Delivering a high-quality customer experience is a no brainer for companies that want to succeed. Unfortunately, a key barrier keeping organizations from offering a great customer experience often boils down to resources. Having enough people and the right tools play into how well an organization can serve a customer. In a time when many companies are asked to do more with less, how do they keep up with their competition while still maintaining their bottom line?
One way is through automation. Today’s customer support agents are often inundated with frequently asked questions that could be answered automatically, freeing up support agents to handle more high-touch customer inquiries. However, automation can be a scary word for some. Do customers really want to interact with an automated system? If it’s intelligent enough to actually help, they do. In fact, a reported 84% of customers turn to self-service channels to get their questions answered.
When developing Bold360, we took that knowledge to heart — making sure to include intelligent automation capabilities that help agents by quickly handling FAQs (think: password resets, return policy, etc.), freeing them up to complete more complex tasks. Here’s the catch with automation, though. It can’t act like your grandparents IVR — you know, the robot that asks you to repeat yourself time and time again, before you just get frustrated and hit “0” for an operator. It needs to be intelligent and have a human touch.
If you are considering going the automation route, here are some pro tips to help make it a success.
Use colloquial and emotive language
One surefire way to sound like a robot is to speak like one. Ensure that your automatic answers use language that’s natural when speaking. This includes contractions, for example say “don’t” instead of “do not,” and colloquialisms like saying “I’m always happy to help!” rather than “I am pleased to serve you.”
Ensure your automation solution can learn and adapt
The ability of automation technology to continuously learn and adapt as it encounters more interactions is a feature that truly sets it apart from competitive solutions. For example, Bold360’s Auto Answers capability first asks customers if an automated response has answered their question. It then uses the customer’s answer to provide more improved answers in the future. It will also learn which answers are least helpful and stop using them altogether.
Make it easy to reach a live human being
While we are big champions of using automation for certain situations, if things do go awry, there needs to be a quick and easy escalation path to a human agent. Although a recent study found that 80% of chat sessions can be resolved by a chatbot, many businesses chose a hybrid approach for this very reason. Using both automated intelligence and live agents together ensures customer’s receive quick resolutions and peace of mind that there is human support if necessary.
There is no doubt that automation is going to play a big role in the future of customer service. A key part of a successful automation strategy is blending automation with human agents, so customers always get what they need, when they need it. Finding that balance will ensure customers give your customer support team an A+ every time. Learn more about Bold360’s approach to self-service, Auto Answers.
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