provide personal help. Can BPM do this better?

Yes. Once a customer’s issue triggers a support ticket in your system, a process application can automatically send personalized, relevant communications to keep them updated with every critical step from start to finish.

Google is always available when it’s needed. But it’s not linked to the evolution of a specific issue. Can BPM be available AND be personal?

Yes, for your process application can use automated and periodic reminders to alert support personnel (and supervisors) of deadlines entering the deadline “danger zone.” And again, those automatic, personalized, relevant communications can include information about what is happening, including issues evolution as the problem is better understood.

Updates happen. Even Google modifies its search algorithm. How will constant changes affect me and my customers?

You will need to update your customer-oriented help processes along with those changes by streamlining, maintaining and updating your process applications as needed to ensure you will be able to appropriately address client support tickets. This will also allow you the opportunity to add new solutions to the knowledge base for future reference that can be made available to clients. 

With the right process management system in place, helpdesk professionals can easily create and manage client-facing processes so they remain usable to both customers and support teams. And, with the right combination of technology and business savvy in place, customer issues can easily be transformed into customer success stories. 

About the Author: Patrice Orenes-Lerma is a BPM evangelist & marketing manager at Bonitasoft. He speaks French, English and Java.




Edited by Maurice Nagle



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