Article by Monyo Monev, Enterprise Account Manager at BRIGHT

Anyone involved with customer success or account management will testify to the importance of strategic planning and a well-organized working process. That, coupled with the growing need for digitalization, makes Customer Service Management especially important in today’s business world.

But before we dwell on the specific reasons why every company — no matter how big or small — needs CSM, let’s take a moment to understand the meaning behind the term.

What is CSM? 

Customer service is all about providing services before, during, and after a purchase. The ultimate goal of customer service is to meet — and even exceed — the expectations of its clients. That happens through customer support, providing the clients with a series of services. It allows them to make cost-effective choices and efficiently use the product.

The Customer Service Management (CSM) Solution applies service management principles to reduce case volume and increase customer satisfaction. In other words, it makes the lives of your employees easier while increasing your customers’ happiness.

The numbers speak for themselves. According to a Forrester study from 2020, the operational improvements of the ServiceNow CSM include:

• Improved first contact resolution by up to 20%;
• Reduced cases initiated over the phone by 40%;
• 7 percentage points reduction in customer service attrition;
• Increased revenue retention by $5.2 million from support contract renewals.

But beyond the statistics, what are the specific benefits of CSM?

Prioritizing Good Customer Service Increases Revenue 

Customer Service Management helps offer a smoother, easier, and more efficient working process to your customers.

“The CSM makes it possible to fix—and even prevent—issues by connecting customer service to other departments and automating processes across teams for faster resolution.” – ServiceNow

And we all know that happy customers build a better reputation for the company, while marketing spending decreases with more customer advocates. What is more, customer satisfaction is key to retention. In fact, 75% of people report that they would return to a company with excellent service [1].

Employee Happiness Correlates to Customer Happiness 

As reported by Forbes, companies with engaged employees outperform the competition by a staggering 147%. CSM allows you to streamline your internal processes and align the team. In that way, the workload decreases while efficiency increases. That creates a win-win situation for both sides. The employees are happier and better coordinated, and there’s more time left to pay better attention to the customers.

CSM Allows for Visibility and Automation 

With the ServiceNow Customer Service Management, you can:

• gain real-time visibility into the health of customers’ products and services;
• proactively detect issues or even prevent the issues entirely.

The CSM also allows your company to identify and predict trends and save time by automating common problems’ solutions.

The benefits of CSM hold for all kinds of companies, operating in industries spanning from High Tech to Telecommunications, government, and the financial and healthcare sectors. Whether you lead a small family business or a huge corporation, your company will benefit from having an effective CSM in place.

BRIGHT is a trusted ServiceNow Premier Partner with end-to-end expertise in IT and Customer Workflows. Our experts will be happy to discuss your processes digitalisation and optimisation initiatives and help you leverage the technology for business growth.