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One of the most common reason for not using customer service software is a lack of technical expertise. The business owner thinks that deploying customer service software is difficult, so he or she keeps procrastinating. Besides, who is going to perform all those training functions once the customer service software is deployed? This is especially true for small businesses.
The goal of this article is to prove that it's not that difficult to deploy and use customer service software. Many small businesses have successfully deployed customer service software and are long reaping the benefits. These small businesses have discovered that it's not only easy to deploy customer service software, it's cheap and affordable, and it's extremely profitable for their businesses as well.
Let's see how easy it is to deploy a piece of customer service software. In most cases, we're looking at two scenarios. One, the locally hosted solution (i.e. Customer service software hosted by yourself), and two, the remotely hosted solution (i.e. Customer service software hosted by solution provider).
For the locally hosted solution, a few things can happen. Most software, both web-based and non web-based, usually come with an easy to use installation wizard. It's a step by step process that will guide you through the entire installation process. Installation wizards will also automatically prompt you when there are missing data, so you don't have to worry about doing something wrong.
If you're still uncomfortable using the installation wizards, you can always approach the solution provider and hire them to install the customer service software for you. They would be happy to do it for a small fee.
And one more thing. If you're worried about technical stuff such as server requirements, there's always that handy test script that will verify if your server meets the requirements. If this script is not made available by the software vendor, verify the requirements with the vendor as well as your hosting service provider.
Tip: For a PHP/MySQL customer service software solution, it's highly recommended that you choose a Linux server with Cpanel. The cost for such a hosting plan is usually less than $50 per month for a highly reliable service.
On the rare occasion that the installation wizard is not available, you may have to do a manual install. Again, you can easily approach the vendor to install for you, or you can hire a competent programmer to install the software for you. (Check out rentacoder.com)
 Many small businesses have successfully deployed customer service software and are long reaping the benefits.
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For the remotely hosted option, it's even easier to deploy your customer service software. All you need to do is to pick the plan or package that best suits your business needs and pay a monthly fee.
For this option, many businesses are concerned about rising costs as their businesses expand. But usually steep discounts are available for bigger plans, and in the long run, it's always more cost effective for the businesses to continue with the remotely hosted solutions rather than deploy the customer service software themselves. Why is this so?
That's because a remotely hosted software solution avoids having to incur additional costs such as hosting costs, rack space costs, hardware and software engineer wages (or labor maintenance costs), and development costs. The combined savings of these costs make the remotely hosted option hard to ignore.
Recap of Server Requirements for PHP/MYSQL Customer Service Software:
- PHP
- MySQL (highly reliable and scalable database)
- Apache server
- Cpanel (this is not mandatory but it's one of the most popular and highly effective control panel offered by most hosting services)
This should alleviate any unfounded worries that you may have about deploying your own customer service software.
All that's left to do now is to pick the most suitable customer service software.
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