Support teams play a huge role for any business. They form the backbone of the company with the service they provide to customers, whether face-to-face or remotely.
Providing excellent customer support is a challenge as support teams need to resolve as many issues as possible as quickly as possible without compromising the quality of service. And the support team directly affects churn rates, so it’s a key factor in whether a business grows, stagnates or becomes unprofitable.
With so much to manage, support teams rely on technology to help them do more, faster. Workflow automation can be of great benefit in this respect; supports your team to streamline their micro processes and achieve long-term goals.
As with any new technology, many support teams aren’t sure where to start when it comes to using automation; In fact, they often have more questions than answers. To make it easy, take a look at three frequently asked questions about incorporating customer support automation into your business!
How can automation help my support team manage their workload?
Most people think that working in customer service is unpleasant, tiring or boring. For many, customer service means overwhelming workloads and rude customers. But it doesn’t have to be like that. With the right technology, things can be calm, pleasant and balanced for your customer support team.
A small support team can save about 600 hours each year with automation. This means your team can have an extra 25 days to listen.
So how does it save your automation team so much time and energy?
To answer that, let’s look at the process of resolving current customer issues. When a request or problem comes in, you should:
- Set priority
- Assign to the correct agent
- If necessary, forward the request to a specialist
Each of these steps has unique challenges. For example, assessing the priority of requests is really complex. You should not only consider the content of the request—what the problem is and how serious it is—but also determine how the customer feels from the way it’s written. A customer who is incredibly angry and a customer who is very satisfied must be responded to in different ways.
Likewise, if you are doing the claim assignment process manually, it can take a lot of time. Because you need to get in touch with the right expert and arrange a smooth transfer, your claim resolution time may take longer, which can result in loss of customers.
Customer support automation supports you every step of the way. For example, you can create a workflow that leverages tools like Watson Tone Analysis to analyze the sensitivity of customer requests and even voice messages! This automation helps your agents identify which requests need immediate attention.
You can also use workflow automation to:
- Transfer tickets via Slack.
- Assign tickets to the right agent and enable account-based customer service.
- Receive alerts about tickets according to the conditions you set.
- File and prioritize internal helpdesk issues.
- And do more!
What role does automation play in omni-channel support?
Zendesk has determined that since last year most of its customers are using more than one channel to get help. In other words, it looks like the omnichannel service will stay in use for a long time. Whether the customer reaches you via live chat, social media, phone or email, companies that fail to provide excellent support experiences will certainly be left behind.
So what role does automation play in omni-channel support?
To provide truly seamless omni-channel support, the teams responsible for each of these channels need immediate insight into the customer’s previous interactions with you. For example, this can be difficult as requests from phone calls and requests sent from a help desk page are recorded in different applications.
The existence of these requests directly impacts customer satisfaction: An Accenture survey showed that 89% of customers are disappointed when they have to explain their problem more than once.
You can assign support agents to manually update customer information in your CRM after each interaction. But with this approach, customer information will not be updated consistently. Each representative may enter different information, which may lead to contradictions or repetitions in the source of information. And every second that agents spend manually entering data means they’re delayed in getting back to customers. The longer the resolution time, the lower the customer satisfaction rate.
Building a comprehensive customer profile is key to providing true omni-channel support, and workflow automation can make it happen. You can use it to move important customer information to a central location so agents always have an accurate bird’s eye view. This also allows them to offer more personalized support, something most customers expect.
Workflow automation eliminates the need to search for information or enter different systems, allowing them to communicate with customers faster and more personalized.
Can customer support automation help my team meet their KPIs?
While reaching target numbers can be motivating for reps, there is a better way to consistently reach your KPIs. Automation actually makes a support agent’s job easier, thereby improving the quality of their work.
According to Zendesk, companies offering omni-channel support see a 16% improvement in first response time, 31% improvement in first resolution time, and approximately 40% improvement in requester wait time. That’s why you’ll quickly see improvements in these metrics if you use workflow automation to create seamless omni-channel experiences.
But workflow automation benefits your team’s KPIs in other ways, too.
Customer support automation can help you intelligently prevent customer churn, the most important KPI for customer support. For example, you can automatically send customer activity from apps like Intercom to an AI platform for intelligent analysis. When the AI tool identifies a potential loss customer, it can automate a high-priority ticket in Zendesk so an agent can reach it immediately.
Customer support automation can also enable you to make data-driven decisions that reflect the behavior of your customers. Often this includes advanced data analysis. To make this simpler, you can create an automated workflow that collects important data and routes it to an analytics platform. This way, you can identify potential issues, address gaps in service, and implement a long-term support strategy.
Let your support team perform at their best
With the fact that 82% of customers stop choosing a company because of insufficient support, it’s critical that you provide your agents with every possible tool to be successful. Customer support automation is an essential part of any support team, especially if you want to keep up with omni-channel support and changing customer behavior. By implementing automated workflows throughout the support cycle, your team will always be prepared. Strengthen your customer support with Workato automations!
