Will all of the customer service be automated by AI and software? Well, no.
But. How do you take advantage of the vast potential offered by AI and software, and still offer your customers a personalised service when it matters?
How do you build and maintain quality relationships with customers AND use AI and automation to serve more customers, reduce cost, offer 24/7 support?
How do we implement automation strategically to help us optimise our resources? Here’s how.
Let’s start by analysing the work that customer service staff do. We can divide the work that customer services agents do into three categories,
If we look into three categories,
- Work suitable for humans only
- Work suitable for complete automation (by AI and software)
- Work suitable for partial automation
Work Suitable for Humans Only
When to use
Providing personal service and recommendation is what humans are best suitable to do in the customer services. Customers feel valued, and get advice on the issues that matter to them the most. At the same time, we want to retain high value products and services to our customers at the right time. This sort of work not very suitable for software and machines, as they are not nearly as capable as human in offering this kind of advice.
Benefits:
- Personalised service
- Strong customer relationships
- Ability to upsell
- Ability to persuade customers to stay
Work Suitable for Complete Automation
When to Use
Do your customer service staff do repetitive work, mostly following a script? That’s a prime candidate for AI and automation software.
Also, when customers want to get served instantly, and personal advice and recommendation does not add value.
Some of the examples of such scenarios are, when customer wants to update their order, or make a booking or change a booking, or want to know the status of the order, or want to order something that doesn’t require any personalised service i.e. the customer is offered various options by the automation software and they select one based on their preference etc.
A recent Zendesk survey revealed that 42% of B2C customers purchased more after a good customer service experience.
In essence, AI and software are better suite in cases where customer service staff follow a given script to help customers, as software doesn’t take sick days, or take long coffee breaks, or forgets to do things. It offers reliable, and consistent service, instantly.
To take it one step further, customer service automation also gives the ability to contact your customers preemptively, before the problem arises. Your customer feel valued.
AI and automation should do what your agents do, completely.
It doesn’t mean canned responses …..
Benefits:
- Reduce cost by over 60%
- Serve customers service 24/7
- Eliminate wait time
- Offer multichannel support – serve customers how they liked to get served
- Add or remove capacity instantly
Work Suitable for Partial Automation
When to Use
You want to offer your customer the best advice and service, and at the same time you want to increase productivity, improve response time and reduce cost. Partial automation of some of the customer service work can help you do this.
After your offering customers the best advice and personal service, the customer service staff hands over the call (or chat) to to automation software to complete the transaction, or capture information etc.
Partial automation helps you offer personalised service, and reduce costs.
The savings in time and funds shouldn’t lead you to pocketing the difference and neglecting the humans in your team. The extra funds and available time can be reinvested in your human team, to give them better training, better tools, and make them better equipped to work in tandem with the technology of automation.
Make sure automation doesn’t mean only canned response – ddkdkdkkd
Benefits
- Increase productivity of your customer service staff
- Offer personalised service,
- Reduce response time
- Reduce cost