The Role of Document Management in Delivering Exceptional Customer Service

Document management represents how an organization records, stores, tracks, and manages its electronic documents. It is a whole system that comes in different ranges in terms of size and scope. For instance, it can be a standalone, straightforward solution or a complex, large-scale system for small and large enterprises with a global audience. In fact, many document management systems or DMSs offer the facility of incorporating standard physical documents to be filed electronically through means of storage location, security, and access control along with audit trails, version control, and check-in and check-out with document lockdown. 

Many DMSs offer various functionalities. For example, it can allow one to convert PDF to Word. Today, in this article, we are going to decipher how crucial is the role of document management in delivering exceptional customer service and how far we have come in the process of managing electronic documents and content management.

Before we dive into the key pointers stating the significance of document management in corporate offices and enterprises, first, let us try to understand how an effective DMS can elevate the whole customer service experience. With a good DMS, enterprises can obtain digital document solutions that offer —

• Faster response time
• Accurate and timely information
• Reduced errors
• Consistency at work
• Minimized time spent, leading to increased productivity
• Better security and accessibility

There are also functionalities such as contact center phone systems internally in a DMS to enhance customer service. Let's move on to understand how DMS works in delivering a better customer service experience and serves as a powerful tool for organizations.

Integrate Your Document Management With Other Systems

Many organizations use document management for customer service in an integrated manner, linking it to their other business systems and professional tools like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) or even with their helpdesk software. When companies are able to integrate DMS with their other software and applications, it leads to —

• Enhanced communication and collaboration
• Improved centralization accessibility
• Automation of tasks with little or no human interaction and effort
• The smooth functioning of tasks and simplification of processes

Organize Documents Based On the Customer Journey

The whole point of document management for customer service is to store the documents and find them in the perfect order, which indicates a customer's journey with the business. For this to happen, DMS systematically stores the documents and allows the staff to go through them in accordance with the various stages of a customer's behavior and decisions. 

For instance, In the pre-purchase stage, documents include brochures, pricing information, marketing materials and whitepapers. Likewise, there are documents such as manuals, invoices and other supporting documents in the post-purchase phase. Thus, DMS helps in categorizing documents to align with different phases of the customer journey.

Ensure Version Control For Consistent Information

It is crucial to offer consistent and accurate information to customers. In that regard, version control software is helpful as it tracks every modification to the database. Any mistake identified is reported to be rectified. If version control is not present, the DMS could produce errors, such as multiple versions of the same document. This, in turn, can lead to complications or dissemination of incorrect and outdated information. With proper version control in place, businesses can prevent errors, maintain consistency and track changes timely to avoid confusion and complications in document management.

Make Documents Easily Searchable

Documents are proof; documents are links, and, more importantly, documents serve the purpose of approval, submission, information, and data and validate business operations. This means that there are several documents that a business deals with each day.

Without the right documents in place, it is possible that a business will stall and operations will get delayed or postponed. This is where the document management system comes to the rescue. It not only records, stores and manages documents but helps in accessing the right document at the right time swiftly. When the staff can make easy searches to find the documents, it helps the entire process and not just the staff. DMSs come with robust search functionality, which typically includes —

• Search filters to narrow down search results through date, customer names, keywords and document types
• With indexing, document management for customer service tags the document with metadata automatically, which makes it easy to search for them
• There are options for full-text search, which makes sure no relevant information is overlooked

In the digital space, the database can have hundreds of thousands of documents stored. Such features help management spot the right document, improving customer service efficiency and response times.

Provide Access Permissions Based On Roles

Document management for customer service is highly advanced when it comes to access, security, and protection of not only customers' but also businesses' data, information and documents. All businesses deal in legal and confidential information and documents, including financial reports, financial statements, and important digital bills. DMS maintains compliance with data protection regulations to ensure privacy and only offers access permission based on roles in a hierarchical structure within the organization. 

In simple words, a document that is only accessible to the manager cannot be accessed by anyone other than the people working at a higher level in the hierarchy. This leads to confidentiality maintained from designation to designation, reducing risks of data breach and misuse. Data integrity requires restricting editing permissions and also, as we discussed, compliance that is aligned with the industry standards and regulations.

You Cannot Provide Great Customer Service Without Adequate Resources

DMS requires employee training and adequate resources made available to learn workflow automation. Also, it requires making sure employees know how to handle systems, go through processes, apply, reject, share, and use the DMS framework effectively. They should be well versed in navigating through DMS efficiently and also take care of the ongoing system maintenance along with data backup and recovery so that no document is lost or gets corrupted inside the system.