How Customer Service Affects Your Security Operation

Customer service, customer support, or customer success (CS) is an important part of any service-based business. For small-to-midsize physical security companies, building a successful CS team can be hard. Often these operations have minimal manpower and resources.

That’s where Silvertrac Extra comes in. Our team has built a quick guide on how to build a successful customer services team.

But first, let’s look at what exactly CS is and why it’s important.

What It Is & Why It’s Important

Customer service, at its most basic level, is the support that an organization provides to its clients. But in order to provide a great experience, CS is necessary before a contract is even signed. CS is the personal touch that helps potential and current clients create trust with a company.

CS is so important to people now that they are willing to spend more money on goods and services when a company provides better CS than its competitor. Great CS along with great service offerings can increase your bottom line significantly.

Not only are people willing to spend more money on companies with better support, but it is also the easiest way to create customer retention. Happy, loyal customers are also more likely to refer other potential clients. If CS operations are set-up properly, the company has now created a cycle of client renewals and client referrals.

Within small-to-midsize physical security operations, companies are constantly going up against companies with similar offerings or are just bigger operations with more resources.

That’s where CS helps a small-to-midsize security operation stand-out. In our 12 years of experience, our clients constantly run up against competition that is too similar to their service-offerings to stand-out. The winning factor for the bid...great customer service!

Sounds great on paper, right? But how do you implement great CS?

What Makes Great Customer Service?

Before we look at how to implement great customer service, we need to look at what makes it great. Take a second to think back through your experiences with CS in your own life. What has worked? What hasn’t?

Great support looks different for every organization, but there are a few basics that all great CS has:

• Emotionally Intelligent Team Members
• Good Communication Skills
• Thorough Knowledge of the Organization, Services, Product
• Timely Responses
• Proper CS Reporting

How to Implement Great Customer Service

Before much CS strategy can take-place, your team has to define what success means to your organization.

For Silvertrac, success means helping all of our clients, regardless of size, make the most out of our software so they can grow their business. Success means being readily available and having friendly, supportive relationships with each and every one of our clients. 

Once you figure out what success means for your organization, it’s important to build a hiring strategy that will allow management to easily identify candidates that are ready to provide great support. A few things to look for are:

• A positive, patient attitude
• Passion for your organization’s service & mission, as well as, your client’s well-being & success
• Past customer service experience

Working in customer service can be very challenging. CS teams regularly speak with angry, frustrated, and confused clients that often aren’t able to communicate very well. It’s up to your CS team to manage these clients. They have to listen to their issues and provide an explanation that makes sense to the specific person they are talking to.

Hiring with the above characteristics in mind will help create a successful CS team right away.

If you’ve already built your CS dream team it’s time to start looking at how to provide support. It’s important to remember, you don’t have to use every type of customer support channel.

For a small-to-midsize physical security company with less than ideal man-power, you may look at just providing the basics to your clients:

• Phone support between certain hours
• Email support
• FAQ/Help Center on your website
• Chatbot on your website

The goal is to pick a few channels that your team can respond to promptly and efficiently. If there are too many support channels for your CS team to attend to, your response times will get longer and the effectiveness of every support ticket decreases.

If your CS operation requires more resources, you can look at adding different technology solutions that can help you offer even better support.

Building in a reporting structure for your CS operation is the last piece of the puzzle. Like any other team in your security operation, if you don’t have a baseline for determining success, you are wasting money, time, and resources. How you build your operation will determine what CS reports your team needs.

Customer Success Key Takeaways:

• CS is incredibly important to the success of your business and your overall bottom line.
• Clients will spend more money for better service.
• Hire CS team members with attitude, passion, and experience in mind.
• Only utilize the CS channels that your team can effectively monitor and respond to.
• Make sure CS reporting is in place so you can measure the success of your CS team.

If you're not a Silvertrac client already, but you're ready to have great, dedicated customer support right at your fingertips, sign-up for a demo today!