In today’s world business moves ever faster and competition has never been more fierce. Customers expect instant responses, 24/7. How can small or medium-sized businesses keep up with the pace of change as their business grows and continue to deliver a level of customer service that their market demands?
Businesses are transforming the way they deliver customer service with innovative tools. Shifting from in-house systems to the new generation of cloud services and mobile devices, it’s possible to become more agile in developing and expanding your service efficiently. The good news is that this shouldn’t need an ever-expanding budget.
Regardless of your product or service e-commerce solutions are both secure and scalable are available to meet the demands of your customers. They offer customized products, process transactions quickly and securely, ensuring reliable fulfillment of customer orders.
Handle fluctuations in demand
One of the issues for many growing businesses is the need to adapt to fluctuations in demand, whether these are seasonal and predictable (eg pre-Christmas) or unplanned (as with Covid-19). However, cloud-hosting solutions which can handle whatever is needed, such as Microsoft Azure, provide services and apps on an ‘as-needed’ basis. This means that you can add or reduce capacity according to what you need to fulfill customer orders efficiently, regardless of exponential growth in demand. For example, you could increase the capacity of file storage, stock control, and payroll apps to prepare for heavy demand in the last three months of the year. This eliminates slowdown when your systems can’t handle the extra load. Then, in January when things go quieter, simply reduce the capacity until it’s required again.
Customer service levels can be maintained without the need for large capital investment. Or the need to pay year-round for applications that you only use occasionally. The price is calculated monthly, based on what services you’ve used. To help you plan your budget, the Azure pricing calculator is a free tool to help you estimate your cloud costs, whether for new Azure services or variations of your existing uses.
Add new services immediately
In the past, adding a new service whether for your employees or customers to use, could take weeks and often required significant investment in technology, and labor costs related to implementation and testing. With services such as Azure existing tools can be upgraded and new ones can be added and deployed instantly. Remaining agile and keeping one step ahead of your competitors are the keys to satisfying and retaining your loyal customers, as well as impressing new ones.
Equip your team
The bottom line is that, when your team delivers service to your customers, they need the right tools to help them work faster and more efficiently. Cloud-based platforms such as MS Azure and others offer a wide range of productivity and CRM tools which can ensure they offer optimum service. Azure can host the apps your team needs to work effectively, as well as implementing new customer services. So when customers come along, ready to purchase, your team will be more than ready to respond.
