How Much of Your Customer Service Efforts Should You Actually Automate

The much thrown around phrase that “customer service is the backbone of your business” isn’t trivial at all. A staggering 96% of consumers around the globe say it’s an essential factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand. Therefore, it is important for growing your business too.

Delighting your customers and providing a prompt response and superb customer service helps establish trust in your brand and transform your buyers into returning customers.

Automation opens up numerous opportunities, but only if you get it right.

Automated customer service comes with numerous benefits like faster response times, extended service hours and channels, and fewer human errors.

You may be wondering how much of your customer service efforts should you automate, so let’s dive into best practices for implementing automation.

Keep It Simple & Know Your Audience Well

Many businesses don’t need a lot of automation, so automating every single aspect of your customer service process may be unnecessary. Also, bear in mind that the lack of a personal connection can turn off older customers, so understand your target audience well before introducing automation.

For instance, if seniors are your primary client demographics, replacing friendly customer service agents with a confusing phone menu may not be the best decision.

You have to know what your customers expect, what they prefer, and only automate where it makes sense.

Use Automation to Serve the Customer Journey

Automation is great for certain aspects of customer service, for example, checking the shipping status of an order. On the flip side, it may not be the right solution when it comes to recommending accessories. Human-to-human interactions will always be the best option for some touchpoints.

Take angry or frustrated customers for instance. Human agents will handle them best. On the other hand, it’s unnecessary or inefficient for humans to do some tasks.

These processes within the customer service organization can be done better and faster by machines.

Provide 24/7 Customer Service

The chatbots are transforming customer service. AI can respond to customers faster than any human, and you can make this instant response feature available all the time. A chatbot operating 24 hours allows businesses to finally meet customer expectations of getting 24/7 support.

By deploying chatbots for customer service, you get to extend your service hours, so time zones and time of the day become irrelevant.

And thanks to technology advancements, an AI digital assistant like Servisbot can provide out-of-hours automation and work collaboratively with your live chat, allowing you to automate key customer interactions.

This hybrid approach with the right balance of live chat and chatbots delivers better customer support. And don’t’ forget: real-time customer engagement boosts their satisfaction!

Reduce Volume of Repetitive Tasks

Picking up a phone 30 times a day only to give the same answer to every customer will affect any customer agents’ job satisfaction. In addition to this, they weren’t hired to do that. This is where automating customer service can make all the difference.

When repetitive questions are eliminated from the agent’s agenda, and their ticket volume is reduced, it frees up their time for tasks that add more value to the customer and the company.

With reduced workloads, support reps can finally focus on complex issues and having impactful conversations with the customers.

Deliver Automated Responses to FAQs

Automated customer service can respond to issues and concerns that customers frequently inquire about. It can also be used to educate customers about complex services or products, like deciding on health insurance.

An AI-powered customer service chat can handle most queries, and when needed, transfer customers to live agents. This will help your company reduce customer service costs and also increase customer satisfaction.

AI-Powered Interactive Troubleshooting

If your business offers products or services that require troubleshooting, you can utilize AI to help your customers pinpoint the problem and offer the steps to fix the issue. Also, AI can share images, videos, or articles to help customers better cope with the problem they are facing.

For example, Nespresso opted for such a solution in an effort to help their customers descale their coffee machines or find the nearest store or a recycling point. Customers are provided with step-by-step tips that are delivered naturally via conversation.

Research, Experiment, and Test

The key to success is anticipating and meeting your customers’ expectations. Listen to your audience and leverage the stream of actionable insights and data that customer service automation provides to optimize and improve your customer service pipeline.

Also, don’t forget to pay attention to your users’ experience with chatbots. Be prepared to test and analyze so you can improve your bot.