The Complete Guide to Automating Customer Service

Impact of Artificial Intelligence-Based Chatbots on Customer Engagement and Business Growth SpringerLink

Well—automated helpdesk decreases the need for you to hire more human representatives and improve the customer experience on your site. Automatic welcome messages, assistance within seconds, and personalized service can all contribute to a positive shopping experience for your website visitors. They are valuable in cases when you need to get back to an issue in a few days or months. The customer service automation tool will reopen the ticket and let you know. Implementing a knowledge base into your customer services workflow is a must. As you might have noticed in some cases already, the best tools are those replying to a question with a list of possible solutions.

That way, you can have both automated and human customer service seamlessly integrated, without any loss of data or inefficiencies. Chatbots can be connected with live chat, email with phone support, and so on. This allows for a unified view of customers that results in better personalization. Data is collected and analyzed automatically and can trigger automated actions.

Offer Proactive Response

While automating customer support can help ease your team’s support burdens and make your workflows more efficient, there are definitely some downsides to automation. While you don’t have to follow specific guidelines, you should have a general idea of what to include in your support process. Automating your customer support will allow you to easily add the information your customers need.

A chatbot can pop up after a specific time and suggest using an interactive spinning wheel with discounts and other offers for the visitor. They spin the wheel and get a discount code for your latest collection. They probably think to themselves “it would be a shame to waste it”, so they go ahead with a purchase. You can even use the data collected by bots in your email marketing campaigns and personalize future customer interactions. They can also fill in the gap between the customer showing interest in your products and the sales representative joining the conversation.

Ways to automate your customer support

Good conversational AI vendors will be able to add new content or make changes to FAQs quickly and easily to deal with emergencies, new releases or updated offerings. Learn more about bookings and reservations, and listen to a call with a voice assistant. Context is particularly important in the voice channel, where chat history is not displayed to the customer. Within conversational AI, intents define what actions should be triggered based on conversational inputs. NLU is especially critical in voice interactions where speakers may not use specific keywords, or may tell longer stories to get to the point.

As a real-world example, Landry’s Golden Nugget Hotel & Casinos deployed a PolyAI voice assistant to solve staffing issues and deliver better CX. Authenticating users through is a cheaper way to automate the process than voice biometrics, and doesn’t come with the same set of risks that voice biometrics presents. Voice assistants use conversational AI to determine why a customer is calling and route them to the right department. This is similar to a conversational Interactive Voice Response (IVR), but using conversational AI technologies like NLU allows customers to use natural language instead of keywords. The most common use cases for conversational AI in customer service are as follows. Value extraction is the process by which AI agents extract the relevant information from customer queries and store them against the relevant ‘slots’.

Porting chatbot technology into voice

Automation can only handle simple tasks, such as answering frequently asked questions, sending email campaigns to your leads, and operating according to the set rules. That’s alright—customer service automation can be the answer to your worries. However, airlines didn’t present the most issues for summer travelers. For the 77% of summer travelers who reported they encountered customer service issues, rental car companies topped the list, as nearly a third of travelers using rental cars had issues.

If your business processes involve collecting and storing sensitive customer data, you’ll want to make sure that you maintain full control over it. Finally, if you plan on growing your business to a global scale, you’ll have to consider your customer support process. It’s important to let your customers know what to expect when they contact you, as well as inform them about their rights.

Other advantages include saving costs, decreasing response time, and minimizing human error. But remember to train your customer service agents to understand a customer’s inquiry before they reach for a scripted response. This will ensure the clients always feel that the communication is personalized and helpful.

And if not, the customer service software can analyze the request and offer some options that might be helpful. AI enables faster issue resolution, 24/7 availability, and personalized responses by analyzing customer data. It also frees up human agents to handle complex tasks and interactions. GetJenny helps brands connect with their customers 24/7 using AI chatbots tailored to improve customer experience.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Colm has no favourite movie, because “it depends on the genre”, and is experimenting with growing his own food. Brands that extend service hours to 24/7 conversational support typically see their conversation volume in chat increase by about 40%. The metrics from all-day conversational support will quickly give you insight about the ideal time-of-day availability for your customers. It also helps you identify the specific pain-points your customers experience.

Every time someone asks a question, it will compare it to the questions you’ve added for that canned response. Once you’ve got about 10 to 20 examples of chat conversations for each onboarding message & FAQ you’d like to automate you’re ready for the next step. If you consider a chatbot automation solution, check for all the messaging platforms that integrate with it. A good chatbot will work across your website, applications, SMS, Facebook messenger, and other native platforms. When it comes to choice, you can choose not just the tasks,but also the automation based on the kind of customer as well. The merchant bot also enables Masterpass within chats that allow direct merchant-customer chats.

Customers can interact with voice assistants to seek assistance, ask questions, or receive information without the need for typing or navigating through interfaces. This voice-based support enhances convenience and accessibility for customers, particularly in scenarios where hands may be occupied or accessibility is limited. The main chatbot disadvantage is that the bots can only perform certain set functionalities and cannot do anything that is outside their setup. After all, there is no replacing of the natural flow of a human conversation. So, keep in mind that chatbots are a supplement to your human agents, not a replacement.

Alternatively, you can add a feedback feature that will allow customers to submit their questions anonymously. This will let you respond to more customer questions while you’re away. Once you know what you’re aiming for, you can start creating your customer support process. From mapping out your communication channels to determining the best way to handle FAQs, you’ll need to take everything into consideration.

Companies familiar with automation upsides have the upper hand over the ones still skeptical about it. You can selectively choose customer support automation to fit into your strategies. Zendesk Support Suite is one of the largest customer service management companies in its market segment. It combines a simple helpdesk ticketing system with an omnichannel functionality.

Read more about Automate 87% of Your Customer Support Conversations in 1 hour here.

• This proactive approach ensures prompt resolution, enhances customer satisfaction and improves brand reputation.
• Other advantages include saving costs, decreasing response time, and minimizing human error.
• A benefit of a chatbot is that bots can entertain and engage your audience while helping them out.
• These tools simplify or complete a rep’s role responsibilities, saving them time and improving customer service.