Customer support automation, or how to use technology to improve customer satisfaction

In the family of technological developments that enable companies to extend their ability to satisfy customer needs and expectations, I would ask for the automation of customer service.

What does this involve? What are the advantages and disadvantages for the company and its customers? How can processes be automated and which tools should be used? Appvizer answers all your questions in this comprehensive guide.

See all software Customer Support

What is automated customer support?

Automated customer support allows your customers to solve their problems without having to ask for help from a real person. In other words, automating customer service means using specific tools to optimise external and internal processes to make it easier and quicker to deal with customer issues.

By reducing the number of interactions between customers and company staff, automated customer support improves service quality.

The 8 benefits of customer support automation

Developing automated management of customer requests is highly beneficial both for the company and for the customer. What are the key benefits of automated customer support?

1) Continuous availability of assistance

The first advantage of automated support systems is that they are available 24/7. Able to handle simple, repetitive tasks, these tools lighten the workload of employees, who can devote themselves to more important and complex missions.

💡An essential tool for automated customer support, chatbots answer customers' questions at any time of the day or night, instantly.

2) More speed and efficiency

As you know, a company that aims for complete customer satisfaction has every interest in dealing with their issues and concerns quickly and efficiently. Whatever the sector of activity, a long response time encourages customers to turn to competing companies.

Efficiency is just as important in terms of customer satisfaction. Customers are more likely to place their trust in a supplier that is able to offer relevant solutions.

Automated customer support is always available and responsive. Not only does it reduce waiting times, it also provides consistent assistance. 🙌

3) A reduction in costs

The fewer interactions between customers and company staff, the lower the costs associated with customer service. Rather than creating positions or replacing employees to handle the ever-increasing number of requests, you can leverage automation tools that are able to address customer concerns.

Freed from tedious tasks, your employees can concentrate on urgent assignments or those with high added value for your customers. As soon as they are freed up, their productivity increases tenfold.

4) Simplified processes

Customers of the same company have different expectations. While they all want to be able to communicate easily with the company, they don't use the same communication channels. Some prefer emails, others phone calls and still others social networks.

Some customers use not one, but several different channels. To keep your customers fully satisfied, you need to enable them to switch from one to another with ease, in other words without having to rephrase their request every time they make a switch.

This is a difficult requirement for a traditional customer support system. It means that the different antennas have to be in constant communication to ensure real-time monitoring.

👉Automated customer support services are specially designed to be deployed across multiple channels. Integrated with your CRM, these tools process all the information linked to customer interactions so as to offer a global view and continuous monitoring.

As a result, customers have access to an easy, fast and efficient enquiry handling process!

5) Empowered customers

Customers tend to solve their problems on their own. Thanks to automated customer support, they don't have to seek human assistance. As well as cutting out the middleman, they can start the process whenever they like.

Free to resolve their problems at their own pace, customers feel they save time. The process seems simple and appropriate.

6) Ongoing improvements

Digital tools evolve in line with companies' needs. It's a good thing that companies are constantly striving to improve their customer service. As we mentioned earlier, the ability to meet customer expectations is a major competitive advantage.

👉 With scalable software, you can be sure of optimising the speed, efficiency and consistency of your automated customer service.

7) Fewer errors

If error is human, it's nothing to do with customer service automation solutions. Without these tools, helpdesk staff have to communicate constantly to pass on customer information. A simple piece of missing data can lead to an error. In the best-case scenario, the customer is forced to repeat information that he or she has already transmitted.

👉With automated customer support, these hazards disappear. All the information is gathered, including the history of exchanges, to ensure that customer requests are dealt with quickly and efficiently.

8) An optimised customer experience

All the advantages offered by customer support automation tend to improve customer satisfaction. With real-time assistance offering fast, consistent and effective responses and solutions, the customer experience is greatly optimised.

For the company, these improvements translate into better acquisition and retention rates.

And the drawbacks?

While technology makes no mistakes, it is not perfect. There's no denying it: customer support automation solutions are revolutionising customer service. Nevertheless, there are a few drawbacks to consider.

Difficulties in resolving complex problems

Efficient customer service solves all kinds of problems. On the downside, some are beyond the reach of customer support automation solutions.

This is the case when the requests require overly exhaustive knowledge or when they concern thorny billing issues. In these situations, the automation solution must enable customers to talk to someone who can resolve their problem. If it does not allow this contact, customers will be dissatisfied.

✋Chatbots do not resolve conflicts as easily as humans. To deal with a request from an unhappy customer, it is therefore better to propose an exchange with a real person.

The lack of human interaction

We saw earlier that some customers want to deal with their problems autonomously by calling on the responsive services of a chatbot. But many prefer to talk to humans. It's a fact, robots can't answer every question.

💡So when it comes to effective customer service, we shouldn't rely solely on artificial intelligence. Let's also consider the fact that some customers feel frustrated at the idea of not having access to human interaction.

Incomplete solutions

It's up to you to configure your customer support automation solution. Its performance therefore depends on your ability to put the entire process in place. Even if you excel at configuration, you won't be able to ignore requests for human interaction, for example.

