Beginner’s Guide to Customer Service Automation

Beginner’s Guide to Customer Service Automation

Automating customer service does not necessarily mean heavy investment or sacrificing
personalization.

Customer service automation aims to reduce the amount of human effort in customer service,
particularly for executing repetitive tasks, solving low complexity issues, or answering FAQs.

Now that personalization and humanization of automated customer service is not a significant
concern, the only thing organizations need to monitor and avoid is an overreliance on
technology

It is important to maintain a robust man-machine collaboration to optimize the power of
automation fully and not sacrifice customer satisfaction.

What is Customer Service Automation?

An automated customer service is an approach of support that provides autonomous systems
such as chatbots or other conversational AI, to reduce the human effort involved in providing
support to customer requests.
Customer service automation offers 24/7 support and is primarily used to assist human
customer agents. Automation makes customer service pleasant and convenient for both the
customers and agents.
Customer service automation provides a solution to the long-standing issue of mismatch
between customer expectation and business support capability. With automation, you can
provide the support your customers expect in a hassle-free cost-effective manner.

Courtesy Freepik

Why is Customer Service Automation important for businesses?

The one and only reason needed: Customers simply prefer automated services, like
self-service, chatbots etc.
Customers are only interested in faster and more efficient resolutions.
Quick resolutions and low first response time can boost your customer satisfaction significantly.
Automated customer service simplifies the process and gives you the time to focus on more
important and complex interactions with customers. The intention behind automation is not to

remove human effort from the equation but rather to provide them with the support they need to
increase their productivity.

Customer service automation not only helps improve agent productivity by taking care of
preliminary questions. More importantly, it provides 24/7 support, reduces first response time
(FRT), and improves customer satisfaction (CSAT). Automation leaves no room for human error,
making it incredibly reliable and hassle-free.

To put it simply, with customer service automation, you stand to
gain 3 vital benefits:

1. 24/7 support: Being easy to reach at any time for assistance is no longer an
expectation; it is the norm.

2. Empower customers to help themselves: Not only does this help handle FAQs, but
customers can help themselves whenever they need it without relying on someone else.

3. Enhance Agent Productivity: Agents no longer need to spend their time resolving
minor issues but instead can focus on resolving more complex issues faster.

Image by Mohammed Hassan from Pixabay

Here are some examples of Customer Service Automation

The examples below explore how customer service automation solutions can help you deliver
personalized customer service by eliminating repetitiveness, backlog, and complexity.

1. Canned responses

We’ve all witnessed impersonal and frigid automated responses from brands that leave a bitter
taste in our mouths. That’s because these are automated responses, which addresses issues in
a one-size-fits-all manner, but lately, there has been a shift from this approach towards canned
responses with the help of AI-enabled personalization.

Photo by Roman Pohorecki from Pexels

What are canned responses?

These are pre-written responses to frequently asked questions that resolve low complexity
issues like login queries, subscription queries, account information queries, and many more.

Canned responses can be incredibly effective in reducing ticket volume, first response time,
average handling time, and other essential customer service KPIs.

2. Self-Service

Your agents or customer service team must be well versed in writing emails that cater to a
variety of customer questions, so why not use those emails as solution articles or guides for
customers to view at their convenience?

Everyone knows the most significant factor influencing customer satisfaction is speed,
customers want answers to their questions immediately. Providing self-service not only
addresses the issue of speed but also empowers customers to be more independent rather than
relying on someone else.

According to a study by Harvard Business Review, across industries, fully 81% of all customers
attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative.

Courtesy Freepik

Creating a comprehensive knowledge base is a great way to develop ready-made answers for
frequently asked questions. To create an extensive knowledge base, you can rely on FAQs, past
conversations, product information, and other essential resources that can help customers avoid
needing to contact your customer service agent.

With self-service, businesses are not restricted to just using articles on help sites, but they can
also use video tutorials or guides.

Language would no longer be a concern since you can translate your knowledge base into
several languages, so it is understandable to a global audience.

3. Chatbots and AI-drive Customer Service Automation

The introduction of live chat revolutionized the customer service industry, customers for the first
time we're able to get support in real-time. However, agents could still get overwhelmed by the
volume of tickets, and it did not provide a solution for 24/7 support without scaling your
customer service team.

That’s why chatbots have been overwhelmingly successful, they were simply the solution to
multiple problems.

According to a study by Cognizant, 69% of customers said they’d prefer chatbots for receiving
instant responses, and the same percent said they’re most likely to use chatbots for
service-related inquiries.

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Standard practice is to have a set of responses to a list of frequently asked questions. So when
a customer sends a query, the chatbot retrieves and responds with the answer immediately.
Above all, customers expect service to be fast, easy and helpful, but they still appreciate
customer service that’s personal and understanding.
Chatbots provide a solution to the age-old problem of delivering a unique customer experience
at scale for new emerging businesses to set them apart from the competition.
But Chatbots aren’t the only form of artificial intelligence that is essential for customer service;
using a helpdesk that is AI-powered can streamline and simplify customer service.
Our AI-driven platform at Simplify360 provides businesses with a plethora of information like
ticket priority, customer sentiment before and after the resolution, and much more.

Conclusion: Why Customer Service Automation?

The benefits of automating customer service depend on the type, but there are a few general
benefits regardless of the kind of automation.

Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels
● Increases productivity
● Streamlined customer service
● Lesser room for human error
● Maintains consistency
● Improves customer experience

If customer service automation is used wisely and optimized the right way, businesses can
achieve the delicate balance of personalized customer service at scale.