Quality should be the highest priority for any type of organization, and for providers of customer service software this means constant quality assurance and testing.
Luckily, there are software testing companies that can be engaged to perform these tasks on an outsourced basis, both efficiently and cost effectively.
What is customer service software?
Customer service software is a set of tools that allow businesses to support their customers in today’s increasingly digital world. Software applications typically provide the following functions:
- Tracking of customer requests and support inquiries with the use of a helpdesk or customer portal
- Management of multiple communication channels such as telephone, email, chat, messaging, and social media
- Collection and organization of customer data in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and reporting on all customer activities
Benefits of customer service software
Organizations use customer service software to provide better, faster, and more efficient customer support by utilizing the same tools for multiple customer service agents. Customer communication and issues can be dealt with by any of the agents through multiple channels. In addition, customer data may be made available to anyone in the organization who has been given authorization to access it.
Customer service software allows customers to communicate, place orders and get support from companies from anywhere and at anytime using the device of their choice. Increasingly, companies are automating their simpler customer support processes with chatbots, which enable agents to devote their time and energy to more complex customer needs.
What is Quality Assurance?
Quality Assurance (QA) is a way of identifying and eliminating defects in software and other products to avoid complications for customers and ensure the software is “fit for use or purpose”.
Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control
The main difference between Quality Control (QC) and Quality Assurance (QA) is that QC is oriented toward the product and focuses on identifying defects while QA is oriented toward the process and focuses on preventing defects. When the above activities relate to software, QA becomes Software Quality Assurance (SQA) and QC becomes Software Testing.
Why is QA needed for customer service software?
Customer service software testing is needed to ensure the application performs effectively and safely. Testing is important in the design, delivery, and ongoing support of the software to customers. Resolving problems with users sooner rather than later avoids high costs and potentially dangerous situations.
QA and testing play a particularly important role in customer service software as all bugs must be identified and eliminated before they negatively impact customers and their thousands of end users. The last thing a company supplying customer experience (CX) software wants is to provide a bad customer experience to its own clients.
What to look for in a software testing company?
If you have decided to outsource the quality assurance of your customer service software you should be looking for a leading software testing company with a skilled team that has many years of experience in quality assurance and complex software testing.
The QA or test engineers you have hired should be considered part of your team. Ideally, they will work exclusively on your project and participate in any meetings that are needed.
You should look for the option to pay based on hourly rates or if you have clear requirements and one-time needs, a fixed budget could be more suitable. This particularly applies to performance, load, stress testing and QA audit activities. It goes without saying that regular reporting of software testing results should be provided to you.
QA and software testing procedures
Here are some of the testing activities that you may need:
Functional Testing – checks web links, forms, cookies, database connections, etc.
Usability Testing – tests functionality and the overall user experience
User Interface Testing – Uses the graphical user interface to interact with the software
Compatibility Testing – tests popular browsers and screen resolution compatibility
Performance Testing – tests server response time and throughput, etc.
Security testing – ensures protection against unauthorized access and harmful viruses
Database Testing – stress testing of databases
Automation Testing – tests and compares the actual results with the expected results
Beta testing – the last stage of testing performed by customers or volunteers in their own environments
Summary
If you are a provider of customer service software, or any type of software for that matter, quality assurance and testing are absolute must-haves. However, checking your app is a complicated and time-consuming operation. There are many tests to be carried out, usability, functional, compatibility, UI, security, performance and more. Outsourcing the service to a professional software testing company could save you time and money – and in the case of a software quality issue – it may just save your business and reputation.
