Customer support automation has been round for years.
The cellphone tree you navigate when calling your web service supplier, the chatbot that walks you thru paying your invoice, and the canned response you get after submitting a brand new assist request are all examples of customer support automation in actual life.
However with the speedy development of AI in the previous few years, customer support automation has undergone a major transformation.
As new applied sciences emerge, assist groups are adapting their methods, and the notion of automated buyer assist is shifting. This evolution is empowering assist groups of all sizes to answer tickets extra shortly and giving prospects the assistance they want far sooner than was attainable.
Automation might help assist groups to do their greatest work and ship distinctive buyer experiences. Our view of AI at Assist Scout has developed, and we consider that when thoughtfully utilized, using AI will allow companies to thrill extra prospects and in addition create room for groups to deal with extra impactful work.
Whether or not you’re a big enterprise firm or a small family-owned enterprise, customer support automation might help you’re taking higher care of shoppers with much less effort. Let’s have a look at the way it works, the challenges and advantages of utilizing automation and AI in customer support, and key greatest practices for implementing automation in buyer assist.
What’s customer support automation?
Customer support automation refers to utilizing expertise to reinforce and streamline customer support processes. Automation in customer support can be utilized behind the scenes to assist brokers do their jobs, or it may be used immediately with prospects to ship a personalised and environment friendly assist expertise.
Companies can use customer support automation to enhance effectivity, cut back response occasions, and improve self-service, all whereas enabling their human brokers to deal with extra complicated queries and duties.
How does AI-powered automated customer support work?
Automated customer support depends on massive quantities of information mixed with cutting-edge expertise like AI, machine studying, and pure language processing. Right here’s a common overview of what must occur to automate customer support with AI:
1. Knowledge assortment: Knowledge should be collected from numerous sources so automation will be carried out intelligently and precisely. Knowledge from buyer profiles, conversations, person actions, buy historical past, CRMs, and extra can be utilized to “practice” and develop customer support automation instruments.
2. Knowledge processing and evaluation: As information is collected, it’s processed and analyzed utilizing AI and machine studying algorithms that may determine patterns, traits, and insights. That is the place the “coaching” begins with AI bots. The extra information out there, the extra info the bots can use to be taught over time.
3. Automated actions: Based mostly on the info evaluation and insights gathered, automated methods can resolve how to answer prospects and deal with particular duties primarily based on the context and information out there in addition to earlier buyer interactions.
4. Steady studying and enchancment: The algorithms routinely refine themselves as they work together with prospects and eat extra information. AI and machine studying instruments are interesting as a result of they consistently get smarter as they obtain and digest extra information.
5. Human oversight: Whereas automation turns into extra prevalent and dependable in customer support, people nonetheless have to be concerned. That is very true when dealing with extra complicated points or conditions requiring empathy or extra inventive considering. Human brokers ought to oversee the work of automated methods and will even have to intervene sometimes.
That’s not an entire listing, as a result of the method of automating customer support will at all times range primarily based on the instruments your small business makes use of and your buyer journey. By and huge, although, in the event you look beneath the hood of any group that has successfully automated components of their buyer expertise, you’ll sometimes discover these elements at play.
Examples of customer support automation
Automation doesn’t at all times require or contain AI expertise. Generative AI has taken the world by storm in the previous few years, however customer support automation has been growing for many years.
Automation will be easy, primarily based on triggers and occasion information inside a assist ticket:
Whereas easy automated workflows can have a huge impact, the explosive progress of AI has allowed assist groups to take automation a lot additional.
There are lots of methods to automate customer support. Relying in your firm, service, and product choices, some varieties of automation may give you the results you want whereas others gained’t. Listed below are some frequent methods companies are automating customer support at the moment.
Workflows
Workflow automation is a robust solution to make a assist staff extra environment friendly. It could possibly get rid of many handbook duties brokers sometimes have to deal with inside a ticket’s lifecycle. One instance of workflow automation is routinely tagging a ticket and responding to a buyer.
Let’s say a buyer encounters a bug and submits a assist ticket by your assist desk. The assistance desk sends an auto-response acknowledging the bug report and applies a tag to the ticket primarily based on the phrases included within the inquiry.
Taking this even additional, utilizing AI and machine studying, an automatic system may triage the bug, decide severity, buyer influence, and precedence, after which assign it to the event staff.
Rule-based chatbots
A easy solution to introduce automation to your assist course of is through the use of rule-based chatbots. A rule-based chatbot is way much less complicated than a conversational AI chatbot. They will also be carried out with little or no coaching, not like the excessive quantities of coaching that AI chatbots want.
With a rule-based chatbot, you’re sometimes utilizing some form of resolution tree or course of map to “inform” the chatbot what to do.
