Automation has changed how companies operate forever. Finance, e-commerce, manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality, and many other sectors are using automation to improve their operations. The introduction of machine learning and artificial intelligence has further expanded automation opportunities.
However, many leaders and organizations are still skeptical about automating tasks that traditionally relied on human interaction to get desired results. One of those tasks is customer support, and even though automation has entered this segment more slowly, it can provide excellent results.
Despite that, many fear that automated support is inferior and could cause a lot of frustration. Today we’ll debunk all of these myths.
What is Automated Customer Support?
Automated customer support is the process of using various automation tools and technologies to replace different workflows done manually. Customer service automation can have different levels and be set up in the backend without anyone noticing it.
On the other hand, it could be the first contact point between customers and customer support staff. There are many different tools and customer service software that enable automation. For example, many companies use virtual assistants to communicate with customers and provide valuable answers.
Any support department can benefit from automation, but it still isn’t possible to automate the whole process.
How Does Customer Service Automation Work?
Since we started talking about chatbots, let’s use this example to explain how automation works. Most automated bots rely on machine learning to understand the input they’re getting from customers and respond with pre-set answers, links to valuable resources, and FAQs.
Some virtual assistants even give customers prepared questions they can ask with a single click and get an automated response. Some more powerful AI assistants can also answer questions, but in most cases, they redirect challenging issues to employees best suited for that specific issue.
From phone calls or chats to ticket assignment to a resolution to follow-up
Some typical automated customer support systems include:
- Workflow automation
- IVR (interactive voice response)
- Self-service systems
- Email automation (Email marketing is a fabulous channel to deliver exceptional customer experience)
- Virtual assistants or AI chatbots
Modern automation can cover a big part of the customer support system. Live chatbots can accept customer inquiries and direct them to the most capable customer support staff via automated ticket assignment.
They can also provide self-service solutions like knowledge bases where people can find the answers they are looking for on their own. After resolving the issues, companies can set up email automation to send emails to re-engage customers and show them they care.
Why do companies choose automated customer service software?
With this intelligent and automated self-service support, companies can facilitate faster resolution and reduce customer inquiries while providing great user experience. Specific automation like AI live chat has become a standard over the past decade.
Using automations can be an integral part of your process improvement strategy. They can benefit an organization internally by allowing employees to focus on more important tasks and provide customer support to those who need it, but it may also impact customers negatively.
For example, some people don’t like communication via email or phone. Instead, they prefer live chats that provide answers quickly and allow them to multitask. Increased cybersecurity risks are also a consequence of providing so many options. So, taking each case seriously is critical.
How Automated Customer Support Can Benefit Your Business Growth
Here are some vital benefits companies get by automating their customer support process.
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Decrease in customer churn
Automation techniques reduce time-consuming and repetitive tasks letting employees focus on strategic work. Intelligent automation reduces customer churn by recognizing high risks and notifying employees about which customers need urgent assistance.
These solutions can also perform automated actions to prevent customer churn. For example, if a customer is clearly disengaged, a system can send personalized incentives or offers to keep them onboard.
Do you want to automate your customer support and improve your customer success rate?
Contact Growth Hackers
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Reduced business costs
No matter how large your business and your customer support staff are, automation helps you scale quickly. An automated customer support process lets you resolve more queries and reduce churn without having to hire more employees or burn out your current team.
Not only does automation reduce the need for hiring new people, but it also helps your employees be more productive. Acquiring a new customer costs five times more than keeping old ones, and since automation prevents customer churn, you can imagine how much this reduces costs alone. The bottom line is that improving your resource capacity can have a long-term impact on how efficiently your business will operate.
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Increased sales opportunities
Decreased churn rate automatically means companies have more customers likely to buy something in the future. The fact that automation allows companies to scale quickly means they will resolve more issues resulting in sales.
Most customers want to learn everything they can about products and services before deciding whether to buy something. Since live chat is constantly available, it can increase sales by giving answers to inquiries at any given moment.
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Improved net promoter score
Automation can improve net promoter scores in several ways. First, your platform can segment customers based on their scores. It’s also possible to set up automated follow-up emails that will thank your customers and set up triggers when recognizing detractors so that your customer service team will focus their attention on them.
At the same time, based on customer information, intelligent platforms can send personalized offers and content to improve their satisfaction and leave a better impression.
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Enhanced productivity and efficiency of agents
Automated support lets companies help a more significant number of customers at scale with proper implementation. Since automation can handle most basic queries, it frees up support agents to have the time to provide answers to more complex questions, including troubleshooting issues, VIP queries, emotional complaints, etc.
