Customers these days tend to be quite picky, especially in terms of making purchasing decisions, and they’re right to do that.
Above all, most customers expect outstanding customer service and customer support throughout the entirety of the buying journey. However, it’s not always easy for companies to make sure that the customer service and customer support they’re providing are outstanding.
Fortunately, there is a great way that they can always improve it, and even maintain the quality and speed without hiring and training more people. The solution is automation and chatbots, which can automate and speed up customer service and customer support.
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Reasons for Automation
Companies that are growing because their solutions are scaling are achieving a lot of success. And the more leads that are converting but staying with the business over a long period of time, becoming loyal customers means that the customer support team tends to face a lot more challenges.
Put simply, when companies are trying to keep up with their growth, they tend to have trouble with the speed and quality of the customer support that they provide. That’s because when a company is growing, its customer support team should be growing alongside it too, but that has its own set of challenges.
Having more people on board means that the business will have more knowledge to transfer in onboardings and training, more careers it should be helping grow, more communication channels, and of course, a lot more people that need to be managed.
This can quickly turn into a never-ending cycle as companies have to keep hiring, onboarding, and training more people, which results in a big building filled only with customer support employees that aren’t going to be happy if the company isn’t catering to all of their different needs.
That’s why companies need to use automation in this process.
Chatbots
One of the best ways that companies can start automating the customer support process is by utilizing a chatbot.
Chatbots are computer software that is able to simulate communication with people through text in a way that can help companies answer any questions or requests they receive from potential customers.
They’re also a great way for customer support employees to get additional help while cutting costs.
Instead of companies having to spend a lot on looking for, hiring, onboarding, and training more and more people, they can invest in a chatbot that’s going to automate a lot of the common and simple tasks and questions a business might receive from its customers.
Additionally, there are plenty of chatbots that are available for free to businesses, and in many cases, there’s no need for employees to have coding skills to build their virtual assistants as many come with templates.
At the end of the day, by utilizing chatbots, companies can get multiple integrations that will help their businesses and customer support employees including getting a tool that’s able to communicate in a number of different languages.
Chatbots can also communicate with consumers using the company’s unique brand voice, and most importantly, they’re available to answer questions at any time of day.
Advantages of Automating Customer Support Tasks
Companies that are able to automate their customer support teams means that they’re also going to be able to reduce human involvement in terms of solving issues that customers might have.
There are plenty of different examples of how companies can use automated customer support, such as conversational artificial intelligence, frequently asked questions, self-service help desks, as well as, of course, chatbots.
There is a big reduction in costs with automation which also helps companies sustainably scale without having to sacrifice any of their quality.
Costs
Automating some of the customer support processes can reduce the costs of overall customer support.
This is because automation tools such as chatbots tend to cost only a fraction of the price that companies generally tend to pay for hiring, onboarding, and training even a single customer support employee.
In fact, according to research, the average return on investment for chatbots specifically is over 1000%.
Efficiency
Most customers really appreciate it when companies are able to provide responses to any of their questions or concerns in a short period of time.
Additionally, the customer support team inside a company can also appreciate chatbots because instead of having to go out of their way to provide customers with a short response time to their questions, they can focus on the overall quality and the results they can get from interacting with customers.
This way, companies can improve the speed and efficiency of their customer support teams, while still providing the same quality
Task Focus
When companies are able to cover some of the basic tasks such as sending out welcome messages, collecting feedback from customers, and creating frequently asked questions pages by automating them, all of the employees on the customer support team can start focusing on the things that truly matter.
Those are providing a higher quality of assistance to the customers that have some more complicated problems, as well as solving more complex tasks that automation tools aren’t able to do.
Through chatbots and automation, customer support teams can also start anticipating the needs of the customers before they even happen.
As a result of this type of anticipation, companies can provide their customers with outstanding customer support that’s going to be assisted by chatbots.
Constant customer support
One of the biggest benefits that come with utilizing chatbots in customer support is the fact that they help companies provide their customers with constant customer support, no matter where they might be located.
Since chatbots don’t work in shifts, they’re going to be available to the customers at all times and at any location.
Additionally, if a specific issue needs to be handled by a customer support employee, the chatbot can notify the employees while assuring the customer that they will receive a reply to their issue as soon as possible.
This helps companies improve the communication flow between the customers and the customer support team, without adding any interruptions to the process.
Matthew Caiola serves as Co-CEO at 5W Public Relations, managing the overall growth, direction and day-to-day business of the Corporate & Technology Communications Divisions and Digital Marketing.
With more than 17 years of PR experience, Matthew leads teams in launching and building high-growth tech companies, disrupting industries, building global brand resonance through thought leadership, C-Suite profiling, and speakers’ programs, as well as crisis communications across a variety of industries.
