Customer service now
Services management has a long history – but it is far not over. Some new technologies are knocking the door to change the whole game.
Trends in Customer Services clearly shaping around the possibility of
- engaging intelligent tools that help automate support agent processes,
- providing customers better experience by branded applications,
- customer communication via all channels.
Artificial Intelligence is still a buzzword for 2018. But contrary to previous years, now we see living examples where intelligent tools successfully decrease workload and save money. And some tools are to support Customer Service or Partner Service.
What we call Customer Insights is getting to its very meaning using intelligent algorithms: for example, when an Agent starts working on a Case/Ticket, the system might warn the Agent that sending a Field Service technician will very likely to cause dissatisfaction, because the problem that the customer is facing with is an easy one and they expect a quick fix via phone. The great step is not only that the system tells what is about to happen but is telling why is about to happen… and it is using our data to figure it out. Data, out of which less then earlier is enough to make quality predictions – and this is very important. The amount of data required for successful predictions has always been a challenge. Today’s’ more advanced tools are capable to bridge this gap.
“The great step is not only that the system tells what is about to happen but is telling why is about to happen…”
Now, combining communication and artificial intelligence, you can figure out what comes next: a machine that talks to our customers. Thanks to Natural Language Processing, many of customer inquiries can be handled by so called Chat bots. They are robot agents that can understand the intent of our customers and they hand over to a living person only when they „feel” uncomfortable. As an example: a bot can understand that a customer is requesting to change the color of the product he has ordered recently and the bot will show up the color options. Once the customer picks the one needed, the bot will change the order. This all works with the education of the bot that needs to understand the nature and core concepts of our business.
81% of customers try Self Service as a first option when they stuck as users of our products or services. Either we build a community of users who help each other, either we build and publish our knowledge database, there are potential moments when we can step in and start an interaction. This can be a request towards one of our services, a request for help or an inquiry for our products. The experience is better and the engagement is stronger if this all happens in a branded environment, let it be a mobile application or a PC browser.
When customers try to contact with us, the first question comes up in their mind is the way they should do so. Depending on their age, they get used to different preferred channels. They might try to look for an email address or a „Contact Us” form on our website but it is more common to just make a search for our Company on Facebook or other social media platform.
The overall approach here is to be available on any channels and direct all incoming communication into one pipeline in order to decrease agents’ workload. Trending channels are Facebook, Messenger and Twitter, first two is more common in our CEE region and luckily, there are really good and easy-to-integrate solutions that make these channels manageable from our Support system.