Customer service, the process of taking a customers order and answering their questions about a publisher's titles or the status of an order is an important service provided by many publishers.
A good publishing package will;
1> Allow you to process orders faster and thus reduce order backlogs.
2> Allow you to check on the inventory status of a title while talking with the customer on the telephone.
3> Eliminate the chance of accidentally keying in a credit card number twice, which results in unhappy customers.
4> Give the entire customer service staff access to all prior conversations with a customer. This allows any agent to knowledgeably answer the customers question.
5> Allows the customer service agent to send invoice copies via Email to the customer. Its faster and less expensive than printing a copy of an invoice, stuffing it in an envelope and paying the postage to mail it.
Savings?
A publisher in New York City implemented Acumen Book and was able to reduce her customer service staff by 50% within twelve months.
Another publisher using Cats Pajamas was able to acquire two other publishing companies without increasing the size of their customer service staff. How? They used EDI to import orders into the Cats Pajamas. Order entry only had to review the orders for accuracy, not type in an additional 1000 to 2000 lines items daily.
