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Ask CWS: How do you track customers?

Question:

I own a small company and have a hard time tracking all of the conversations we have with our clients. We have several employees now, and it always seems like one employee tells a customer something and then another employee tells them something else. How do you keep track of communication you have with clients so that everyone is on the same page?

Answer:

This is an excellent question and one that was a challenge for us too (especially as as we grew). As you mention, it was easy at first because I was the only employee and knew everything about each customer. But as you grow, there is no possible way that you can handle every customer request. So, you do the logical thing and hire additional employees and hope that everything will go well.

It won't.

You'll soon realize that you could have done a better job training your new staff. Or maybe that they handled a situation just a little differently than you would have. Or even worse, that something was forgotten and now you have an upset customer that wants to speak to the boss! You think to yourself, "How could this have happened?"

Wouldn't it have been nice to know about this situation BEFORE it turned into a big deal?

Of course it would, and that's why we started using some web-based software called Highrise a while ago. In the most simple terms, it's a website where we track email and phone conversations with a customer. This means that any employee can pull up a customer and see who said what to them, how they communicated, and when.

I know you're probably thinking, "You take the time to re-type every email you send to a customer?" Hardly. Each employee is given a Highrise "drop-box" address that they BCC each outgoing email to. This attaches the email to the customer so that other employees can review it if the need arises.

In addition, Highrise has an RSS feed for all communcation. This means that in Outlook, we can keep an eye on all communication that we've had as a company that day. Want to know if Johnny called Customer XYZ back today? Just review the RSS feed and you'll see everyone that Johnny communicated with that day. It's that easy.

Our Highrise account is affordable at only $49/month. It's an invaluable tool as it includes information about everyone that associates with CWS. Highrise offers a wide variety of plans based on the number of contacts and emplyees you have. Check it out.