Customer service teams are under increasing pressure to maximize efficiency. That being said, some paths are more promising than others.
Adding new hires may boost productivity, but it’s costly and time-consuming. Meanwhile, outsourcing can give you a temporary fix, but it’s unsustainable and can even adversely impact your customer experience.
Only automation allows online businesses to make the most of their existing resources — with today’s leading solutions capable of automating over 70% of customer questions. As the chances of a recession in 2023 have risen to 70%, automation offers a secure way to future-proof your business.
Below we’ll cover three of customer service automation’s most significant benefits. For a definitive guide to delivering exceptional online service, download Zowie’s ebook: The Customer Service Automation Handbook for Online Businesses.
How automation transforms your customer service
Customer service automation is capable of producing substantial benefits across any organizations that sell online. Customers, agents, and your entire company can enjoy the impact of automation. Here’s a quick look at what automation enables each segment to accomplish.
1. Delight customers with personalized responses (at scale)
When brands treat shoppers like individuals, customers take notice. In fact, 72% of customers only engage with personalized messages. Personalization also raises customer loyalty and satisfaction as well as revenue.
Customers crave personalized service — but only 31% say they’re consistently getting it. Something as simple as addressing a shopper by their name can leave a lasting positive impression and do wonders for your customer experience.
One-third of customers identified repeating personal details as their top source of frustration in customer care. Automation removes this headache by remembering data like their contact details, location, and purchase history.
Not only that, but it enables enhanced interactions through customized product recommendations, individualized incentives, and engaging exchanges. With an array of built-in personalization features, leading automation solutions make it much easier for brands to deliver the red-carpet service customers expect.
PRO TIP: By personalizing exchanges with automation, you’ll get more customers trusting your brand — without ever needing to interact with a live agent.
2. Enhance agent effectiveness
Automation doesn’t just improve the customer experience — agents enjoy a smoother experience too.
Your most repetitive customer questions — Where’s my order? Can I get a refund? — can be fully answered by a chatbot. With tickets like these taken care of, agents are free to handle more meaningful tasks that require their expertise. By streamlining complex workflows and placing crucial customer data at agents’ fingertips, automation tools significantly lighten any support team’s workload and increase each agent’s overall effectiveness.
But the transformation doesn’t stop there. This newfound freedom empowers agents to take the customer experience one step further. Whether that’s having the time to address more complex tickets, reducing average resolution times (ART), or leveraging their relationship and product expertise to drive sales: automation tools empower them every step of the way.
PRO TIP: Industry-leading automation platforms save online businesses up to 2 hours per agent daily.
3. Identify the voice of your customer
Customer service automation’s impact isn’t limited to customers and support teams. The most advanced platforms take things up a level by offering insights that can lead to improvements across the organization.
How? Leading automation solutions track and report frequent customer questions you don’t have automated answers for.
In other words, they deliver your customer’s biggest concerns, headaches, and dilemmas right to your fingertips. With an effective customer service automation system, companies can directly access the voice of their customer and act on this feedback.
And much of this can be preventative. Support teams — along with other departments — no longer need to wait for formal complaints to know something is wrong. As soon as an automation solution identifies that several customers are asking the same questions, corrective measures can be taken.
PRO TIP: Automation speeds up customer feedback loops and brings brands closer to customers than ever.
Elevate your customer service with automation
Automation delivers a revolutionary solution for modern online businesses that delights customers, assists agents, and puts the customer voice front and center. Want to accomplish all three simultaneously?
That’s precisely what you’ll learn to do from The Customer Service Automation Handbook for Online Businesses. Download your copy today to see how automation is redefining customer service and helping out companies big and small every day.
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