Customer Support Automation and Its Importance
By Niharika Ayyagari / In Customer Support Automation, AI / September 17, 2020 / 7 min read
By Niharika Ayyagari / In Customer Support Automation, AI / September 17, 2020 / 7 min read
Customer Support Automation. This term has been the talk of the business world for the past few months, where companies are rushing to incorporate their own customer support solutions.
So, let’s dig into what it exactly is and why has it become so important.
There’s a great quote by Jack Ma that goes “Forget about your competitors, just focus on your customers.” Rightly so, customers are the true drivers of any business, and you can “shoot for the stars” when you know what your customers want or how they feel about the current services offered by your company.
And to do just that, companies introduced their own customer support teams, who would gauge customer’s needs, provide them with the necessary information, help them with any and every issue, and provide a solution quickly.
But with the growing size of the customers, it became difficult to respond to them on time or even get back with the appropriate response. Plus, the idea of providing proactive support started to grow distant.
This is where customer support automation steps in.
A couple of statistics that make us understand the true importance of customer support and why and how they propel a business forward:
One-third of consumers say they would consider switching companies after just one instance of bad customer service. – American Express
67% of customer churn is preventable if firms resolve issues the first time they occur. – Ameyo
52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a company after a positive customer service experience.- Dimensional Research
Over time, the value of providing top-notch customer service reduced due to the following drawbacks:
To combat the above issues companies reached out to their friend in need – customer support automation (CSA).
CSA is a form of customer support that is provided to the customers using automated technology such as voice assistants, AI-chatbots, etc.
It’s basically a streamlined process that reduces or eliminates the amount of human involvement while delivering advice or assistance. Such as booking a ticket, general queries,refund-related questions, etc.
For example, a customer wants to inquire if a shoe they like is available in a certain size. Instead of waiting on the customer support agent, they get an automated response in minutes on let’s say a chatbot saying that “The shoe is available in Size 9.”
With Machine Learning algorithms you can understand what the customer wants and how to respond.
Moreover, the idea of customer support automation is not to replace humans but to make their life simpler and easier.
To be noted that, automated customer support can be provided 24/7 and used to both assist and reduce the cost of human support representatives.
Customer support solutions are picking up speed and people are realizing the number of things they can be used for. Mainly, how they can enhance customer support.
Here’s how customer support automation makes things easier:
It’s estimated that by 2021, 85% of customer service interactions will be automated.
The main idea of incorporating a platform is to automate simple tasks and give more time to the agents to focus on selective and productive tasks.
Also, messaging applications are a new trend to provide CSA, as millions of people are available on messaging channels such as WhatsApp. This makes it easier to communicate with the agents for everything in a one-stop platform.
Moreover, users are inching more towards self-service platforms, and parting ways with emails and phone calls. So, companies will have to tend to their requirements and provide platforms with FAQ bases, interactive diagnostics, virtual assistants, etc,. This is also to ensure that companies are up to date with the latest trends and user requirements.
Also, real-time responses will soon become an expectation. This can be achieved with CSA platforms, where customers can expect on-time and quick responses.
So, we can see how automation platforms are the way to go to maintain a balance between agent productivity and customer satisfaction.
Content and Marketing, Verloop.io
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