Maintaining customer relationships is as important to a service-based business as it is to any other company. Service providers are very reliant on satisfied customers and their recommendations, as word of mouth creates more business opportunities. It is essential for service-based industries to prioritize building stronger relationships with their customers while also paying attention to their business productivity.
The service industry is a growing business sector and shows no sign of stopping. A CRM system can provide the right tools to help expand your business while still meeting customer expectations. It can save time and effort by automating daily business activities so that your focus stays on offering the best customer experience.
Zoho CRM includes ready-to-use Services and Appointments modules to cater to the service industry. These modules can be customized to fit your specific business requirements. The Services module includes a job sheet which your employees can use to record important details before marking an appointment as completed. You can also create reports and dashboards to gain insights into your business efficiency. And you can increase your teams productivity through automation.
- Easy access to service catalog: An organized database that displays the different types of services you offer makes it easier for your employees to keep track of them. You can also monitor the number of requests received for temporarily or permanently discontinued services and take this to consideration so your business meets customer demands.
- Manage appointments: Managers and employees can view appointments in the calendar and filter them by Day, Week or Month. This allows them to find an available time for an appointment quickly and also send reminders to the attendees and keep them posted about any new appointments. Rescheduling or cancelling appointments is easy to manage with just a click.
- Easy access to customer details: Centrally stored data allows employees to create appointments for each service more efficiently. You can quickly fix an appointment for a contact, and any cancellations or rescheduled appointments will also be captured in the contact's record for reference. Manager and other users can easily access the details of every service appointment.
- Enhance work productivity: Save your employees' time by automating daily activities such as sending email alerts when appointments are cancelled or rescheduled. Set automatic status updates when certain criteria are met to speed up the process.
Business scenarios
Automobile service
An automobile service company offers oil changes, car washes, inspections, and replacement of engine air filters and wiper blades at the customer's home or workplace. The service bookings are made by the customers on the phone. The call center agents book an appointment for the same day for the requested service. The service technicians are notified about the service, appointment time, and the customer's location. For inspection and replacement services, the technicians must enter details about the replaced parts, warranty period, and inspection results. These details are important for internal audits and to track which vendors supplied the faulty parts.
Here is how they can manage the services and appointments in Zoho CRM:
- List the available services in the Services module
- Maintain a log of appointments in the Appointments module
- Book appointments based on the technicians' availability
- Allow technicians to enter important details about the inspection and replacement immediately after completing the appointment
- Notify the technicians when an appointment is assigned
- Get a 360-degree view of the contacts, the services they use, and the frequency of appointments
- Generate reports to monitor the number of appointments booked each month, the services that received the most and fewest bookings to gauge customer interest in each service
- Prepare time-based cohorts to analyze customer interests and booking patterns for a specific period
The Appointments module tracks the requests made by the customers, which service they are for, which date and time they requested, and the service member assigned to each request.
Once the appointment is completed, the service member submits the job sheet with information like the list of tasks that were carried out during the appointment, spare parts that were used, and other relevant details.
Wellness and beauty services
The beauty industry is a rapidly growing industry that thrives on excellent interpersonal relationships with clients, skilled professionals, and always keeping up with emerging trends. Salons offer multiple services and manage dozens of appointments a day. Moreover, they do all of this without compromising customer service and employees ' work hours.
A growing industry like this that has high customer expectations can scale its performance and efficiency by:
- Proactively communicating appointment schedules and reschedules to customers through automatic notifications
- Keeping its employees aware of their schedule by setting reminders at regular intervals
- Understanding customer's interests and engaging them with targeted campaigns based on their interests
- Generating reports to find the service that was rescheduled the most and identify the reason for rescheduling to avoid disruption to the schedule
- Sending surveys to customers via email to get their feedback on the services