The expectations of customers, prospects and users regarding rapid access to information have never been higher. This new situation inevitably has an impact on the way companies operate. For some organizations, this phenomenon can become a real headache, especially when their pricing structure is not adapted to managing rapid response times. Customer service automation is therefore a fundamental solution for managing these flows of requests and the workload of our teams.
In this article, we won’t use fancy words like performance, productivity, efficiency or optimization. After all, they won’t help you in any way. Our aim is to give you concrete methods and tools to automate your customer service.
If you had only one thing to remember from this article :
Automation has certain limitations and imperatives. It is therefore important to :
- not to compromise customer satisfaction,
- realize that managing complexity is an integral part of your know-how
- and not to neglect the management of change by involving employees and training them in the new tools.
What is customer service automation?
Customer service corresponds to a set of business processes used to respond to different requests from customers, prospects or users. Depending on a company’s know-how, these different business processes are made up of a sequence of consecutive or even simultaneous actions in response to a request.
Customer service automation is the automated or assisted handling of specific tasks in a process. In both cases, the aim is to improve customer satisfaction and added value.
For automated task processing, the solution implemented completely replaces an action previously carried out by a member of staff, who is freed from non-value-added and/or time-consuming tasks.
For assisted processing, the solution enables various tasks such as searches, calculations, updates, etc., to be carried out simultaneously with certain actions performed by an advisor. Automation becomes the agent’s co-pilot.
Find out more about process automation in our article
The benefits of customer service automation and examples of solutions
Improve response times
Whatever a company’s business, fast customer service has an impact on the customer’s perception of service quality (and sometimes even when the product or service isn’t top-notch). Reducing waiting times therefore has a strong added value for the customer.
Examples of solutions:
- Automatic qualification of requests
- Creation of a ticket enriched with automated data collection from various software applications and the CRM.
Happier, more efficient advisors
Let’s face it, being a customer service advisor isn’t always a rosy picture. Some customers are ready for a fight. Making life easier for agents, or reducing their non-value-added tasks through automation, means making their lives better.
Examples of solutions:
- Automated data entry in several software packages
- Identifying appropriate responses to callers
- Automatic display of account information
Be contactable day and night
Problems often happen when you least expect them. Even if consumers and users know full well that they’re not dealing with a human being. Initial automated exchanges can reassure and de-stress them.
Examples of solutions:
- FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), Knowledge Base, Customer Portal
- Initial qualification of the need
Customer autonomy
Some complaints can easily be resolved independently by a customer, if his problem is well defined and he is directed to the right operating procedure.
Examples of solutions:
- How it works
- Dynamic form
- Chatbot
How do you automate customer service?
Step 1 – Study the existing situation to identify problems through a process audit
To carry out this analysis, it’s important to focus on the employees involved (you can choose a representative sample if the number of players is too large). Also, make sure you meet the right people– often operational people rather than managers – to understand exactly how a department works.
Be prepared to ask questions and rephrase information for better understanding. If possible, carry out field observations using methods such as DILO or Gemba Walk to ensure the veracity of the information.
During this process, it’s important to adopt a benevolent, listening and pedagogical attitude to facilitate collaboration and promote the success of organizational changes or transformations.
Examples of areas for improvement in customer service :
- Response times
- Response rate
- Quality and friendliness of exchanges
- Customer onboarding
- Message acknowledging their complaint and creating a ticket
- Complex or convoluted use of software
- Operator unavailable
- Ticket redirection
- Dunning and notification
- Multiple entries with no added value…
Find out more in our article on how to conduct a process audit.
Step 2 – Prioritizing problems
Once the problems have been listed, they need to be prioritized in a roadmap.
To prioritize them, you can use different qualification elements:
- Estimated number of FTEs (full-time equivalents) affected by the problem
- Average salary of FTEs affected
- Agent frustration level
- Consultants’ level of dissatisfaction with software
- Financial and non-financial impact of possible automation
Step 3 – Finding solutions to problems
How to find a solution
To solve a problem, it’s crucial to follow several steps.
Firstly, the problem needs to be converted into an objective, and all the potential solutions for achieving this objective need to be exhaustively identified.
For example, to reduce response time, a company can free up advisor time, recruit new agents, or outsource customer service, and so on.
Next, it’s important to determine the company’s requirements and constraints (a requirement is something negotiable, while a constraint is mandatory).
