Nowadays, especially after the emergence of Covid-19, the entire way we live and work has evolved, yet customer expectations are still as high as ever. Modern-day customers can quickly become frustrated if they're waiting on hold or chatting with multiple customer support agents. Customers are looking for the correct answers to their queries and requests fast while expecting their issues to be resolved promptly with care and empathy. Well, digital technology can make that possible. Even though it may seem like a paradox, fully automated customer service can make support more responsive and human.

But why is this the case? Service automation is reshaping businesses' relationships with their customers and customer service representatives by streamlining the entire support process and enhancing both parties' satisfaction. Automated customer service aims to help customers have fewer human interactions and have their customer requests solved more quickly while insulating companies from high call volumes, speeds up customer service processes, and minimizes human error.

In this blog post, we'll explain what service automation is, we'll go through the technologies that make service automation possible, and finally, discuss how it can help you take your company to the next level. Please continue reading to understand how automated customer service could benefit your business and empower responsiveness in customer requests.

What Is Automated Customer Service?

Did you know that in a regular five-minute customer service call, representatives spend more than 75% of their time doing manual research to answer or solve the customer’s request, neglecting responsiveness and valuable customer interaction to a dismal 25%? With service automation, companies reduce the human effort involved in finding the solutions customers need and consequently empower the responsiveness in customer queries.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that human agents will get replaced by technologies from the AI umbrella and get left behind. Instead, customer service automation means that human representatives will be empowered by these groundbreaking technologies like machine learning and natural language processing. To name a few, they resolve customer issues faster—sometimes before they arise—and have more time to focus on more complicated matters than routine tier-one requests.

Companies can achieve automated customer service using simulated chat conversations, proactive messaging, self-service resources, and more. Typical examples of service automation systems include automated workflows, ML-powered software like Y Meadows, email automation, self-service help centers, FAQs, interactive voice responses, chatbots, virtual assistants, and more.

Below, we’ll explore why we believe that all support teams should be adopting this technology and what it can put on the table for your business. But, before we do that, let’s see how machine learning and natural language processing technologies make this possible.

The Roles Of ML And NLP In Customer Service Automation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already extremely important in the business world. Machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) assist an increasing proportion of day-to-day processes and communications.

And the uptake of AI is more significant than you’d think. From tapping into chatbots and virtual assistants to ask a question to receiving a “you’ve left something in your shopping bag” email, consumers are on the other end of AI processes all the time, often without even knowing it. So the penetration of AI into customer services, and by AI, we mean machine learning and NLP, is vast and is here to stay.

Machine learning is a subset of AI which allows systems to learn from experience without being programmed by a human automatically. The learning is then automatically applied to develop a better process. Instead, machine learning relies on computers accessing data that they can learn and use for themselves. For example, machine learning collects data about a customer’s previous browsing, geo-events, on-site interactions, purchases, referrals, and other online behaviors. It then uses this data to determine a more personalized service in the future.

Natural language processing is another subfield of artificial intelligence and computer science concerned with the cooperation between computer and human languages. It concentrates on how computers can be programmed to process and interpret vast amounts of natural language data. Luckily, Y Meadows’ software is well equipped with these revolutionary technologies to help your organization achieve fully automated customer service to serve your customers in a highly responsive and professional manner.  

6 Ways In Which Automated Customer Service Can Empower The Responsiveness In Solving Customer Requests

Service Automation Improves Overall Efficiency And Speediness

Both companies and customers can gain incredible value from automated services and shorter response times. For instance, diverting customers from directly calling your business and making it possible for them to find answers to their issues on your website or platform can allow your agents to free up time and solve more complex problems, queries, and requests that need a human touch. This way, instead of pressuring human customer service representatives to achieve short call times, they’ll be solely focused on the outcomes.

Put yourself in the shoes of a customer. Imagine you file a customer service request, and instead of getting bounced around multiple agents, your problem gets resolved the first time in a highly responsive and efficient way. To businesses, this approach means fewer complaints, more requests resolved, and happier customers.

Automated Customer Service Supports Team Collaboration And Avoids Manual Ticket Triaging

Automated customer service solutions like the Y Meadows model can help increase team collaboration and eliminate confusion about who owns a particular support ticket. Furthermore, support teams equipped with automation apparatus can strengthen workflows for resolving customer requests, which prevents excessive steps along the way. For example, to avoid a ticket falling through the cracks, our software can flag each ticket for review if it doesn’t change after three days.

Allows For 24/7 Customer Support

Human customer representatives can only work so many hours during the day. On the contrary, automated customer service provides 24/7 first-class customer support without interruption.

For instance, the Y Meadows model can allow for online assistance without any need for human interaction if the request is straightforward and its solution is already in the knowledge base of the software. For more complicated issues, chatbot solutions can promptly notify human representatives regarding a service interruption and get the problem resolved in a matter of minutes.

Automated Customer Service Minimizes Human Error

No matter how friendly the support team is, nobody likes getting bounced around from one representative to another. If you strive to be a successful organization, you practically owe it to your clients to resolve their requests as fast and efficiently as possible. Service automation is perhaps the best way to improve service speed and reduce human agents errors.

Nowadays, people tend to rely too much on intuition and instinct. Customer service agents do their best but tend to develop muscle memory for customer requests, and individual interactions may not be the best representative of the entire customer support process. With service automation, support agents don’t have to conduct in-depth analysis during every call. Automated customer service tools like our software can even surface context-sensitive intelligence before answering an incoming call or answering an email.

It Supports Customer Feedback Campaigns

Besides directly ameliorating customer requests' responsiveness, automated customer service can also help your company collect valuable feedback along the complete customer journey. For example, you can go beyond when a client endorses your products or services and discover why they love or hate your company's work.

Additionally, you can make the most out of KPI metrics like customer service satisfaction score and net promoter score to acknowledge which customer channels result in the most satisfied customers and measure responsiveness in different channels to know which channels work best for your business.

Automated Customer Service Perfectly Aligns With The Needs Of Modern-Day Customers

As phones remain one of the most widely utilized customer service channels between all generations, that trend is certainly evolving. Younger generations tend to embrace communication channels outside of phone calls and speak to a human representative to receive timely support.

As digital natives, Gen-Z and Millennials are progressively comfortable resolving issues by themselves with the help of automated customer service. They are very familiar with FAQs, knowledge bases, virtual assistants, social media messaging, and webchat. For that reason, if you fail to offer customer service automation, you might be limiting the level of service you can provide to tech-savvy customers.

Are You Ready For Customer Service Automation?

With the technologies like machine learning and natural language processing available today, what excuse is there not to provide better and more responsive support and service for your customers? Automated customer service comes with many benefits for modern-day businesses, so if you receive a high volume of customer requests each day that outpaces your representatives’ ability to resolve these requests, you should book a call with our sales reps and find out how you can free up resources for your skilled human representatives and provide better support to your clients.