In today’s modern business environment, it’s possible that customer service has never been so influential. As competition continues to increase and intensify in many sectors, and with social media channels awash with reviews, opinions and promotions, providing an exceptional customer experience can make all the difference to an organization’s long-term success.
What’s more, customer expectations are higher than ever before. People demand more, in less time, in a way that suits their personal lifestyle and schedule. Satisfying their needs can help you stand out and keep them coming back to spend more. Conversely, poor service can make them leave you forever, and tell all their friends about it in the process.
As such, looking after customers proactively and keeping them happy must be a priority. But with so many urgent and conflicting demands to manage, it can be extremely difficult for customer service teams to cope. Time and resources are required every day, and many organizations simply don’t have enough.
So, what factors cause issues when it comes to serving customers?
Too slow to respond
We live in a world where instant gratification is expected. Customers don’t like to be kept waiting for answers to their queries about orders, refunds or other issues – but support teams are left overstretched by having to deal with a large volume of requests and can’t immediately access the information needed. The resulting delay infuriates and disappoints customers.
A disconnected and inconsistent service experience
Having to speak with different service agents and repeat the same information over and over again is very frustrating for customers. There seems to be no single point of contact or reference for their case or query, which gives the impression that it is being handled in a disorganized way or not given the attention it deserves.
Over-reliance on specialist knowledge
Not all support agents are qualified to manage and solve every customer query they are faced with. They have to seek advice or support along the way from colleagues. While this is logical, it can cause frustration for customers who end up being passed from agent to agent, or experience delays waiting for the right person to become available.
Many of the tasks and processes involved in customer service are in fact repetitive, repeatable, and rely on sourcing and sharing information… which makes them ideal candidates for automation.
Purpose-built and designed specifically to support agents in dealing with more queries, faster, automated customer service can significantly reduce the level of human involvement in advising on tasks and requests.
By taking advantage of intelligent self-service technologies such as messaging, webchat, and chatbots – all of which customers are already familiar with and comfortable using – automated customer service eases the burden on agents by minimizing the time they have to spend engaged in direct ‘human-to-human’ interactions.
This lowers the cost to serve per case, while also ensuring that every customer enjoys a better service experience (and agents improve their own job satisfaction).
These technologies can take the strain for a variety of simple and consistent service-related tasks: including pre-written email replies and query responses; logical webchat responses (if x, then y…); assigning and delegation of tasks between departments and people; and to some degree, machine learning.
Of course, while all these capabilities can make a big difference, automation should never be considered as a replacement for the rich, personal experiences that come from having direct human interactions. It is only there to make certain aspects of customer service easier to manage.
As well as the demonstrable time, hassle, and effort saved, these automated tasks and rules free up support agents to focus their skills and attention where it matters most: on individual customers. They can address more complex, case-by-case problems and challenges and dedicate themselves to each customer as they go.
This doesn’t just make the agents feel more satisfied; it also makes customers happier too, for a number of reasons:
Customer interactions become more personal: Agents benefit from having a holistic view of available customer data and insight into every previous touchpoint those customers have had with their business, they can respond accordingly and provide a much richer, more relevant experience.
Cases and complaints are resolved faster: Having easy and immediate access to the right information helps agents find the right or best answer more quickly. And if they can’t find it for any reason, they can rapidly reassign the case to someone else who can.
The cost to serve is reduced: Automated service capabilities include the ability for customers to serve themselves in terms of more straightforward or simple everyday queries and requests. These can be addressed automatically with pre-defined answers and advice, which means that agents don’t need to get involved and can spend valuable time on other things.
Support can be provided, 24/7: By offering automated options, customers can receive a certain level of support around-the-clock, whenever they need it and via the channel of their choice. In turn, more complex cases that need human intervention can be routed to the right people based on the most appropriate time zone or skillset.
Your business reputation and brand advocacy improve: Satisfied customers not only buy more, more often, but they also spread the word about the good service they have received and even suggest that their friends should experience the same. This brand advocacy is something money can’t buy – and it enhances your reputation.
Bunzl Retail and Healthcare Supplies (part of the Bunzl Group) wanted to create closer connectivity across all aspects of its business, between individual employees, suppliers, and customers. To achieve this, it needed a centralized process automation platform that was capable of managing its growing operations while delivering efficient customer service.
Bizagi created the foundations for this to happen, via automation.
As a result, Bunzl has been able to process some 77,000 customer enquiry cases, with 33% faster customer call resolution (6-minute calls now take 4 minutes). This equates to seven days a month of time saved on call logs and case resolutions for Bunzl’s customer contact center agents, who enjoy the convenience of viewing all relevant data on one integrated system screen.
Find out more about Bizagi’s automated customer service capabilities at https://bizagi.com/en/platform.
