IssueTrak Identifies Key Factors to Drive Customer Service Improvements

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA--(Marketwired - Sep 29, 2015) - IssueTrak CEO Dan Luhring has highlighted the importance of flexibility, ease of implementation and customizability in customer-centric issue tracking software as organizations in their struggle to meet customers' evolving expectations for service quality and problem resolution. The delivery of service that is geared towards the customer, rather than what the organization is currently able to provide, remains one of the major challenges facing global industries.

"Most customer satisfaction metrics concentrate on representatives' courtesy and attitude, but despite this the majority of customer experiences remain disappointing. All too often, customer service representatives demonstrate a low 'business IQ' because the data at their disposal doesn't allow them to resolve issues," said Luhring. "This dynamic can't change without the broader use of streamlined, next-generation, innovative workflow tracking tools."

In the face of disruptive technology innovation and business change, IssueTrak surveys¹ confirm that selection of customer-facing issue tracking applications² is primarily driven by the extent and ease with which software can be tailored for individual businesses. But many companies are still not equipped with the situation-specific technology to meet the expectations of today's consumers, who demand highly personalized responses, within increasingly shorter time frames.

Time to Response
Industry research³ shows that 39% of customers expect a reply to their requests within four hours, yet the average response time remains 7 - 10 days. The chief reason for this, said Luhring, is that most customer service software is either too inflexible or too complex to allow for easy and ongoing adaptation.

Customer loyalty can drive millions in annual revenue, but the customer service process must be both personalized and pain-free to retain and grow the user base. Customers are willing to attempt a self-service option as long as they are confident that at any time they can opt out and reach a human without incurring long delays.

"People want timely answers to their questions but most call centers can't adequately address simple queries such as invoicing changes because their information hasn't been shared from department to department," Luhring noted. "Customer-centric issue tracking technology can break through this barrier. For example, using our own application, IssueTrak has achieved an average response time to queries of 39.4 minutes in the past 365 days and our average response time to customers seeking the 'human' option ranges from 13 to 44 seconds."

Customization and Co-Creation
100% of all users of IssueTrak's cloud-based application to customize their software, and many use IssueTrak as a platform for deep levels of innovation. "From the outset we have engineered ease of customization into our application, because no two businesses are the same. You can't support the objectives of any business by taking a prescriptive software platform and force-feeding it into customer-facing roles -- the very area where personalization and timeliness are the keys to success," said Luhring.

IssueTrak data also indicates that co-creation of applications, as a joint effort between vendor and user organizations, is one of the most important emerging trends in customer-centric situation tracking. Companies increasingly require flexible software applications that can be precisely adapted to their needs, without the delays inherent in building a solution from scratch.

"There is far more demand for joint development by vendor and client to create new instances of an application for situation-specific potential," says Luhring. "We are seeing this across all areas of industry, from healthcare benefits companies to coal-face transport to M2M logistics management and it is driving a wave of change across the situational analysis and issue tracking industries."

About IssueTrak
IssueTrak is a leading provider of customer-centric issue tracking applications for strategic processes with some 1,000 customers in 40 countries. Since its foundation in 1992, IssueTrak has served many of the world's major brand names including 3M, Hershey's, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Pepsi, Nielsen, Philips, Rite Aid, the U.S. Department of Defense, UPS, and Verizon. For more information, visit www.issuetrak.com.

¹ IssueTrak survey Q3 2015
² IssueTrak user statistics Q3 2015
³ Institute of Customer Service research, March 2015