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 fast development of AI in the previous few years, customer support automation has undergone a big 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 reply to tickets extra shortly and giving prospects the assistance they want far sooner than was potential.
Automation may help assist groups to do their finest 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 please extra prospects and likewise 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 may help you are taking higher care of consumers with much less effort. Let’s take a look at the way it works, the challenges and advantages of utilizing automation and AI in customer support, and key finest practices for implementing automation in buyer assist.
What’s customer support automation?
Customer support automation refers to utilizing know-how to boost 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 straight with prospects to ship a customized and environment friendly assist expertise.
Companies can use customer support automation to enhance effectivity, scale back response occasions, and enhance 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 giant quantities of information mixed with cutting-edge know-how like AI, machine studying, and pure language processing. Right here’s a normal overview of what must occur to automate customer support with AI:
1. Information assortment: Information should be collected from numerous sources so automation might be performed intelligently and precisely. Information from buyer profiles, conversations, consumer actions, buy historical past, CRMs, and extra can be utilized to “practice” and develop customer support automation instruments.
2. Information processing and evaluation: As information is collected, it’s processed and analyzed utilizing AI and machine studying algorithms that may establish patterns, tendencies, and insights. That is the place the “coaching” begins with AI bots. The extra information obtainable, the extra data the bots can use to study over time.
3. Automated actions: Primarily based on the info evaluation and insights gathered, automated methods can resolve how to reply to prospects and deal with particular duties primarily based on the context and information obtainable in addition to earlier buyer interactions.
4. Steady studying and enchancment: The algorithms robotically refine themselves as they work together with prospects and eat extra information. AI and machine studying instruments are interesting as a result of they continuously 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 must 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 should even must intervene sometimes.
That’s not a whole record, as a result of the method of automating customer support will at all times range primarily based on the instruments your corporation makes use of and your buyer journey. By and enormous, although, should you look underneath the hood of any group that has successfully automated elements 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 know-how. Generative AI has taken the world by storm in the previous few years, however customer support automation has been creating for many years.
Automation might be easy, primarily based on triggers and occasion information inside a assist ticket:
Whereas easy automated workflows can have a huge impact, the explosive development of AI has allowed assist groups to take automation a lot additional.
There are numerous methods to automate customer support. Relying in your firm, service, and product choices, some varieties of automation would possibly be just right for you whereas others received’t. Listed below are some frequent methods companies are automating customer support immediately.
Workflows
Workflow automation is a robust strategy to make a assist crew extra environment friendly. It might probably remove many handbook duties brokers sometimes must deal with inside a ticket’s lifecycle. One instance of workflow automation is robotically tagging a ticket and responding to a buyer.
Let’s say a buyer encounters a bug and submits a assist ticket by way of 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 affect, and precedence, after which assign it to the event crew.
Rule-based chatbots
A easy strategy 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 can be applied 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 consumer for his or her order quantity. After receiving the order quantity, the chatbot can reply with details about the shopper’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 far more. Listed below are some methods you need to use automation to handle tickets:
Mechanically comply with up with a buyer who hasn’t responded after [X] days.
Notify brokers when a ticket has been unassigned for [X] hours.
Mechanically escalate a ticket that’s set to “URGENT.”
Merge duplicate tickets.
Your assist crew in all probability spends all day, every single day, in your assist desk, which is why assist desk automation can have an enormous affect in your crew’s effectivity and productiveness.
Translation companies
Do you could have a worldwide buyer base? In that case, you would possibly want to supply assist in a number of languages.
Stay dialog translation is one other strategy to leverage automation in your assist crew. Translation instruments can translate incoming and outgoing messages from the consumer’s language to your assist crew’s most popular language, enabling you to supply multi-language assist with out hiring extra brokers.
Translation instruments may also robotically 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 capacity 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 take heed to all choices and kind a quantity, the shopper can communicate what they need assistance with and obtain an correct response from an automatic cellphone bot.
Computerized suggestions assortment (CSAT, NPS, different varieties of surveys)
Help groups can use automation to gather and analyze buyer suggestions. For instance, as soon as a ticket is closed, you’ll be able to configure your ticket system to ship a CSAT survey.