For each objective, it is then necessary to determine the tools available to meet it, while checking that these tools are compatible with the organization’s constraints. In the example, for the “free up advisor time” solution, tools such as Aircall, Zendesk, Intercom or Lapala could be used.
Examples of customer service automation solutions
Chatbot
A chatbot is a tool that automatically communicates with people through online messaging. It can answer questions, provide information and help perform certain tasks.
Interactive voice server
It’s a telephone system that lets users navigate a menu using their voice or the telephone keypad. It can be used to provide information, redirect calls to the right service or take messages.
Cascade call routing
This is a telephone system that routes calls to a series of numbers or extensions until an agent answers the call. If an agent doesn’t take the call, the system moves on to the next agent, and so on.
Customized script
Depending on the request and the customer, a personalized script can be pushed to the advisor to propose a customized response tailored to the need.
Qualifying claims
An initial automatic review of the request or claim can prioritize a request for faster processing.
Automated CRM
CRM systems can direct information and data instantly when someone contacts you by phone, e-mail, chat…
Integration with other software
To avoid multiple entries of the same information in a software program, or to instantly collect information from multiple tools.
Customer portal and FAQ
Customer portals and FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) are usually dedicated applications that list answers to common consumer questions.
Automatic e-mail
It enables e-mails to be sent automatically on a scheduled basis or in response to specific actions, such as an order or a request for assistance.
Helpdesk
A helpdesk is a support and ticket management center that responds to user requests for help and support. It usually includes a number of solutions, such as chatbots, CRM, FAQs, etc.
Best practices
Whatever the automation, allow the customer to communicate “simply” with an advisor. Of course, you’ll need to educate them and make sure you understand their problem. You also need to explain that response time will not be immediate.
Implementing automation is relatively simple, but implementing quality automation for the customer is a real challenge. It may be important to set up systems to measure customer satisfaction via qualitative comments or quantitative elements such as star ratings. What’s more, it’s crucial to ask questions that make sense in terms of the customer experience.
Use software and tools that are flexible, scalable, collaborative and easy to modify. If you have to move heaven and earth to adapt to your company’s changes and decisions. The system will cost you a lot to maintain over time.
To avoid this, you need up-to-date documentation of your customer service processes. Don’t hesitate to use process sheets.
The process sheet is a crucial tool for guaranteeing the long-term viability of an activity and ensuring simplified improvement whenever necessary. It brings together key information such as process mapping and performance indicators.
The process sheet will also facilitate the implementation of new projects, audits, controls and reviews.
However, there’s a fine line between “having a useful process sheet for your company” and “having an unused, obsolete sheet lost in the depths of your storage space”.
To explore this topic further, we have written another resource to help you produce a simple process sheet (with a sample process sheet).
What are the limits and imperatives of customer service automation?
There’s a fine line between what might be considered a limit to automation, and a task that fundamentally should not be automated. Customer service is a complex business, and advisors have a real know-how. It makes no sense to think that automation will solve all problems.
Level of satisfaction and empathy perceived by the user through automation
Frankly, there’s nothing worse than being faced with a chatbot that can’t answer your questions. I’m sure you, too, have spent 15 minutes trying to explain something without success and without being able to interact with an advisor or loop on interactive voice servers. Customer satisfaction takes a big hit.
Can we handle complex cases with customer service automation?
Some requests or complaints can be complex. Full automation may not be appropriate for several reasons:
- managing this complexity is part of your know-how. If everyone knew how to manage this complexity, your company wouldn’t necessarily exist.
- setting up an automation to meet them would surely take a lot of resources and development time. So the question to ask is: is the investment worth it, or are there other, “simpler” automations to build that would have a better return on investment?
In addition, as mentioned earlier, a complex case can be automated to assist the advisors. In co-pilot mode.
Don’t neglect change management
As a reminder, automation is a collective exercise.
Not involving employees through communication, workshops and meetings can create difficulties in the project.
Intuitively, advisors may be quick to think that automation is going to replace them and perhaps cost them their jobs.
This may well be true, but even in this case, it’s important to communicate the objectives to avoid a painful transformation.
In addition, and particularly for assisted automation, agents need to be trained in the use of these new tools.
Now you know all about customer service automation. Now it’s your turn! See you soon for more content!
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