Suppose a buyer sends you a message about checking their order standing. A chatbot can acknowledge the phrases “order standing” and immediate the person for his or her order quantity. After receiving the order quantity, the chatbot can reply with details about the client’s order and estimated supply date.
Assist desk and ticketing methods
Along with aiding in ticket workflows, assist groups can use automation to handle tickets, notify brokers about ticket statuses, summarize tickets, and way more. Listed below are some methods you need to use automation to handle tickets:
Robotically observe up with a buyer who hasn’t responded after [X] days.
Notify brokers when a ticket has been unassigned for [X] hours.
Robotically escalate a ticket that’s set to “URGENT.”
Merge duplicate tickets.
Your assist staff most likely spends all day, day by day, in your assist desk, which is why assist desk automation can have a large influence in your staff’s effectivity and productiveness.
Translation providers
Do you could have a worldwide buyer base? If that’s the case, you may want to supply assist in a number of languages.
Reside dialog translation is one other solution to leverage automation in your assist staff. Translation instruments can translate incoming and outgoing messages from the person’s language to your assist staff’s most popular language, enabling you to offer multi-language assist with out hiring extra brokers.
Translation instruments can even routinely translate your assist paperwork into native languages to your prospects.
IVR
Lately, Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, has skilled main developments. We’ve all seen this play out with Siri’s potential to acknowledge our phrases.
Telephone assist groups can leverage IVR by decreasing friction in a cellphone tree menu. As a substitute of forcing callers to hearken to all choices and sort a quantity, the client can converse what they need assistance with and obtain an correct response from an automatic cellphone bot.
Computerized suggestions assortment (CSAT, NPS, different varieties of surveys)
Assist groups can use automation to gather and analyze buyer suggestions. For instance, as soon as a ticket is closed, you may configure your ticket system to ship a CSAT survey.
As responses roll in, an AI-powered instrument can routinely analyze and summarize these responses.
AI instruments
Whereas among the instruments above depend on AI, extra particular AI-based automation instruments exist for assist groups. In contrast to rule-based chatbots, AI chatbots can reply utilizing pure language and deal with extra complicated inquiries than easy rule-based chatbots.
Different AI instruments can routinely summarize a ticket thread, recommend related assist articles to ship to the client, and even draft a steered response for the agent to overview and ship.
What are the advantages of customer support automation?
Customer support automation affords quite a few advantages for each companies and prospects.
Quicker response occasions
Prospects need solutions shortly, and automation permits faster (generally speedy) responses to buyer questions, decreasing the general response time.
In our fast-paced society, delivering fast response occasions is more likely to result in a rise in buyer satisfaction.
24/7 assist
Customer support automation and AI expertise have enabled even the smallest assist groups to supply around-the-clock assist. With AI translation instruments, chatbots, and self-service instruments, companies can present some assist with out having devoted human brokers in each area.
Deeper insights
The sheer quantity of information concerned in buyer assist will be overwhelming. Not analyzing and never performing on that information means you’re lacking out on many alternatives. With AI instruments, qualitative and quantitative information will be analyzed in close to actual time, offering colourful insights to management groups to assist make essential choices.
That is particularly helpful for high-volume assist groups. Analyzing 1000’s of inquiries per week isn’t cheap, however having a machine working quietly behind the scenes to uncover these insights can deliver nice worth to your staff, firm, and prospects.
Empowers prospects and brokers
Many shoppers don’t wish to work together with assist. They wish to remedy their issues independently, and automation instruments enable them to do this. Automated self-help sources like rule-based chatbots and cutting-edge AI machine studying instruments give prospects the data they want on the proper place and time.
Equally, customer support brokers are empowered to deal with extra precious work slightly than spending tons of time on repetitive duties. Customer support automation can cut back ticket quantity for human brokers, decreasing stress and the chance of burnout.
Challenges of customer support automation
Corporations ought to contemplate implementing some type of automation of their assist workflows to assist scale their assist staff, however you should concentrate on the challenges that include it.
Much less connection
Automation is bettering quickly, but it surely isn’t the identical as human assist. The largest problem with automating buyer assist is dropping the non-public contact a human can present. Some prospects nonetheless wish to discuss to an actual particular person, and in the event you power automation on them, they could really feel disconnected, deprioritized, and pissed off.
Lack of emotional intelligence
There’s an intelligence ceiling with automated instruments. People have empathy and emotional intelligence. Automated methods lack that, making it difficult to empathize with prospects when wanted. There’s a threat that prospects might really feel misunderstood or undervalued when interacting with a machine as a substitute of a human.
Technical points
Counting on automation means counting on extra expertise, which takes effort and time to configure and keep. Automated methods are additionally vulnerable to bugs and technical glitches. Errors in an automatic system may lead to a poor buyer expertise. Incorrect responses, errors, or a system-wide outage may depart prospects pissed off.
