More and more companies around the world are embracing the use of technology to lighten the load on their human employees and to ensure that all possible resources can be directed towards research and development of better products.
In case of call centers, automation has a major role to play in modern systems, with automated customer service now being used to enhance customer service.
The cornerstone of good customer service has always been a combination of quality and personalization.
With automated systems now taking personalization of service as one of their primary features, and with their assurance of quality, they stand the best chance to provide an elevated level of service and help your company grow.
In this article, we will take a look at the ways in which the personal experience for the customer can be bettered through the use of automated customer service.
1. Ensure fault-free alert systems to notify humans of issues.
Sometimes, the biggest requirement of automation is to notify an agent when something goes wrong, or an anomaly approaches. Automation to begin a human interaction, as is the case with an alert system, helps the company conduct proceedings smoothly and monitors office activity.
2. Improve conversion rates.
Automation helps your customers get the most of out of their products.
It is also more efficient than the average human agent in converting leads to hard sales, because it can pick up the exact requirements of the user based on the data it gathers and then present the value proposition of the product in a manner that leads to spiked conversion rates.
3. Draw out more effective referrals.
The increased satisfaction of customers is bound to make them promote your product in their networks.
This positive word-of-mouth helps you gain more new customers and boost sales.
In addition, automated systems would ask satisfied customers for referrals and testimonials which better your company’s reputation.
4. Retain more customers with constant access.
Being in touch with your customers even after they have completed the sales, is something that can distinguish your brand from others in the market.
Using automated customer support, you can send them interactive messages, initiate conversations, notify about further opportunities and overall, just remain in touch so that they feel a connection to the brand.
This pushes your retention rate significantly and increases the customer loyalty.
5. Preemptively address customer concerns.
Human intervention is inherently reactionary, because it is next to impossible to preempt a situation on a marketable scale.
With automation, however, you allow your system to effectively look for any potential red flags, identify what a customer is likely to need in the near future, what their queries would be about, etc. and then preemptively supply them with that information in order to make their personal experience better.
6. Decrease the volume of incoming service requests.
Automation is also very helpful in lightening the load on human resources.
Especially during the peak hours, agents are burdened with unattainable numbers of calls that they then have to process throughout the day.
By decreasing this volume, you allow that space for your employees to focus on the quality of their interactions over the quantity.
7. Help customers help themselves.
More often than not, customers are happy to solve their own problems if they have an easy source of knowledge, than burden an agent with their problems.
Automated systems allows the customer to access simple tutorials or referrals that they can use to solve their issues. This saves time for both parties and benefits the experience of the customer.
8. Resolve issues quicker.
Using automation massively brings down the time it takes to resolve an issue.
Not only are agents better equipped to handle the requests that customers make, they have the suggestions posted by the system to help them through it.
With access to likely customer indications, requirements and proposed solutions, the work of an agent can be done far more effectively.
9. Pre-design replies for all incoming messages.
Automated intelligent systems can be programmed to recognize the type of incoming message and send an appropriate response till human intervention can take place.
Often, that response helps customers understand that their queries are being attended to, bringing up their levels of satisfaction and helping the company retain them.
10. Streamline the process of operations.
Automated ticketing systems and a dynamic knowledge base are important elements of well-functioning call center support systems.
Customer service automation can benefit the team’s workflow and the overall streamlining of operations by allocation tickets as per the requirement or sharing the interactive knowledge base with the customer to help them figure their own solutions out.
11. Utilize data about customer history.
One of the greatest benefits of automated customer service is that it properly utilizes data to optimize performance.
A call center is a gold mine of data about every customer, and the automated system efficiently draws out the meaningful data from it to suggest patterns which have the best statistical chances of success for a specific client.
12. Humanize the experience.
Customers crave for personalization and human touch in the interactions they have with the call centers.
At the same time, call centers are burdened with so much volume that they can hardly afford to steer away from generic scripted answers.
Using automation, they can make use of the data about the customer to build a model that humanizes the experience for every individual client without needing any time or effort from an agent.
13. Gain exposure for your operations online.
For a company looking to attract new customers, proper online visibility is essential to their success.
Automated systems can not only dynamically keep their presence online, but can figure out what changes are required based on audience feedback in real-time, leading to a more efficient web presence and subsequent chance of exposure.
14. Sync social media.
The number of social media users, across all the popular platforms, is over 2.5 billion.
It is important to stay active on the top platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram for a company to get noticed.
