Customer Support Services

In today’s competitive digital marketplace, most clients of publishers and information services companies expect to get what they demand. That’s the norm. When something goes wrong, for example, they need to resolve the issue as fast and as efficiently as possible. And yet, to stand out from the rest, publishers and information services companies need to exceed expectations consistently. For instance, publishers are also under increasing pressure to rein in costs, which makes the challenge of keeping customers happy even more pressing. Therein lies the opportunity.

To help publishers meet this challenge without breaking their budgets, SPi Global has combined its domain expertise in the publishing industry with its global resources to provide claims and returns processing, order fulfillment and technical support. Many of the world’s largest commercial and not-for-profit publishers have benefitted from these customer support services we provide.

SPi Global also sets and achieves aggressive process improvement goals for our clients, applying best practices that have routinely improved turnaround time. One client cut the turnaround time from nine days to two. Another reduced it from two days to only one. We also provide detailed performance tracking reports on client engagements, giving our clients visibility into key metrics that document our performance.

Here’s a more detailed look of how we’re helping our clients meet and exceed the expectations of their customers:

Back Office Services

• Claims and Returns Processing: Even as publishers move to a digital publishing environment, many publishers still fulfill requests for print issue subscriptions. Sometimes, these issues are either not received, damaged, incorrect or lost in transit. Our specialists work within the publisher’s fulfillment workflow to facilitate claims and returns from publishing customers and subscription agents for books and journals, following the rules and conditions set by the client. We also collaborate with internal support groups, forwarding requests by the end users to the various departments, making sure everything stays on track.
• Order Entry: Our specialists process journal and book orders for publishers, taking the information from customers and entering it directly into the publisher databases. We also process invoices and help customers with requests for cancellations, samples and trial subscriptions.

Help Desk
We also provide application services and technical support for employees of our publishing customers, helping them with technical issues such as uploading information products so they can be accessed by customers. We deliver Level 1 and Level 2 technical assistance, escalating issues to the corporate development team if appropriate. We specialize in providing support outside normal U.S. business hours for employees based in Europe or Asia. Our help desk team also makes phone calls to internal customers to immediately acquire details necessary for request resolution.

Contact Center

• E-mail, chat and phone queries: Our experts are also ready to help customers resolve simple requests such as tracking down the product, retrieving usernames and passwords, to more complex file error troubleshooting and back-end system configuration. We also handle more detailed requests such as providing information on specific product features and benefits. We typically respond to all e-mail queries within 24 hours and also provide real-time chat support. Some phone support is also an option.