9 min read
Feb 13, 2024
Customer service is the single most important element of your company’s public perception. You can boast the best product in the market and lightning-fast delivery times, but if customers are unhappy after interacting with your company, then it’s all for nothing. That’s why customer experience (CX) has become such an essential area of focus for most businesses, large or small.
If you want to stand out in a crowded and competitive marketplace, you must use all the tools at your disposal. In the field of customer service, there are few tools as powerful as automated workflows. Since most customer service tasks tend to be repetitive, customer service teams can greatly benefit from automating them.
This article is your guide to workflow automation in customer service, where you can explore its benefits and learn from real-world use cases of this new and exciting technology.
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How automation helps your customer service team
Welcome to the world of workflow automation. This emerging technology has rapidly become the need of the hour in customer service. If you want to increase your customer satisfaction (CSAT) score in particular or improve the overall CX, effectively using automation is necessary. Today, as many as 95% of businesses prioritize workflow automation after seeing how it can add value.
Once you learn a little bit about the benefits you can enjoy by embracing customer service automation, you will be convinced to adopt it for yourself. The best part about automated customer service workflows is how versatile they are. They can be used in various capacities, including:
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Interactive voice response (IVR) software
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Automated notifications
All of the tools listed above contribute to a superior experience for customers. Let’s look at the ways workflow automation tools can help your customer service department.
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Saves time
If your business serves many customers, dealing with their queries and difficulties can become extremely time-consuming. Using workflow automation, you can streamline the creation of customer support tickets and tag them based on priority. This will keep things moving swiftly, reducing the time to resolve customer issues and increasing your company’s satisfaction ratings.
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Lowers costs
Not every customer service issue needs a human agent to resolve it. AI chatbots allow you to answer recurring customer questions instantly, eliminating the need to address the issue manually. This lowers costs, as you can continue to service a growing body of customers without needing to hire new members for your customer service department.
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Offers 24/7 support
Large enterprises have customers spread across many states, countries, and time zones. There’s no predicting when a customer may need assistance. As any CX professional will agree, leaving customers waiting when they want assistance is a recipe for disaster. AI chatbots and automatic email services are the best solution, allowing companies to send a professional response to concerned customers even if a service agent isn’t available.
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Provides detailed analytics
Making data-driven decisions is one of the best ways to improve your overall CX. Automated customer service software gathers data about customer behavior, giving you a clearer picture of what is working and what isn’t in your current strategy.
Limitations of automated customer service workflows
While customer service automation is a valuable tool if used correctly, it would be wrong to say that it has no drawbacks. There are certain limitations to utilizing this approach, but they are easily outweighed by the advantages mentioned above.
With that said, let’s look at some areas of concern in automated customer service processes.
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It lacks a human touch
Possibly, the biggest concern with customer service automation is that you risk alienating customers who prefer interacting with human agents. Though routing issues through human agents take longer, offering your customers the chance to opt out of using automated services is worthwhile.
By balancing automation and a human approach, your company can cater directly to each customer’s needs, reduce customer churn, and focus your customer service team’s energy on tickets that demand their attention.
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Concerns over data security and privacy
It’s understandable if your customers hesitate to adopt automated services because of data privacy concerns. A recent consumer survey from McKinsey found that 87% of consumers would not do business with a company if they lacked confidence in its security protocols.
When it comes to automated customer service tools like AI chatbots, you must build your customers’ confidence in your security measures. Invest in robust encryption software for sensitive customer data, obtain customer consent when gathering said data, and ensure all your processes are in line with existing data protection regulations.
Addressing concerns over data privacy will make a big difference in how much value AI chatbots add to your business.
Best practices for adopting automated workflows in customer service
Now that you know the pros and cons of customer service workflow automation, you can start integrating it into your company’s processes. Before switching from manual to automated customer service, consider following the best practices listed below.
Map customer journeys
Understanding every customer’s journey is the first step to integrating workflow automation in your organization’s CX. This includes tracking all the channels customers use, listing the number of touchpoints they have with the organization, and identifying bottlenecks and problems within the existing setup.