Similarly, a knowledge base developed to answer questions asked via a chatbot accessible on your website does not exempt you from dealing with requests by email.

A barrier between the company and its customers?

Previously, we talked about incomplete knowledge bases and the need for human intervention to resolve certain issues. If chatbots prevent customers from interacting with real people, contact between the company and its customers is broken. Frustrated, customers are not inclined to forge links with the company. A climate of trust cannot develop, and the chances of building customer loyalty are considerably reduced.

Examples of automated customer support

Customer support automation is based on the use of multiple tools to optimise processes. Here are the main ones.

Chatbots

A key tool in automated customer service, chatbots are perfect for answering common customer queries. Capable of solving conventional problems, this robot guides callers towards an effective solution.

👉The chatbot's performance depends on your ability to programme its responses.

Email

As part of a digital marketing strategy, customer service includes the automatic sending of e-mails to customers. These follow recent purchases. Their content may include feedback on satisfaction or information on how to use the product purchased.

Live chats

Live chats put customers in touch with customer service agents. As this is a direct, real-time connection, Internet users do not have to wait on the telephone. They can be sure of getting a response as quickly as possible, and can count on real expertise to solve their problems.

FAQs and knowledge bases

These self-service tools are very useful for customers looking for general information about a company's products and services or about the company itself. When it comes to specific questions, they save time by browsing these structured databases independently.

Workflows

Customer support automation is not just about handling interactions between customers and their dedicated service. Specific tools can be used to automate workflows in order to boost efficiency and encourage cooperation within the customer service department.

With repetitive tasks automated, staff can focus on solving complex problems. At the same time, the automation solution allows an employee to pick up where their colleague left off while accessing the full history of data and interactions related to the customer request in question.

6 best practices for successful customer support automation

To ensure that your customers are fully satisfied, you need to take great care when configuring your customer support automation solution. Here are some of the best practices to adopt to improve the customer experience within your company.

Best practice no. 1: Provide self-service options

Remember, Frequently Asked Questions and knowledge bases provide very useful self-service options for customers. Customers can find answers quickly, while customer service staff can focus on solving more complex problems.

✋Beware, the development of these mines of information requires prior analysis to define the most common questions and problems.

Best practice no. 2: Provide access to human contacts

In order to satisfy all your customers' expectations, you should not be satisfied with a chatbot to manage requests. A human person must be available to handle complex situations. 👤

If you don't allow this direct contact, customers will be forced to make their request by email or voicemail. Forced to wait, they will surely be tempted to contact your competitors.

Best practice no. 3: Incorporate live chat

Live chat is essential to enable customers to get in touch with customer service representatives in real time. Customers prefer this tool to chatbots because they trust humans more to find solutions.

💡On your website, live chat is also useful for analysing exchanges and identifying common questions. Without these observations, it's impossible to improve the way you deal with customer queries.

Best practice no. 4: draw up predefined responses

Increase the efficiency of your customer service processes tenfold with predefined answers. Employees can use them during live chats to save time resolving problems. Saving time means increased productivity and a better customer experience!

👉Always with the aim of meeting customer expectations, make sure you provide personalised responses to add a human dimension that will be much appreciated.

Best practice no. 5: Gather customer feedback

Solicit feedback from your customers to assess the performance of your automation solution. After processing a request, include a question so that customers can express their level of satisfaction. Don't hesitate to integrate a rating system to make it easier to process the data collected.

Best practice no. 6: Integration with other tools

Customer support automation software can be integrated with relationship marketing automation solutions to improve the quality of exchanges, share information on personalised services and products, roll out a targeted advertising campaign, etc.

Which tools can help you?

Rely on the functionalities of customer service software to automate processes and improve the customer experience.

✏️Parmi the most popular, Trengo uses artificial intelligence to help your teams manage all conversations on several platforms simultaneously, from a single dashboard. Its high-performance chatbot handles customer requests automatically.

✏️Également based on artificial intelligence, Zendesk is developing multiple functionalities to save time for customer service agents. These include

• Production of survey summaries

• Creation of predefined responses

• Access to multiple channels from a single workspace to respond to all requests

✏️Développé for large enterprises, ServiceNow offers a self-service portal enabling customers to create support requests and obtain information from a help centre without having to communicate directly with an agent. Customers can ask questions and share their experiences in community forums.

✏️Outil is a popular customer service tool, and Hiver has been developed to help you handle enquiries on a single dashboard. A particularly interesting feature is its easy integration with Gmail, which makes this solution very easy for businesses to use.

✏️Le Zoho Desk customer support software offers a host of tools and options for automating workflows. As with previous solutions, it incorporates a single dashboard that enables staff to view all requests simultaneously. Another valuable asset of Zoho Desk is its ticket management system, which organises tickets according to specific criteria such as priority, status or due date.

See all software Customer Support

Customer support automation: what's important?

Whatever the business sector, customer support automation software optimises and accelerates the processes involved in handling customer requests. Within the department, agents are freed up from repetitive tasks so that they can focus on resolving issues that require human intervention.

The result of this optimised organisation is a more responsive service, greater efficiency and productivity, and an improved customer experience.