Customer Service Management Software Selection Guide

The business is unaware of cross-selling opportunities across multiple product lines.
Customer service staff attrition rates continue to be high, creating longer response delays for voice channels.
Customer service responses are reactive in nature, reinforcing a poor culture for customer experience.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

After-sales customer service is critical for creating, maintaining, and growing customer relationships. Organizations that fail to provide adequate service will be ill positioned for future customer service and sales efforts.
Shift left toward delivering predictive service instead of reactive service to enhance customer experiences.
Ensure your key performance indicators accurately reflect the incentives you want to give your customer support staff for delivering appropriate customer service.

Impact and Result

Determine your organization’s customer service maturity (and thus if a standalone CSM tool is relevant).
Understand key trends and differentiating features in the CSM marketspace.
Evaluate major vendors in the CSM marketspace to discover the best-fitting provider.

Customer Service Management Software Selection Guide Research & Tools

1. Customer Service Management Software Selection Guide – A guide to walk you through the process of selecting CSM software.

This trends and buyer’s guide will help you:

Determine your organization’s customer service maturity (and thus if a standalone CSM tool is relevant).
Understand key trends and differentiating features in the CSM marketspace.
Evaluate major vendors in the CSM marketspace to discover the best-fitting provider.

2. CSM Platform RFP Template – A template to provide vendors with a detailed account of the requirements and the expected capabilities of the desired suite.

Create your own request for proposal (RFP) for your customer service management suite procurement process by customizing Info-Tech's RFP template.

3. CSM Platform Opportunity Assessment Tool – A tool to assess whether a CSM solution is right for your organization.

Use this tool to assess your maturity and fit for a CSM solution. It will help identify your current CSM state and assist with the decision to move forward with a new solution or augment certain features.

4. Software Selection Workbook – A workbook to document your progress as your select software.

Keep stakeholders engaged with simple and friction-free templates to document your progress for Rapid Application Selection.

5. Vendor Evaluation Workbook – A workbook to assess vendor capabilities and compare vendors.

Leverage a traceable and straightforward Vendor Evaluation Workbook to narrow the field of potential vendors and accelerate the application selection process.

6. CSM Platform RFP Scoring Tool – A tool to support your business in objectively evaluating the CSM vendors being considered for procurement.

Create an objective and fair scoring process to evaluate the RFPs and demonstrations provided by shortlisted vendors. Within this framework, provide a multidimensional evaluation that analyzes the solution's functional capabilities, architecture, costs, service support, and overall suitability in comparison to the organization's expressed requirements.

7. CSM Platform Vendor Demo Script Template – A template to support your business’ evaluation of vendors and their solutions with an effective demonstration.

Create an organized and streamlined vendor demonstration process by clearly outlining your expectations for the demo. Use the demo as an opportunity to ensure that capabilities expressed by vendors are actually present within the considered solution.

Customer Service Management Software Selection

Market trends and buyer’s guide

Analyst Perspective

The pandemic and growing younger demographic have shifted the terrain of customer service delivery. Customer service management (CSM) tools ensure organizations enhance customer acquisition, customer retention, and overall revenues into the future.

It is one thing to research customer service best practices; it is another to experience such service. Whether being put on hold for an hour with a telecommunications company, encountering voice biometric security with a bank, or receiving automated FAQs from a chatbot, we all perform our own primary research in customer service by going about our daily lives. Yet while the pandemic required a shift to this multichannel and digital assistant environment (to account for ongoing agent attrition), this trend was actually just accelerated. A growing younger demographic now prefers online communication channels to voice. Social media (whichever the platform) is a fundamental part of this demographic’s online presence and has instigated the need for customer service delivery to meet customers where they are – for both damage control and enhancing customer relationships.

Organizations delivering customer service across multiple product lines need to examine what delivery channels they need to satisfy customers, alongside assessing how customer loyalty and cross-selling can increase revenues and company reputation. Customer service management tools can assist and enable the future state.

