The What, Why and Wow of Customer Service Automation

To augment this, you should look toward a solution that offers the ability to scale. At a recent NPR Intelligence Squared debate, IBM Project Debater challenged a top debater in real-time, adapting to counter-arguments dynamically. In some cases, they can turn a simple question into an explosive complaint. To address these, it typically requires even more human intervention to resolve.

From the outside in, customers don’t want to use mystic software systems to “open a ticket.” They want to use what they know and like—be it email, social, chat, or the phone. We’ve all navigated our fair share of automated phone menus or interacted with advantages of automated customer service support bots to get help. Stumptown Coffee had an overly complicated phone system that was easy to send off the rails with an error on the back end. But now they use RingCentral, whose easy-to-navigate interface has made everyone’s lives easier.

Predictive customer service

With more and more people shopping online, you want to make any interaction as smooth as possible. When you consider that global retail e-commerce sales totaled around $4.9 trillion in 2021, you can see how important the market now is. However, it’s also about every aspect of customer service, from checking on an order status to finding out how to use a product properly.

It’s one thing when channels of communication are not interconnected and customers end up repeating the same issues over and over like a broken record. This kind of centre is an easy-to-navigate library with a knowledge base, a FAQ section, tutorials and how-tos. However, partial automation to improve CX is accessible and quite necessary already, for a number of reasons.

Is your business ready for Automation?

An all-too-common pitfall is attempting to automate processes that require a nuanced understanding of customer emotions or complex problem-solving. The inherent complexities of CX processes can expose businesses to potential risks that can have a lasting negative impact on brand reputation and even on their bottom line. 👉 Read our complete guide to building the perfect customer service knowledge base to set yours up in five steps.

However, the latest conversational AI technologies can resolve complicated problems without impacting CX. This metric allows organizations to assess the workload on their support teams and enhance the overall efficiency of their customer support automations. Yes, we know we have to be patient with chatbots as they need time to learn and process. However, when launched with an intention to improve the CX, some chatbots can cause quite the opposite, creating problems for companies that now must struggle to keep the customers from leaving. In any case, even the most basic, polite answer from a chatbot is better than silence, because it acknowledges that the customer needs attention and that you’re there for them immediately. If this is not a sign of a good attitude towards customer service, we don’t know what is.

Set up a chatbot

AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data in real time and identify patterns and trends that may otherwise go unnoticed by human agents. Traditional customer experience (CX) strategies heavily relied on human interactions to create meaningful connections with customers. But technology and automation have ushered in a new era of customer engagement, revolutionizing the way organizations approach their CX strategies. To omit the chaos in your Inbox, you can let automated customer service do its thing.

A staggering 88% of customers already expect automated self-service when they visit a company’s ecommerce website, so if you haven’t embraced automation yet, you’re falling behind. But thanks to a little something called automation, customer service is poised to enter a brave new world of revenue growth, satisfied customers, and better-equipped support agents. And while it empowers your customers it also helps your business by lightening its operational costs. However, It’s important to keep in mind that many customers still prefer support through human assistance when required.

Lower operational costs

And as speed is increased, so is the number of issues your business can resolve in the same timeframe, as automated programs can serve multiple customers simultaneously. This is probably the biggest and most intuitive advantage of automation. With software able to pull answers from a database in seconds, companies can speed up issue resolution significantly when it comes to non-complex customer queries. Request customer feedback after support interactions to improve your automation efforts.

Despite not reaching out to customer support, many customers who have had a negative experience will either stop using the company’s services or continue with a less favorable opinion. You can avoid this if you proactively contact your customers whenever they experience an issue with your product or service. By analyzing tickets, it can give you a comprehensive understanding of the customer experience.

reasons to bring automation in customer service (Benefits)

So let’s unscramble the issue, see what its pros and cons are, and how to make it work shipshape. Use the tool’s automation features to add ticket routing and automation to your reps’ workflows, empowering them to provide effective support faster. HubSpot also makes assigning and prioritizing tickets easy to ensure every customer gets the support they need. Set up automatic customer feedback surveys — NPS, CSAT, CES — to collect the information needed to improve the customer experience. You can automate the timing of these surveys so customers can fill them out after completing specific actions (e.g., making a purchase, speaking with a rep over the phone, etc.). With this insight, your customer service team can determine which areas they need to improve upon in order to offer a more delightful customer experience.

Chatbots come in a range from the basic with a simple FAQ capability, to conversational bots with increasingly advanced AI, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning. You can even customize and brand the portal to provide a completely seamless experience for customers who reach it through your website. Aisera’s next-generation AI Customer Service solution is a scalable cloud service used by millions of users.