Customer service is at its best when it solves or attends to the queries of customers when they need it most. These queries can be seemingly impossible to answer instantly, therefore using an automated customer service solution may just work fine.
But why customer service automation?
Considering the statistics:
- About 66% of adults want brands to value their time during a service interaction, according to a report from Forrester
- 95% of US customers will keep patronizing a brand because of high-quality customer services, says Microsoft
- AI and Chatbots can reduce customer service cost by 30%, according to Chatbot Magazine
By simply automating your customer service, you can increase your chances of winning more customers while also allowing your customer service agents to focus on more important tasks.
In this article, we’ll break down the concept of customer service automation, its features, and the tools for getting it done quickly. Let’s explore.
What Is an Automated Customer Service?
Many brands (e.g. Fortyseven47 https://fortyseven47.com/), especially enterprises, perform daily repetitive tasks that are a lot critical for their business to keep moving.
These tasks are sometimes too hectic for their reps to handle effectively and may be quite impossible to completely fulfill.
To help with this, businesses automate their customer service by simply incorporating several automated systems that consistently perform necessary tasks while also reducing the workloads on customer service agents.
Automation helps customer service agents focus on complex or urgent queries that need special attention, and can thus, improve the workflow of the business in general.
One of the prominent ways to go about this is by implementing a CRM-based solution that can simply provide a harmonious image of the customers based on their last purchase and personal details, giving your customer support teams a deeper understanding of who your customer is, and how to deliver completely personalized services to them.
Companies who struggle to meet customers expectations can simply leverage this type of tool to support their customer service agents and also gain the loyalty of their customers.
Core CRM Features Of Customer Service Automation
Self-service
People will always need the help of customer service agents, but more importantly, they need it on time.
One of the best possible ways to quickly help them is through a self-service online library delivered by a knowledge-base of help articles and documents.
This could also be as simple as providing them with a knowledge base of frequently asked questions that they can access 24/7, without having to bother your customer service agents.
More importantly, providing proactive customer support with self-service customer portals that answer customer questions as quickly as possible positions your brand as an authority before your audience.
To go further than just help content and FAQs, you may also want to provide them with some other self-service integrations such as live chat, personalized product catalogs, and customer collaborations.
Customizable Dashboard
Having a customizable dashboard gives you an understanding of the number of tickets received and the average number received daily. With a customizable dashboard, you wouldn’t need to encounter too many complexities when dealing with customer issues.
Omnichannel Communication Support
Providing great customer service isn’t only about omnichannel communication, you must ensure synchronization among these channels (social media, phone, email, or online chat) enough to hold the context of every customer interaction on these channels for any other future interactions. This allows customers to further conveniently build credibility with the brand.
Inbuilt Tracking System
An excellent blend of customer interactions along with ticket management is what can be called an ideal customer support system.
Doing this gives clear accountability between both back-end and front-end developers.
Along with omnichannel support, brands can simply create tickets via multiple interaction channels which can later be presented to the customer service agents in a single window.
Cooperative Agent Desktop
Without unified agent desktops, customer service agents can’t deliver personalized and tailored customer service to the customer.
The customer interacts with the brand across multiple channels, so agents will need to understand the customer’s history and transactions with the brand to fully meet their needs.
This could be as easy as having unified customer information all in a single window.
Automated Customer Service Solutions
Here are the best tools to help automate your customer service
HubSpot Service Hub
HubSpot has been around for a while and their Service Hub is one of those tools that automates customer service in the most humanly possible way.
With this tool, you can log your customer queries as tickets and assign them to specific team members.
The knowledge-base can also be updated with help articles and FAQs in a way that customers can find their needed information and agents can also use these resources to tackle customer issues.
Additionally, you have access to other tools like customer satisfaction surveys which can summarize into actionable data results.
Pricing: Free
Freshdesk
Freshdesk contains stunning features that allow you to organize your helpdesk, manage new tickets, eliminate repetitive tasks, and plan for the future.
The tool prides itself on providing brands with streamlined conversations across multiple channels while also helping them collaborate with team members on various complex issues.
Additionally, using Freshdesk allows you to build a knowledge-base for your product by simply using tutorials and DIY guides, even allowing you to nurture user communities where you encourage customers to work unanimously as one.
Pricing: Free
Zoho Desk
If your customer service agents are having issues with prioritizing their workloads, you probably want to try this tool. With Zoho Desk, you can sort tickets based on status, dates, and even urgency.
You have access to histories of your communication with customers, thus speeding up your response to issues plus improving workflow.
Additionally, you can use ticket keywords to look for articles in the knowledge base related to current issues and easily copy and paste for speed.
Pricing: Free
Conclusion
While you want to try as much as possible to automate your customer service, be careful not to keep human touch out of it, or you end up losing more loyal customers. However, using some of the tools outlined in this post could give your business a strong foothold helping you provide an awesome customer experience.
