Automated customer service has the potential to benefit both small businesses and enterprises. Read along to learn more about the benefits of implementing automated customer service, from saving time and money to gaining valuable customer insights.
Save agents time and reduce costs
Automated customer service can save your agents time by automatically tagging tickets and intelligently routing them to the correct agent based on skill, channel, priority, and availability—eliminating the need for manual ticket routing.
Automation features can help your team members effectively manage their workflow and keep things moving quickly. For example, you can set up an automation to close tickets four days after they’ve been resolved.
Other automated service solutions like AI chatbots can handle recurring customer questions without human intervention, reducing costs as your support agents dedicate their time to the customers who need it most.
Deliver fast, 24/7 support
When it comes to good customer service, speed is king. Customers today expect to get what they want quickly. If your response times don’t keep up with your customers’ busy lives, you risk giving them a negative impression of your customer service.
Automated customer service enables you to deliver fast, 24/7 support. Unlike human agents, AI chatbots never have to sleep, so your customers can get answers to their questions whenever they want.
In addition to answering customer questions, automated customer service tools can proactively engage with your customers.
“Bots can help you get ahead of customer asks by reaching out with meaningful, timely, and personalized interactions that drive engagement and retention and increase sales and conversion rates,” says Lauren Hakim, group product marketing manager at Zendesk.
Gain greater insights
Another benefit of automated customer service is automated reporting and analytics. Automated service tools eliminate repetitive tasks and busy work, instantly providing you with customer service reports and insights that you can use to improve your business.
Automated customer service software can also automatically combine customer support and sales data across channels. As a result, you gain visibility into all customer interactions and get the details you need to make informed decisions.
Additionally, automated customer service solutions allow you to easily report on your success, whether you’re using customizable charts or leveraging pre-built dashboards that are automatically populated with key customer service metrics.
How does customer service automation benefit small businesses?
Personalized customer service can be a big selling point for small businesses. So, you may be hesitant to trust such a critical part of your business to non-human resources. But with the right customer service management software, support automation will only enhance your customer service.
A smaller business is less likely to have an army of customer support representatives. Every hour those workers spend on the clock is precious. When smartly implemented, automated customer service software increases productivity, providing a better customer support experience for agents and consumers alike.
How does customer support automation benefit enterprises?
For a larger corporation, it’s all about scaling customer service resources to meet demand. As a big company, your customer support tickets will grow as quickly as your customer base.
Imagine a simple reboot of your product is usually all that’s needed to fix a common problem. If just one customer calls about this issue per day, your support team can handle that. But if hundreds of customers call in every day, your entire support team will get bogged down explaining something that AI-powered customer service could address in seconds.
Moreover, humans can only converse with one customer at a time. An automated support system can handle multiple requests simultaneously, saving you significant labor and operating costs.