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Customer service is rapidly changing
Because of the increasing digitalization of our society, companies have found amazing opportunities to better connect with their customers. The usage of messaging platforms as a customer service channel has surged over the last couple of years. It’s a fast and easy way for both businesses and customers to reach each other.
This has changed the customer service industry significantly. This - at first sight - ‘quick and easy way’ to communicate with customers via their preferred messaging platform has disrupted the customers’ perception of quality service.
Why?
The biggest factor: They expect companies to respond as fast as friends or family on a messaging platform.
Providing an outstanding average response time is a great opportunity for businesses to increase their service level. Offering a fast response increases the service level of your business, which affects the level of trust in your business. Customers give a higher ranking to businesses that have good online accessibility, resulting in more loyal customers.
The best average response time? 2.5 seconds (!!)
‘Seriously? Responding within 2,5 seconds? On average?!’
That may sound impossible and unnecessary. This would require an enormous customer service department if every incoming message is handled this quickly.
Yet, it’s possible. Even better: it’s possible even without hiring 200 new employees.
So… how?
Companies who successfully maintain a constant low average response time make use of a chatbot in their customer service flow. A chatbot helps to accommodate incoming customers. For starters, it can send a confirmation to customers saying you received their question. Furthermore, simple or frequently asked questions can often be answered immediately by the chatbot. And when the questions are more complex, it guides the conversation to a human agent and requests useful information in advance as well.
Never automate your full customer service
Customers always prefer a personal approach. Especially when these customers have complaints or complex questions. In these situations, you should never handle this by a chatbot alone. This will do more harm than good.
However, the chatbot can be very helpful even in this context. Let’s find out how:
As we’ve said, the chatbot can help to retrieve useful information beforehand before your employee takes over. This lowers the workload on your employees and helps them to focus on the important matters of the complaint or question. As a result, your team can more effectively handle the queries.
Also, the chatbot can also help the customer after receiving personal support. If, for example, it has become clear during the (human) conversation that the product doesn’t meet your customers’ expectations. The customer wants to return the product. In this case, the chatbot can take over again and handle the return.
Different situations where you want to use a chatbot for customer service
It’s clear that chatbots are a very cost-effective way for businesses to manage all the incoming questions. As a result, more and more businesses are ‘hiring’ one. Obviously, the needs of companies vary and so do all the situations in which they can deploy a chatbot. Let’s explore some more situations in which a chatbot is helpful.
Formal organizations, for example a hospital
In this situation, a chatbot can be very helpful for scheduling appointments or for patients who have questions prior to their visit. Depending on their treatment, different patients may have the same question. A customer service chatbot can easily answer these frequently asked questions for you or direct them to the right information. This will not only improve the service level of the hospital but also ensure they will get fewer phone calls.
Seasonality
Some businesses or organizations have to deal with periodic hustle and bustle. For example during the holidays. At these moments, they can scale up their customer service team or save costs by using a customer care chatbot. They can handle more than double the amount of incoming questions while the chatbot also provides them with data about your customers. It can learn from the interactions and measure the sentiment of the messages customers are sending, leading to more personalized communication.
‘But wouldn’t this require a lot of technical knowledge?’
The simple answer: not at all!
Nowadays, modern customer care solutions such as Mobile Service Cloud makes it very easy for companies to manage their customer service on any channel. Furthermore, chatbots can be deployed without any technical knowledge.
As all channels can be managed within one tool, all data is also stored here. This helps you with data enrichment and the realization of rich customer profiles. You can gain more insight into your customers, which makes your business adaptable to their needs and wishes.
Mobile Service Cloud provides you with all the channels, tools, and features you need in order to deliver an outstanding customer experience, reduce the pressure on your customer service team, and even improve your business results.
