5 Ways to Make Customer Support Automation as your Strategic Advantage

As most aspects of our daily interaction turn virtual, there has been a rise in customer expectations more than ever before. Customers expect business to value their time, provide easy engagement, and deliver personalized solutions for their needs.

And to match some of these expectations, companies are delivering transformative solutions with the help of customer support automation. With a strategic combination of machine learning, robotic process automation, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence to automate tasks, customer support automation has changed the look of customer engagement. 

However, if not done the right way, automation might give you the result the other way around. So in the article, we’ll discuss the ways to make customer support automation your strategic advantage.

What is customer support automation?

Customer support automation is assistance provided to customers using automated technologies like voice assistants, chatbots, voicebots, etc.

Support automation eliminates the need for human involvement while delivering solutions. Customers do not have to wait for long to inquire about products and services or any queries they have. They get an automated response in an instant.

How to make customer support automation your strategic advantage?

Intent discovery

Intent refers to the intention behind a statement or action in a customer’s journey toward a purchase. It can be a reason why a customer chooses to interact with any brand.

Interpreting customer intent can be a very helpful tool for marketing, at the same time, crucial for any business to grow. However, it’s hard to tell what customers are looking for or what their intentions are.

This is where AI technologies like chatbots come in handy. This customer support uses a variety of channels to interact with customers, which can be a great source of information. By analyzing past interactions across channels, you can study and analyze the trend and patterns in what your customers are looking for and how. Then you can provide solutions to the customers accordingly.

Automate customer service responses to FAQs

Some queries are too frequent yet very crucial. For instance, queries related to orders, return, post-purchase, etc., which occur on a daily basis.

Deploying human agents to resolve such queries will not only keep them away from performing crucial activities, but also it can be time-consuming and costlier.

Thereby using AI to automate customer support responses like FAQs to deal with repetitive queries. It will enhance the customer experience and reduce the waiting time. Also, while the AI does the work, the human agent can focus more on other human-intensive activities.

Ticket routing

There’s no doubt automation, like chatbots, improves the customer experience. They are perfect for resolving simple requests.

However, there should be an easy way for customers to connect with Live agents during urgency, as some complex queries require human intervention. 

This is where automated ticket routing comes in. It allows the support desk to automatically tag and group incoming tickets and redirect customers to the right agents based on the expertise they have in certain areas, availability in real-time, the number of tickets they are currently dealing with, etc.

Gather feedback

You can improve customer satisfaction only when you listen to your customers and understand what they want. For that, you need to ask for their regular feedback.

Asking for feedback makes the customer realize that their opinion is valued, which in turn develops trust and builds satisfaction in customers.

Along with that, feedback helps your business understand the problem that could interfere with your brand reputation. You can analyze and work on the pain points to improve, innovate and increase the number of happy customers.

Select the right platform

Since there are so many platforms available, selecting the right platform for automation can be challenging. However, it can be done if you understand what your needs are.

For instance, do you want to expand your reach? Are you looking forward to increasing your brand awareness? Or do you want to generate more leads?

Depending on your business requirements, you should choose your platform like Instagram and TikTok for visually oriented brands, Twitter for business focused on real-time events, or youtube for diverse audiences.

Features of Customer support automation

Self-service customer portal

You can help your customers by carrying out proactive support with a self-help portal before they even have any questions.

Self-service support is created when a business is able to anticipate what problems customers are facing and what possible queries they are going to have. Based on that, various knowledge-based bits of help are offered, like blogs, presentations, documents, etc., that are created around anticipated queries.

The CRM provides suggestions for self-help content to be fetched on your portal after collecting popular help requests.

Omni channel outreach

When you have all communication channels linked into a contact center, it boosts the quality of service in the way most suitable for the customer.

Customers reach out to you from any channel they prefer and receive the same level of support. Moreover, data related to queries from all channels come to one place, which allows agents to have a look at them when required.

Case management

Automation allows you to set predefined rules to assist your case management process. Those rules include case assignment, growth, and resolution conditions.  

This feature comes in handy for automated call centers where operators focus on helping with queries straight away without having to do things manually like, filling and managing case forms.

Email automation

An automated email workflow is crucial for inbound marketing and customer service. Once the customers interact with your business, the email responses can be triggered automatically. These responses contain support, troubleshooting help, etc.

Benefits

Real-time response

Customers get frustrated when they don’t get an immediate response and have to wait for too long.

But with customer support automation, the queries get resolved in an instant. Quicker the response, the higher the customer satisfaction, which means higher retention.

Reduce operational costs

Automation of customer support reduces manual work. It reduces the need to hire extra staff to perform the same task. Thereby, it reduces the operational cost which otherwise would occur during hiring, training, and staffing.

Effective problem-solving channel

Automated customer support, especially conversational AI, collects and analyses all the past data the business has collected and stored from the customers. It then provides more accurate solutions.

Increase efficiency and customer satisfaction

Since most of the repetitive queries are handled by customer support automation tools like conversational AI, employees get to invest their time in more productive activities.

Hence, customers get quick solutions at the same time, and employees get rid of mundane tasks, which results in higher efficiency.

24/7 support

One of the greatest benefits of automated customer support is that it’s available 24/7. Customers from any timezone can interact with your business at any time they like.

Being able to provide support outside of working hours helps you stay ahead of your competitors.

Wrap up

If you’re looking forward to automating customer support, you got to implement customer support software and incorporate it with your workflow. Chat360’s intuitive customer support software is one of the best solutions that help you organize your helpdesk, eliminate repetitive tasks, reduce waiting rates and offer 24/7 support. 

Companies like Nestle, L.G, Ford, Faber, etc, have trusted our brand, and so can you. Book a free demo and see Chat360.io in action for yourself.