When two of the world’s most recognized fine watch brands, Citizen and Bulova, merged in 2018, they faced more than just the challenge of maintaining their distinctive identities, unique designs, and technologies. With one support organization having to serve customers for both brands, it became clear that streamlining the way the customer service team operated needed to be a priority—or else the customer experience would suffer. At issue?

It’s no secret that how well you serve customers will define your company’s long term success. In fact, great customer service leads to better customer loyalty, higher revenue, and lower costs. But if you have to focus on the customer and become a service-oriented organization, it’s not merely enough to attain a passable grade. You have to strive for service excellence to reap its benefits.

Automated phone technology, such as interactive voice response (IVR) menus, can save businesses time and money on customer support. These solutions route callers to the right people without the help of a human operator. Larger businesses should consider IVR menus to streamline the customer support experience. They should not replace account managers and instead are optimized for streamlining after hours and emergency support communication.

Customers are engaging with more connected devices than ever before—they’re getting around on smart electric scooters, slyly reading text messages on Apple Watches during meetings, and telling Amazon Alexa which Cardi B song to play next—all of which is part of a phenomenon known as the Internet of Things (IoT). And, this is only the tip of the hyper-connected iceberg. The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that there will be 41.6 billion connected devices in 2025.

‘Tis the season to be flying. This year, the TSA expects a “record breaking holiday season.” Between Thanksgiving and New Years, tens of millions of people will be traveling across the United States, with over 41 million travelers crossing state lines in the Christmas season alone. With all the waiting, spending, and flying, traveling can be stressful.

OneDesk allows you to set up single sign-on (SSO) to permit your users to log in using their existing credentials. If the user does not exist, once they log in using SSO, OneDesk will create a user record for them. Since email addresses must be unique in OneDesk, it is important that you do not already have a customer record with the user’s email address or the sign on will fail.