Regular posting and syncing with all media platforms can be taken care of by the automated system, keeping the company digitally relevant and reaching out to millions of users every day.
15. Assist live through chatbots.
Chatbots are the best solutions in any live chat service.
It is impossible to keep an agent on call for every user who wants an immediate consultation online, so chatbots automate responses based on advanced text mining and AI powered tools.
Customers need immediate, correct and personalized answers and the company saves its agents from actively having to engage in such large volumes.
16. Maintain multi-channel communication.
Similar to how automation can help in cross-platform posting and syncing, companies also engage in automated systems to maintain communications with customers over multiple channels to ensure they stay in touch and keep the customer occupied through all the relevant means.
Social media, email lists, line calls and text messages are automated to be sent to clients at regular intervals.
17. Tag and segment different messages for future reference.
Data keeps flowing into the call center every second, and it is important to label and tag chunks of information so that they can be retrieved in the future.
This real-time segmentation of data into different clusters as per their nature is an automated process, and is essential to keep the data meaningful.
18. Never miss a follow-up.
More often than not, issues do not get resolved at the first call.
So, agents need to follow up with those customers as the status of their query moves along.
Not doing so leaves a bad impression and causes customers to leave, provide negative exposure or join rival companies. Automated systems keeps track of every necessary follow-up, making sure you do not miss a deadline.
19. Track events without human intervention.
Live events require constant monitoring, often at a scale which would be inefficient to be done manually.
Agents still have their own schedules and work to do.
Therefore, putting an automated system in place helps to get constant feedback on the status of the events and ensures smooth functioning without needing an agent to stay in control actively.
20. Save yourself a lot of repetitive work.
At a call center, automation takes over a lot of otherwise repetitive work.
Running a code snippet could save writing of thousands of emails.
Putting a system in place covers for billions of data points which would otherwise have to be analyzed manually.
In this matter, it drives up efficiency, provides better service to the customer and gives them an enhanced personal experience.
The Case Study
We have seen how automation can have an effect in the workings of the company in terms of making its workflow more efficient, getting the best out of call center software, providing interactive and personalized communication and enhancing the customer experience.
Not only is it a helpful tool to deal with the volume of data that the call center faces, it can also provide a level of individualism and personalization that is practically impossible if done manually.
To judge the effect of automation on a working call center, let us take the example of Ultron Technologies, a telemarketing agency providing call center solutions for an established organization.
Through the course of this case study, we will take a look at the challenges they faced, the solutions that were implemented to counter them and the effect that those solutions had on the company.
The Problem Scenario
Ultron Technologies had been in business for a very long time and had served its clients well.
Over the last few years, they had hired more aggressively to deal with an increasing customer base, but it was now at a point where they had to replace manual jobs in order to continue the scale of operations.
They were also looking to provide more personal interactions and beef up their online presence.
The Challenges
The challenges that the company faced in its day to day operations are as follows:
1. Agents were unable to deal with the high volume of calls that came in throughout the day, especially during the peak business hours. Scheduling of agents became an issue.
2. The company had a poor online presence and inactive social media handles, which is why a lot of leads decided not to pursue with sales after an initial research.
3. Customers were unhappy with the level of service offered because queries were taking too long to get resolved. The company often missed deadlines and failed to initiate conversations which could get them better business.
4. The data being dumped at the storehouse was not being classified and hence was difficult to retrieve meaningfully.
The Solutions
The managers at the company came up with the following solutions to counter the problems that they faced.
1. They decided to invest in the best call center software which would allow them to implement automated customer service and intelligent systems.
2. The company used its technology to design a better online presence through active mailing, presentable website interfaces, frequent social media usage, communicating over the multiple platforms, etc.
3. Simpler queries were resolved through the automation system using the data collected and its AI modules. This brought down the time required for resolutions, lowered volumes and increased efficiency.
The Result
Within the first year of the implementation of this new technology, agents had been trained to use it to the best of their abilities, and their work focus was now centered around more operations that required manual monitoring and action.
This drove up the overall efficiency of the workplace and provided an elevated quality of customer service. Over the next few years, customer retention rates were far higher, and the sales figures gradually increased year on year through the better telemarketing software solutions.
Thus, we can see how crucial a role of automation technology plays in the growth of a company.
Using the right call center software solutions, you can boost revenue generation through sales, provide enhanced personal experiences through better customer service and ensure your customers stay loyal to your brand.