Thomas Randall, Ph.D., Research Director

Thomas Randall, Ph.D.
Research Director, Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge	Common Obstacles	Info-Tech’s Solution
The business is unaware of cross-selling opportunities across multiple product lines. Customer service staff attrition rates continue to be high, creating longer response delays for voice channels. Customer service responses are reactive in nature, reinforcing a poor culture for customer experience.	It is not clear if a CSM tool would resolve the business’ challenges or if a better-fitting technology solution is preferable (such as a customer relationship management add-on). The business does not know its customer service maturity well enough to assess the feasibility of adopting a CSM tool.	This trends and buyer’s guide will help you: Determine your organization’s customer service maturity (and thus if a standalone CSM tool is relevant). Understand key trends and differentiating features in the CSM marketspace. Evaluate major vendors in the CSM marketspace to discover the best-fitting provider.

The objective at the end of the day is to have a single interface that the front-line staff interacts with. I think that is the holy grail when we look at CSM technology. The objective that everyone has in mind is we'd all like to get to one screen and one window. Ultimately, the end game really hasn't changed: How can we make it easy for the agents and how can we minimize their errors? How can we streamline the process so they can work?
Colin Taylor, CEO, The Taylor Reach Group

Customer service management tools form an integral part of your CXM technology portfolio

Customer service management tools are an integral part of CXM

Info-Tech’s methodology for selecting the right CSM platform

	1. Contextualize the CSM Landscape	2. Select the Right CSM Vendor
Phase Steps	Define CSM tools. Explore CSM trends. Understand if CSM tools are a good fit for your organization.	Build the business case. Streamline requirements elicitation for CSM. Construct the request for proposal (RFP)/vendor evaluation workbook.
Phase Outcomes	Consensus on scope of CSM and key CSM capabilities Identify your customer service maturity and use for CSM tools	CSM business case High-value use cases and requirements CSM RFP/vendor evaluation workbook

Info-Tech Insight
Need help constructing your RFP? Use Info-Tech’s CSM Platform RFP Template!

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1	Phase 2
Call #1: Discover if CSM tools are right for your organization. Understand what a CSM platform is and discover the “art of the possible.” Call #2: Identify right-sized vendors and build the business case to select a CSM platform.	Call #3: Define your key CSM requirements. Call #4: Build procurement items, such as an RFP and demo script. Call #5: Evaluate vendors and perform final due diligence.

Phase 1

Phase 2

Call #1: Discover if CSM tools are right for your organization. Understand what a CSM platform is and discover the “art of the possible.”

Call #2: Identify right-sized vendors and build the business case to select a CSM platform.

Call #3: Define your key CSM requirements.

Call #4: Build procurement items, such as an RFP and demo script.

Call #5: Evaluate vendors and perform final due diligence.

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

The CSM selection process should be broken into segments:

CSM vendor shortlisting with this buyer’s guide
Structured approach to selection
Contract review

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit	Guided Implementation	Workshop	Consulting
"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."	"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."	"We need to his the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."	"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options

Software Selection Engagement

Five Advisory Calls Over a Five-Week Period to Accelerate Your Selection Process

Expert analyst guidance over five weeks on average to select and negotiate software

Save money, align stakeholders, speed up the process, and make better decisions

Use a repeatable, formal methodology to improve your application selection process

Better, faster results, guaranteed, included in membership

Five advisory calls over a five week period to accelerate your selection process

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Software Selection Workshops

40 Hours of Advisory Assistance Delivered Online

Select Better Software, Faster

40 hours of expert analyst guidance

Project & stakeholder management assistance

Save money, align stakeholders, speed up the process, and make better decisions

Better, faster results, guaranteed, $25,000 standard engagement fee

Software selection workshops

Book Your Workshop Engagement

Customer Service Management (CSM) Software

Phase 1: Contextualize the CSM Landscape

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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