Cultural resistance
Assist brokers may resist adopting automated instruments for worry of dropping their jobs, and prospects may merely desire conventional customer support strategies. Overcoming this resistance is usually a problem for corporations. It’s essential to take care of a story that automation can be paired with human assist and finally enhance the client and agent expertise.
When to automate and when not to automate
Automation can be utilized to learn the enterprise and prospects, however there are additionally occasions when it must be averted.
When to make use of automation
Excessive-volume, easy, and repetitive duties.
Auto responses and greeting prospects.
Gathering buyer information like order numbers and account numbers.
Verifying person accounts.
Routing tickets to the proper staff or agent.
Easy troubleshooting eventualities.
Altering ticket statuses.
When NOT to make use of automation
When dealing with complicated technical points.
When empathy is required.
When discussing delicate info.
When it’s the one possibility; at all times present a path to a human.
Greatest practices when implementing customer support automation
Rolling out customer support automation requires cautious planning to make sure a easy transition and a optimistic buyer and agent expertise.
Outline your technique and objectives
Begin with a transparent technique for adopting automation. Outline your aims and objectives for automating buyer assist and guarantee these align along with your general enterprise technique and firm values.
Perceive buyer wants
Blindly rolling out automation with out understanding your prospects is a giant threat. Discuss to prospects and get their suggestions. Discuss to your assist staff for his or her opinions on the place automation is likely to be helpful. Have a look at assist metrics and dive deep into your information that will help you perceive your ache factors and the place automation can enhance issues.
Consider instruments
There are extra automated and AI-driven instruments than ever earlier than. This can be a sizzling market, and new merchandise are consistently being launched. Search for instruments that combine along with your current methods, and contemplate flexibility and scalability.
If you happen to’ve already invested in instruments like a assist desk or data base, overview your present utilization to be sure to’re profiting from any current automation options that make sense to your staff and prospects.
Conduct thorough testing
Take time to check the automation so you may roll it out confidently. You don’t wish to introduce automation to your prospects solely to seek out that it’s not performing as anticipated. Check the brand new methods totally, and put your self within the buyer’s footwear. Choose a small subset of shoppers to check it and get their suggestions.
Ask for suggestions
Get buyer suggestions usually to find out whether or not the automated methods are performing effectively. In some ways, it helps to judge your automated buyer conversations similar to you’d consider a human agent’s interactions. Was the problem appropriately recognized? Was it solved promptly and simply? Did it match the tone you’re aiming for?
Monitor CSAT and NPS scores to find out whether or not automation impacts prospects negatively or positively, and act on that suggestions shortly to right any needed points.
Present a path to people
Automated assist is a giant change from human-driven assist. Some prospects will prefer it; some can be pissed off. Machines can solely deal with a lot, and they won’t be capable of assist a buyer. Typically, a buyer may merely desire to speak to a human.
Regardless of the case, present a method for purchasers to achieve a human agent if wanted.
Learn how to automate customer support with Assist Scout
Assist Scout affords many instruments for automating completely different components of your customer support course of, together with clever AI instruments and easy workflow automation instruments.
Workflows
Assist Scout workflows mean you can manage and prioritize your buyer conversations. Pushed by an “If… then…” mannequin, workflows will be constructed primarily based on occasion circumstances and actions. For instance, if a dialog’s topic line begins with “Order Affirmation,” add the tag “order-confirmation” and replica to the related folder.
AI Summarize
Some buyer conversations take plenty of back-and-forth messages between the agent and the client. A number of staff members may learn by the dialog to grasp what’s taking place. With AI Summarize, Assist Scout generates a abstract of the dialog in seconds with the clicking of a single button.
AI Help
AI Help is Assist Scout’s private writing assistant. With AI Help, assist groups can write higher responses and Docs articles sooner, making certain constant high quality throughout all the staff. You may alter the tone and size of the response, proofread it, and even translate it into a unique language.
AI Drafts
Assist Scout now affords the flexibility to draft responses on demand. Think about leaping into the assist queue and already having a head begin on responding to buyer questions. That’s AI Drafts in a nutshell.
Saved replies
Assist Scout makes it simple to create and manage saved replies. Saved replies mean you can reply shortly to frequent questions, bringing a extra constant assist expertise to your prospects.
Customer support automation: It’s essential to get it proper
Customer support automation instruments simplify the assist course of. When paired with human assist brokers, we consider assist groups can enhance their work and create memorable and distinctive buyer experiences.
Adopting automated customer support instruments can present a aggressive benefit. Nonetheless, customer support automation shouldn’t be seen as a solution to change human assist brokers. Identical to the ability drill didn’t change building employees, it simply made them higher and extra environment friendly at their jobs.
Implementing customer support automation must be carried out thoughtfully and punctiliously. Work along with your prospects and your assist staff to sort out the proper issues on the proper time utilizing automation, and your staff and prospects will stay blissful.