As responses roll in, an AI-powered device can robotically 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. Not like 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 robotically summarize a ticket thread, recommend related assist articles to ship to the shopper, and even draft a steered response for the agent to evaluate 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
Clients need solutions shortly, and automation permits faster (generally instant) 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 know-how 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 might be overwhelming. Not analyzing and never appearing on that information means you’re lacking out on many alternatives. With AI instruments, qualitative and quantitative information might be analyzed in close to actual time, offering colourful insights to management groups to assist make important choices.
That is particularly helpful for high-volume assist groups. Analyzing hundreds of inquiries per week isn’t cheap, however having a machine working quietly behind the scenes to uncover these insights can convey nice worth to your crew, firm, and prospects.
Empowers prospects and brokers
Many purchasers don’t need to work together with assist. They need to resolve 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 knowledge they want on the proper place and time.
Equally, customer support brokers are empowered to deal with extra priceless work reasonably than spending tons of time on repetitive duties. Customer support automation can scale back ticket quantity for human brokers, decreasing stress and the danger 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 crew, however you could pay attention to the challenges that include it.
Much less connection
Automation is enhancing quickly, but it surely isn’t the identical as human assist. The largest problem with automating buyer assist is shedding the private contact a human can present. Some prospects nonetheless need to discuss to an actual individual, and should you drive 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 could 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 know-how, which takes effort and time to configure and keep. Automated methods are additionally inclined 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
Help brokers would possibly resist adopting automated instruments for concern of shedding their jobs, and prospects would possibly merely desire conventional customer support strategies. Overcoming this resistance generally is a problem for firms. It’s necessary to keep up a story that automation will likely be paired with human assist and finally enhance the shopper and agent expertise.
When to automate and when not to automate
Automation can be utilized to profit the enterprise and prospects, however there are additionally occasions when it needs to be averted.
When to make use of automation
Excessive-volume, easy, and repetitive duties.
Auto responses and greeting prospects.
Accumulating buyer information like order numbers and account numbers.
Verifying consumer accounts.
Routing tickets to the correct crew 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 data.
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 clean transition and a constructive buyer and agent expertise.
Outline your technique and objectives
Begin with a transparent technique for adopting automation. Outline your targets and objectives for automating buyer assist and guarantee these align together with your total 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 crew for his or her opinions on the place automation could be helpful. Take 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. It is a scorching market, and new merchandise are continuously being launched. Search for instruments that combine together with your current methods, and contemplate flexibility and scalability.
In the event you’ve already invested in instruments like a assist desk or information base, evaluate your present utilization to ensure you’re benefiting from any current automation options that make sense to your crew and prospects.
Conduct thorough testing
Take time to check the automation so you’ll be able to roll it out confidently. You don’t need to introduce automation to your prospects solely to seek out that it’s not performing as anticipated. Check the brand new methods completely, and put your self within the buyer’s sneakers. Choose a small subset of consumers to check it and get their suggestions.
Ask for suggestions
Get buyer suggestions recurrently to find out whether or not the automated methods are performing properly. In some ways, it helps to judge your automated buyer conversations similar to you’d consider a human agent’s interactions. Was the difficulty accurately 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 vital points.
Present a path to people
Automated assist is a giant change from human-driven assist. Some prospects will prefer it; some will likely be pissed off. Machines can solely deal with a lot, and they may not be capable to assist a buyer. Typically, a buyer would possibly merely desire to speak to a human.
Regardless of the case, present a approach for purchasers to achieve a human agent if wanted.
Find out how to automate customer support with Assist Scout
Assist Scout affords many instruments for automating totally different elements of your customer support course of, together with clever AI instruments and easy workflow automation instruments.
Workflows
Assist Scout workflows will let you manage and prioritize your buyer conversations. Pushed by an “If… then…” mannequin, workflows might be constructed primarily based on occasion situations 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 loads of back-and-forth messages between the agent and the shopper. A number of crew members would possibly learn by way of the dialog to know what’s occurring. 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, guaranteeing constant high quality throughout the complete crew. You possibly can modify the tone and size of the response, proofread it, and even translate it into a distinct 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 will let you reply shortly to frequent questions, bringing a extra constant assist expertise to your prospects.
Customer support automation: It’s necessary 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. Nevertheless, customer support automation shouldn’t be seen as a strategy to exchange human assist brokers. Similar to the facility drill didn’t exchange development staff, it simply made them higher and extra environment friendly at their jobs.
Implementing customer support automation needs to be performed thoughtfully and punctiliously. Work together with your prospects and your assist crew to deal with the correct issues on the proper time utilizing automation, and your crew and prospects will stay comfortable.