Easy 6 steps to automate customer service | Knowmax
Tags: Customer Service, Self Service, Customer Experience, Bots, Knowledge Base

Customer service is the backbone of any organization. Customers become the face of the organization as other potential clients trust an existing customer’s opinion over the claims on the website. This now raises the question of how to compete with the industry and still keep your customers happy, close, and away from jumping ships.

The answer is simple; deploy an automated customer service support platform and help your customers not only get assisted but also get acquitted from the issue using automated and self-service responses.

Now, how can companies assure that their customer service channels are automated with consistent knowledge but, at the same time, it is safe from data hacks, security breaches, or incorrect information dispersal?

Well, the question actually is really simple- What is the correct way to deploy automated customer service solutions?

The answer, in a nutshell, is: Your automated customer service solutions must seek to provide correct information to the correct user in the minimum possible time without sketching a burden on the firm’s human assets and financial resources.

Let us study the details

What is automated customer service?

Automated customer service is the deployment of AR and AI-backed solution dispersion systems in a manner that keeps the help desks 24×7 available for assistance. The customers here have to type in their issue. The support team gets an update. If the issue is petty, it is directed to self-service platforms otherwise it is directed towards the experts. Such a service desk can be integrated over all platforms providing 360° degree omnichannel service.

The biggest challenge faced in automating customer service is matching customer’s demands with the service quality. Constant supervision is needed to study the behavior, pattern, loops, etc of a bot or AR/VR service to track repeated mistakes and devise quick solutions to fix them as well.

6 steps to automate customer service

1. Self-service for customer support

Customers don’t like to wait. They definitely don’t appreciate the contact centers keeping them waiting for solutions. With self-service platforms, solutions can be circulated in a creative and interactive manner with the help of tools like decision trees, visual guides, FAQs, and help articles.

With self-service platforms, the wait time is reduced to almost zero with customer independently enrolling their issues and solving them as well. The finding of correct solutions within minimum time devoting the least effort is what your self-service platform should aim at.

2. Providing cloud accessibility

Cloud accessibility ensures omnichannel services in the true sense. Authorized personnel can access the knowledge base at any point in time from any place, over any device. Screen adaptation helps in making this easy. Agents don’t have to wait to get approval or permission to enter the platform each time before a solution is to be found and delivered. Even the employees and supervisors can receive useful insights and act upon them directly.

3. Google-like search results

Knowledge management can help in automating customer service only if it is visible in itself. When a business is listed over Google, a set of keywords is focused and demography is set in accordance with the target audience. Results are visible when this leads to improvement in ranking for the organization’s page on SERP. Similarly, when you keep your knowledge contextualized and tagged, your relevant articles pop up within seconds as crawlers can read within the text.

4. Consistency of knowledge

You would probably be wondering whether consistent knowledge at all is relevant in automating your customer service platform. It in fact is one of the pivotal elements as consistent knowledge makes it easy to integrate entire knowledge base software over all platforms. Consistency of knowledge allows the users to switch platforms or access the easiest one in reach without facing a glitch in continuance on solution delivery.

5. Track analytics in real-time

Automated customer service platforms use cloud connectivity for knowledge storage and for communication as well. The analytics and stats can be derived in real-time. These insights are widely used by the experts to trace each issue down to ground zero and resolve it as soon as possible. Agents’ progress, loopholes faced by bots, repetition of customer complaints, and much more are tracked alongside scores, metrics, keywords, top queries, etc.

6. Active CTA buttons

CTA or Call To Action buttons are an invitation for the users to not just be visitors but also be clients. The features, USP, deliverables, etc must be glorified and CTAs must be placed right by such banners encouraging the visitors to click these buttons. The positioning is extremely important and must be done keeping in mind the visual hierarchy of the website and its impact on the users. The form that opens up post-click too must be not too long to throw off a person and not too short to miss out on relevant details.

Conclusion

Organizations nowadays are investing heavily in the customer service sector. These investments are more of a blind nature and need proper planning and expert guidance to yield ROI. The metrics are important but blatant use of funds can neither score nor purchase it for you. Establishing a systematic channel for the long run requires certain steps that might not be fruitful in near future but have a shot at some point in time.

Such tactics are usually evergreen like banners, display ads, mailer campaigns, etc. However, adopting a flexible approach helps to change your ways easily with industrial turns. A little training also makes your employees creatively competent to think out of the box and deliver great results.

Good supervision, expert guidance, tracking the trends, and some more moves are all you need to paint a better picture of your annual numbers. The leads might start from a low number but they do grow with earned goodwill.

As it is known, a gradual upscaling of business is always more secure than a steep growth with the exception of unprecedented events or sudden contingencies; try to automate customer service systems without compromising on the personal touch. Do not push through to make a sale. Communication is the key. The creative, the better.

Originally published at https://knowmax.ai on December 4, 2020.