However, humans can easily make mistakes when it comes to highly repetitive tasks that need to be done many times during the day. That’s where automation is perfect, as it doesn’t make any mistakes.
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A rise in qualified leads
Communication is a vital part of generating and qualifying leads. Customer support channels allow two-way communication making it perfect for engaging leads. For example, customers want a quick response from a service channel.
Automation allows 24/7 availability. It can answer some questions on its own and send out email responses. It can also notify support staff about which customers have been waiting for too long and require immediate attention.
8 ways You Can Use Automated Customer Support Software
1. First contact resolution
Automation improves first contact resolution percentage in so many ways. First of all, automated channels like email, live chat, or IVR can instantly give answers to some of the most common queries, which are the majority of contacts.
For example, you can connect Live Agent directly to an inventory control system that can tell customers whether a specific product is available or not. Automation can also track key FCR metrics, like counting the number of resolved tickets and categorizing them.
2. Automated ticket routing
Many automated ticketing systems assign tickets automatically based on agents’ availability, knowledge, experience, and skills. With this capability, support agents don’t have to go through the ticket queue and “take” cases as the software creates lists for them.
That reduces ticket resolution and response time, creates a fair distribution of tickets, improves customer satisfaction, and lets agents focus on essential tasks. Those who use automated help desk software can experience average transfer rates as low as 0.5 compared to a whopping 2 transfers per client without automated solutions.
3. Real-time call monitoring and management
Call centers often use real-time monitoring tools that allow managers to track agent calls and oversee them in real time. These tools give valuable call analytics, speech tracking patterns, alerts, and dashboards, which provide complete call coverage and transcripts so managers can look into problematic cases.
Ensure customer satisfaction by using automated customer support today!
4. Personalized IVR
IVR is short for Interactive Voice Response, and these systems enable call routing based on touch-tone input and spoken word responses. Incoming callers are grouped and categorized when they respond in an automated menu and are connected with suitable agents.
However, a one-size-fits-all approach can drastically reduce customer satisfaction. Luckily, there are personalized IVR solutions that offer an omnichannel service that can tailor the journey, change prompts, direct call flows, and use different personas.
5. Engage in proactive chat conversations
Customer support automation allows companies to be both reactive and proactive. Combining automated tools and customer data allows companies to engage people in live chat conversations. Live chat can pop up automatically and offer help.
This data and automation also give you more insight and information about the customer’s journey and interest. That makes it easier to provide the right answers and offer potential products and solutions.
6. Rules-based follow-ups
As previously mentioned, automation is often used for follow-up strategies. You can set up automation tools to notify employees about follow-up calls they need to make. On the other hand, they can also send out follow-up messages via text or email. They do this based on different parameters and by analyzing essential customer data.
7. Leverage customer information data to optimize service
All automation tools can gather and store data. This data can be used for data analytics to improve all aspects of customer service. Companies use analytics to identify future trends, anticipate needs, and highlight their offer at the right moments during the customer journey.
More importantly, customer information is vital to providing a personalized experience. Even automation tools can use this data to send personalized messages, responses, or content.
8. Maximize customer satisfaction with self-service options
Customers want more self-service options. Customers can use self-service options that combine automated and user-friendly interfaces to start, pause, or finish processes.
A typical example is resetting passwords. Instead of calling customer support and asking them to reset the password, customers can do this on their own through a simple web interface and an automated email password.
Closing Thoughts on How Automated Customer Support Can Benefit Your Business Growth
Dive into customer support automation and give your team the power to provide a timely, proactive, and personalized customer experience. It is not enough to adopt the latest tools into your arsenal, but businesses must also change their own processes in order to streamline workflow. Automation is a large part of this strategy as it gives businesses the most control. Manual tasks such as emails, follow-ups, chat bots, knowledge base management, ticket routing, and more can be managed and run without human error. This ensures better leads, decreased costs, and the thing everyone wants, increased sales opportunities.
Growth Hackers is an award-winning digital marketing and growth hacking agency helping businesses from all over the world grow. There is no fluff with Growth Hackers. We help entrepreneurs and business owners use automated customer support, increase their productivity, generate qualified leads, optimize their conversion rate, gather and analyze data analytics, acquire and retain users and increase sales. We go further than brand awareness and exposure. We make sure that the strategies we implement move the needle so your business grow, strive and succeed. If you too want your business to reach new heights, contact Growth Hackers today so we can discuss about your brand and create a custom growth plan for you. You’re just one click away to skyrocket your business.
