4 Ways to Automate Customer Support in 2020

Automation is changing how customer support is being delivered today. An average of 31.7% of companies are already using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance customer service, with 80% looking to implement AI-powered customer service solutions by the end of the year.

AI is poised to revolutionize customer support entirely. In the contemporary world where 89% of buyers expect businesses to understand their needs, let’s look at how automation can further this trend while also exploring different AI technologies that businesses can use to provide exceptional customer support.

1. Self-service knowledge base

According to Invesp, acquiring a new customer can cost businesses anywhere between 5 to 25 times more than retaining an existing one. Therefore, businesses should account for this while formulating their marketing strategy so that their customer support can meet buyer expectations.

An efficient way of providing high-quality customer aftercare is to build and maintain a comprehensive knowledge base. Today’s consumers prefer self-service over phoning for support. By having a self-service knowledge base, customers will be able to solve their problems without asking for help.

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Providing buyers with the right information on how to use your product enhances the customer experience and ensures that they use your services again. A knowledge base can also improve retention as it reduces the number of cases where customers might need you to intervene to help them. When buyers are happy, their retention rates increase and thus contribute to consistent sales and better long-term revenue.

2. Email automation

Customers are always receiving marketing messages, and their inboxes are overflowing with them. However, generalized emails don’t prompt the buyer to take action, and this is where email automation can help.

Automation can help you create personalized templates and send out timely emails to your target audience to boost revenues. Personalized emails garner attention and direct buyers to the product they wish to or even forgot to purchase. Customized emails are so successful that they can deliver 2.5 times higher CTRs, and are six times more likely to drive a conversion, according to Campaign Monitor.

Additionally, personalized email subject lines are 26% more likely to be read, and can drive email revenue by 760% from divided campaigns. Indeed, 73% of customers would consider doing business with brands that used their data to enhance their experience.

3. AI-powered chatbot and live chat

It’s common knowledge that customers always want everything at their disposal. This is one of the reasons why they like live chat because it gives them the feeling that a brand representative is there whenever they might need them. In fact, 75% of customers prefer live chat over the phone.

However, many businesses stop there. One report highlights that 83% of businesses would be better served had they provided superior in-person service. Therefore, brands should look for intelligent tools that can help their support team to provide prompt answers to customers.

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This is where chatbots come in. Businesses can use this program to automate a huge volume of similar requests. These bots provide a turnaround time that’s five times faster than a normal human being and help organizations reduce operating costs by as much as 66%.

Businesses are increasingly realizing the importance of chatbots today. This is evident from their implementation that’s grown significantly over the last two years courtesy of their ability to answer up to 80% of routine questions, giving live agents more time to focus on more challenging and productive tasks.

4. Ticket routing

Today’s customers have high service expectations from sellers that develop from the initial point of contact with the business. There’s constant pressure on brands to provide stellar customer service to increase customer satisfaction.

Consider this: as many as 83% of people expect brands to reply to social media comments within a day. However, brands don’t find it easy. Whenever a query arrives at the help desk, service reps have to read it, categorize it, and route it to the relevant team.

However, even with the help of various help desk solutions, tagging and routing tickets is still a an arduous and time-consuming process that leads to mistakes and unforeseen hold-ups.

And this brings us to ML-enabled automated ticket routing. It allows businesses to tag tickets in real-time, which saves valuable customer service hours and gives them more time to bond with customers on an emotional level.

With automated ticket routing, support tickets are automatically classified and routed to the most appropriate team. It significantly shortens the turnaround time and reduces costs by helping you evaluate tons of tickets quickly.

Conclusion

While automation can be fun to play with, it’s a tool that should be solely used to provide exceptional customer service. Any business that wants to deploy automation should remember this and the fact that it should complement their entire customer support process and not deviate from it.