Business world today depends mostly on technology. With most businesses relying on customer support for traffic, engagement and growth, customer support automation is becoming essential.
A measured integration of automated support can turn the fortune of your business around. But, any negligence can be harmful at the same time. Here is a brief about how to implement automated customer support techniques to benefit the business.
Integrating Support Automation Effectively
Customer support automation is the reality of today’s world. Irrespective of whether you run a small retail stock or if you are an ecommerce giant, you need happy customers to run your business for a long time. If your business’s sustainability and growth are on your mind, you need automation beyond any doubt. But at a similar time, you also have to ensure that you integrate automation technology appropriately and optimally to bring forth the best results.
Studies have revealed that customers like a personalized experience. In today’s business environment, where most transactions take place online, lending the customers the warmth of personal touch is becoming difficult. The greeting a customer used to receive from a sales executive of a brick and mortar store remains missing today when they log into any company’s website.
But, customer support automation comes with enough potency to lend the same experience to the customers when integrated carefully. What you must keep in mind while integrating technology is that the maintenance of balance is a prerequisite. Excessive dependence on chatbots or AI algorithms can become a source of poor customer experience.
Computers are good at managing a large volume of repetitive tasks. Hence, customer support automation can handle tagging, data management, data analysis, sending repeat emails and finding customer information from the database efficiently.
On the other hand, if you would leave delicate areas like customer transactions, promotional emails, etc., the results can be adverse. Customers prefer talking to humans rather than the automated robots. Therefore, the integration of technology can discourage customers from continuing business relationships with a brand at times.
Related : 7 Trending Content Formats To Streamline Customer Support
Advantages Of Using Customer Support Automation
When you integrate technology in the right way, life becomes way more comfortable. For businesses, this can be a blessing if done adequately and optimally, keeping the customers’ interests in mind. Even though customer support automation benefits are not limited, here are the primary ones that make the adoption of customer service automation a must for growth-aspiring enterprises.
- Often a customer only needs either a nod or a no from the sales executive. Engaging a full-time resource for replying to the simple yes and no answer bearing questions needs investment of time and money. Hence, customer support automation can be a smart way of dealing with such queries. This will enhance the level of customer satisfaction, and engage more people in the transaction, increasing the sales figure.
- Agents also get a better experience through customer support automation. Automation always does repetitive tasks in a better way. Hence, the agents no longer remain busy managing those. Hence, sufficient time for managing the rest of the productive tasks enhances.
- If the support team does not remain busy answering the easy queries with simple solutions, the executives will have more time to deal with the complex queries. Any company that extends timely solutions to the most complex queries of a customer wins the confidence of the customer forever. Hence, customer support automation effectively reduces the workload of the support team. Consequently, it helps the team to attend to the complex issues instantly.
5 Ways To Automate Customer Support
Merely integrating the customer support automation techniques does not suffice the requirement of a business house. Enterprises also need to know whether the particular support automation that they are using satisfies the customers or not. Therefore, the following ways can be useful in gauging the impact of support automation on customer experience.
Sending Customer Support Automation Surveys
Automation can be beneficial in several ways. Sending customer satisfaction surveys can be one ways of integrating customer support automation beneficially. This makes sure that once any transaction is over between a business and a customer, the support team sends an email.
This email enquires about how the customer experience was like during the transaction. If the customer responds assertively and if the case approached a closure. If the customer comes up with any suggestions or discontent, the team can further communicate to apologize and resolve the issues. This simple step can turn an unhappy customer into a loyal one forever.
However, if you would engage people to manage this task, they might miss sending a few emails. Also, a chance of manual error always remains in the case of human-handled CSAT emails. If the person managing the CSAT responses forgets to reply to the customers expressing discontent, the whole motto behind the CSAT concept will become ineffective.
Intimating the Customers
Companies keep the support emails available for the customers to send their issues and queries. Once a customer sends an email to customer support, the sender waits eagerly for a reply. On the other hand, when the support team receives the email, it starts processing the issues.
It consults with the IT cell, supply chain and analyzes the level of bugs. After all, is done, the team invests time in framing an appropriate reply. The entire process takes time for sure. Sometimes the entire process consumes 7 – 10 days. Meanwhile, the customer grows impatient and concludes that the company has a poor support system. This, indeed, does not work in favor of the enterprise.
This situation highlights the importance of integrating customer support automation smartly. Any business house can send an auto-generated reply to all the customers’ emails sent to the support team. This simply intimates the customers that the support team has received the query and they are working on it. Hence, the customer does not lose confidence in the company.
However, in the absence of any such correspondence, the customer might end up feeling that he/she is not important to you.
Directing Customers To The Help-Articles
Several enterprises use chat support these days. However, integrating chatbots is never sufficient for any business to achieve the desired level of customer engagement and support. One also has to keep the customer’s angle in mind. Most customers prefer flexible chat support that allows them to enter and leave a chat anytime they want.
A restrictive or too much pressing conversation can repel the customers from engaging with the chat supports any further. Hence, companies need to know the right ways of integrating chat support to make the customers feel comfortable and cared for. Enterprises can use automated supports that can redirect customers to help related articles and links.
This helps customers in many ways. Also, redirecting the customers to the human support team can be a smart way. Support automation should act as a mediation system between the problem and the solutions. If the issues are complex enough, the chatbots must redirect the queries to human support.
Organizing The Support Queue
Organizing support is the key to practical support. Tons of issues and queries might flock into your stream of support email; these queries generally belong to various categories. While some can be regarding the availability of a product, some can be a complaint email about a product. Delayed deliveries, defective products, return requests and much more can be the subject of these emails.
Hence, prioritizing, scaling, escalating, and sorting them is essential. Or else, the support team will have a mammoth task to deal with. This is how inefficiencies and inadequacies creep into the system. Support automation can help in managing the massive influx of email effectively.
By introducing simple techniques like tags, drop down field, workflow management, etc., the productivity of the customer support team can be increased. This will also offer the customers a friendlier experience without making them realize that they are interacting with an automated process.
Faster Response With Ready-Made Replies
Replying to the customer’s emails in time is a must for every customer support team. However, if the team fails to reply in time, the enterprise’s image suffers a lot. If you have ever paid attention to these emails, you must have noticed that a large share of the content remains the same throughout the replies.
If the support team has to type the same content every time, it consumes a lot of time. Hence, keeping the standard part saved can be a way to make the replying task faster. Instead of repeatedly writing the same content, the support team can invest more time in addressing the issues.
Customer support automation can be a smart way of saving canned responses and replies to reduce the response time. However, keep in mind that an overdose of automation can make the replies look robotic. Hence, try to maintain a balance between automation and personalization to make the replies engaging.
Make sure to engage technology in a meaningful way. An overdose of technology can leave the entire process void of the personalized touch. But, when implemented carefully and tactically, the same can be a source of effective customer management.
