You’ve probably entered a website recently and a live chat window popped up asking you whether you need help. This is one of the most recent examples of automated customer service. Customer service has been around for a long time, and whilst the concept has largely stayed the same, the methods have gradually evolved. SaaS or e-commerce companies have greatly benefitted from customer service tools to accelerate their response to modern users.

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Achieving a successful customer experience has always gone beyond providing quick responses. A truly successful experience is based on personalized attention that requires human interaction, as much as artificial intelligence (AI). To personalize automated customer service, the first thing is to search for the best automation tool based on your business needs and resources. The second key aspect is to follow the best practices from other successful companies that have managed to scale a personalized service to a growing customer base.

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This article covers:

  • Why automate your Customer Service?
  • How to automate Customer Service?
  • Top tools to automate your Customer Service

Why automate your Customer Service?

Although you should never lose sight of the human approach when communicating with your clients, automation is key for any business that wants to boost its productivity while continuing to grow its customer base. The main reasons to start using a customer success platform for your customer service tasks include:

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  • Provide faster response times. Although it’s not your main competitive advantage, it’s certainly the first impression your customer will get from you. If you take longer than your competitors to reply, then you know who they’re going to stick with. This is where self-service features such as knowledge bases and AI-assisted chatbots offer 24 hour service. This ensures that any user, regardless of their location, receives immediate support.
  • Boost team productivity. By automating tasks and centralizing communication, your team can boost their productivity levels. This will also give you more time and resources to adapt to your customers’ preferences and needs. For example, a knowledge base might be more suitable for more independent users, whereas a live chat will work better with users who like interaction.
  • Reduce manual error. Automating simple tasks such as ticketing or automated responses will reduce the number of errors. Computers can continually process 100 tickets accurately, whereas the manual alternative will inevitably result in errors.

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All of these benefits will have a direct impact on budget allocation and higher customer satisfaction levels.

How to automate Customer Service?

To answer this question fully, we offer the main characteristics of best practices in automated customer service.

Maintain Human Touch

Customer service is the perfect example of how crucial human-specific abilities are key when it comes to creating relationships and communicating sensitive information. This means that you will always have to make sure that the messages or content received by your customers contains the right amount of empathy, adaptability, and flexibility that only humans can offer.

Create A Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is one of the best forms of self-service. As a business, you need to make sure that any questions that customers may have throughout their journey are answered in this knowledge base. An example of this type of self-service would be a FAQs site, video tutorials, or how-to articles – any content that will contribute to user onboarding.

Use Chatbots Wisely

Chatbots are especially useful for resolving basic issues 24/7. When used wisely, chatbots are a great way to quickly determine the cause of the issue and get the necessary information from purchase history. By covering this important research stage, your team will then be able to resolve the issue faster.

Personalize Automated Messages

Automated responses that are pre-written by your team are a good option, as long as you make sure it’s not robotic. A simple way to avoid this is to create different templates adapted to the tone and style of each channel. You can then personalize the message by adding the name of the customer service agent or any of the details provided by the user that will make customers feel heard.

Gather Feedback

A way to gather feedback is to ask customers to rate your service on all aspects, including speed, resolution, attention, etc. However, don’t ignore the rest of the channels used to communicate with the customer, e.g., phone calls, where you offer higher levels of personalization.

Automate your Customer Service with FROGED

FROGED is a comprehensive and versatile customer success platform that meets users at every stage of their customer experience. Start qualified conversations through live chat, create unique documents in a customizable knowledge base, and reach that wow factor via product flows. There is a reason why FROGED is expanding its customer base successfully and these companies have decided to learn from the best!

Qonto

Qonto launched in 2017 to provide finance solutions to SMEs and freelancers. Currently, target personas also incorporate new business founders and associations, meaning that this growth and variety in customer base requires a platform that facilitates growth while maintaining the same level of attention. This can be easily achieved through Proactive Customer Support, including product flows, self-service content, and live support. Luckily, FROGED offers all of this.

Mark’s Coffee

Mark’s Coffee is an e-commerce platform for specialty coffee roasters. This means that their customers are expecting quality in the product and in the service provided. As stated on their website, they aim to “give you the best flavors and experience possible”, so you better make sure to have the right platform to do so! An e-commerce such as Mark’s Coffee would benefit from customer retention tools such as a knowledge base where coffee lovers could find recipes or ways to enjoy that unique moment. FROGED incorporates an intuitive interface, so you can create useful content in no time.

Sengerio

Sengerio is a cloud-based software solution for bus charters, limo companies, and travel agencies. Their services include booking, scheduling, invoicing, customer service, reporting, etc. A platform like FROGED allows you to streamline communication, so your customer can get the immediate assistance they need. Hear it straight from the horse’s mouth in our recently published Sengerio Case Study.

Automated customer service is indeed a game-changer for all companies, especially in the growing stages. To maintain a high-quality responsive service, you can’t forget about human-specific characteristics such as empathy or friendliness. Automated customer service should be approached as a way to maintain the desired level of personalized service regardless of the number of customers or tickets that need to be dealt with. By making sure your team uses automated communication for initial tasks in the customer journey and leaving the personal or more sensitive issues to the humans, you can guarantee the so-called moment of joy for any user.