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Improve customer service aspects with automation

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This guide outlines five ways that clever use of automation can improve customer service.

Automation offers benefits in all areas of business processes. However, many brands are confused about how to connect these benefits to the customer. After all, a customer doesn’t care if automation is used in employee onboarding or supply chain management.

Yet, these various moving parts all culminate in a better customer experience. There are actually several ways in which automation directly impacts to improve customer service, customer satisfaction and engagement.

How automation can improve customer service

Here are five ways automation positively impacts the customer experience to improve customer service.

Improves Accessibility

The internet has revolutionized how customers interact with brands, with social media leading the charge. Businesses are expected to have an omnichannel, global presence, creating 24/7 availability to answer inquiries. This demand is challenging for many businesses to meet without automation in place to improve customer service.

Automation improves accessibility for a brand, allowing customers to communicate in a way that suits them. Furthermore, it helps limit wait and response times by using automated chatbots on social media channels and websites. These bots can answer commonly asked questions, such as hours and product availability, without calling a human agent.

Customers feel empowered by the ease with which they can access relevant information, enhancing their experience and relationship with the business.

Creates Clarity and Consistency

The problem with having several channels through which to contact a company is the inherent gaps in information sharing and communication. Consider a customer who receives a faulty electronic product and contacts a company via email. They receive a solution that works for a few days, then experience more issues.

In their frustration, they call the company. Without centralized systems and automated information sharing to improve customer service, the agent who answers has no background information on the claim. The customer must then reiterate everything, furthering their frustration.

Meanwhile, companies who incorporate automation and try customer experience platform solutions have that information readily available to call up, no matter how the customer approaches the business. This results in less time spent on hold, less frustration, and a better overall customer experience.

This is also an important consideration during business growth and scaling. Your customer experience and service should remain consistent as your company and demand grow.

Minimizes Time to Resolution

One of the key metrics call centers, and companies use to measure the customer support experience is time to resolution. In other words, it’s how many times a customer must call to solve an issue and how much time they spend in conversation with the company. This metric has a direct relationship with the customer experience and accounts for time spent on hold, time interacting with an agent, etc.

In essence, automation helps minimize time to resolution and this will improve customer service in turn. It shows a customer that their time is valuable and respected, boosting the relationship with the brand.

Facilitates Personalization

Personalization has become a buzzword in the marketing world. An astounding 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from a company that uses personalization, and a further 66% of customers expect brands to understand their personal needs.

Automation facilitates personalization by capturing relevant personal data and transforming it into actionable information. For example, email CRM platforms use machine learning and automation to trigger email flows with tailored offerings. Google Ads uses retargeting to show relevant advertisements based on someone’s online activity.

You can also use automation to collect customer feedback and reviews after a transaction or conversation, which helps to improve customer service. With an omnichannel system, you can trigger an email flow after a positive interaction to collect positive social proof to enhance your business further and help future customers during the purchasing decision phase.

Enhances Employee Satisfaction

Finally, automation enhances employee satisfaction. Simplifying and streamlining processes and removing frustrating, redundant tasks will enhance your employee experience. Employees are ambassadors for the brand, and customers know if the person they’re talking to is happy.

Furthermore, removing redundancies allows for more training time and skills development for customer-facing employees. In simple terms, happy employees mean happy customers. Automation can help your business achieve both.

Conclusion

For these reasons and many others, brands should create an automation implementation strategy to improve customer service and the customer experience.

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