Identify areas for automation
Once you have a clear overview of customer journeys, you will be able to identify the key areas for automation. You could start by using automation to send standard responses to extremely common questions. Another use is configuring automated messaging systems to close the loop with customers once their issues have been resolved. Every organization has its own customer journey to optimize, and identifying the best opportunities for automation will differ on a case-to-case basis.
When you identify areas for automation, it is equally important to do the opposite. Certain customer service tasks, such as onboarding new users of software or resolving complex, multi-faceted issues, are still best handled by a human customer service professional. Ensure that these remain with your customer service team when adopting automated workflows.
Prepare your customer service department
Going from manual to automated customer service requires a collective effort. Every stakeholder in your company’s CX initiatives, especially your customer service team, needs to be on the same page about the new measures. Before adopting any workflow automation software, ensure your team has received the requisite training to use it competently and deliver maximum value to your customers.
Test workflow automation before adoption
Even the best-laid plans require adjustment from time to time. To get the best results out of your workflow automation initiatives, test your new approach on a sample set of customers before adopting it across the entire organization. This lets you tweak your approach and develop optimized iterations of your customer service automation strategy.
Enter a new era of customer service automation with AI
Thanks to AI integration, today’s automated customer service software is far more valuable than ever. Thanks to the ability of AI to process large amounts of data much faster than human workers, automated customer service tools can now cater to customer needs at every conceivable level. AI chatbots like LiveChat help with lead generation, proactive customer service, and creating a superior CX for your organization.
Some of the ways AI improves workflow automation in customer service are:
Personalization
AI-driven customer service software can read each customer’s user profile and tailor responses accordingly. Features like sentiment analysis and natural language processing (NLP) let AI chatbots identify high-priority tickets and streamline customer journeys.
Scalability
Since AI chatbots work 24/7, they are the ideal solution for any organization looking to scale up its customer service operations. AI tools are much better equipped to handle a large volume of requests than human agents and can service a large amount of customers simultaneously.
Data-driven
AI programs use machine learning (ML) to improve their performance over time. While this level of continuous data analysis helps deliver a more personalized CX at the individual level, AI tools also yield valuable insights regarding your customer base as a whole. By identifying trends and patterns in customer behavior, you can optimize customer service operations with automated data analytics.
Automation in action
The number of customer service interactions is growing with every passing month. Last year, it was estimated that 40% of all customer interactions were automated, marking a rise from 25% in 2020.
Let’s look at some interesting ways companies have used automated customer service tools to their advantage.
Sephora increases its average order value
The international cosmetics brand Sephora is known for its in-store experience, where expert sales representatives help guide customers to the right products. Replicating that for their online store presented a challenge since the level of personal attention was missing in a digital medium.
However, adopting LiveChat in 2020 led to more online shoppers having fruitful one-on-one conversations with the chatbot. Thanks to this personalized care, more shoppers were driven to make purchases online, eventually raising the average order value by 25%.
Cabins of the Smoky Mountains speeds up response times
Cabin rental company, Cabins of the Smoky Mountains, is in the travel industry, where customers follow predetermined schedules and are pressed for time. Seeking assistance during a holiday should take as little time as possible, so the company adopted a chatbot to support 24/7 availability.
Cabins of the Smoky Mountains opted to use LiveChat, and its canned response feature. This feature allowed agents to immediately respond to questions with prepared responses and drastically reduced resolution times. This led to more sales and higher customer satisfaction for the company.
Grow sales with ChatBot
Optimize your sales process. Leverage customer experience for revenue growth.
Trusted by 2,500+ companies
Build a brilliant customer experience using automation
The best way to connect with your customers in 2024 is through automated workflows. LiveChat is a handy customer service platform that supports multi-platform integration, balances AI interactions with a human touch, and drives higher levels of customer satisfaction. If you wish to take your customer service operations to the next level, automated workflow software will be invaluable on your journey.
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